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stuff.
    Checking her packages, she put the food in the fridge and left the rest on the table. It was too nice a day to stay indoors. Remembering what she’d talked about with Irma, staying in Nantucket awhile and fixing up the house while letting her emotions settle, she decided there was no time like the present to get started.
    Changing out of her linen slacks and silk blouse into old cutoff jeans shorts and her comfortably worn college sweatshirt minus sleeves, Briana made a mental list of things to do. She’d put off cleaning the inside until tomorrow so she could get an early start. Today she’d check Gramp’s garage and see what he had and what she might need to buy to fix up the exterior.
    She knew there was a ladder in the garage. She also knew she was wary of heights. Maybe she’d call a roofing company to come out. She’d probably need a carpenter to make sure the windows and doors weren’t warped, someone who could also fix the gate on the fence. Later, she’d clear out the flower beds, weed the area, maybe get some rich soil to mix in before adding some new plants.
    Tying her somewhat beat-up canvas sneakers, Briana felt pleased with her plan. Keeping busy, that was the answer. Seeing progress each day and feeling a sense of accomplishment, something she hadn’t experienced in quite some time. She loved her photography, but she couldn’t seem to make herself pick up a camera since the day Bobby died.
    Photography had become both her passion and her career, one following on the heels of the other. She’d put together her first book of photos as a lark, for her own pleasure. Then a friend she’d showed it to had urged her to send it to a New York agent she knew. To Briana’s surprise, Jocelyn Banks had loved her work and sold it to a publisher almost immediately.
    That book had been published two years ago under the title
Manhattan Musings
, and been well received, if not spectacularly so. Now she was contracted for another and had deadlines, restrictions, and requirements, diluting some of the pleasure. She’d been working on that, centered around Boston, when her life had changed forever. After Bobby’s death, she’d had Jocelyn ask for and get an indefinite extension. She’d go back to her work one day, Briana supposed. But for now, she needed to do something less artistic and more physically tiring.
    At the back of the garage, she found several paint buckets, a few with remnants all but dried up in the bottom, one in gray and another in white, plus a couple of smaller cans. Gramp had probably kept them for touch-ups. The brushes were sitting in some coagulated liquid and too far gone to reuse. Finding a plastic trash bag, she tossed in everything she couldn’t use, wound on a twist-tie, and hauled it out to the can at the fence line.
    Taking her time, Briana wrote out a shopping list, then circled the house to determine where she should begin. The east side that bordered Jeremy’s place was the worst, probably because the wind and rain hit there the hardest, and the sun baked it the longest. She carried the five-foot ladder, the only one she found, out to that side, propped it open, and steadied it on the uneven ground. This was about as high as she felt comfortable climbing. She’d worry about the uppermost part later. With a metal scraper she’d found in hand, she climbed halfway up and went to work grating off the loose paint.
    Briana worked slowly, enjoying the warmth of the sun and the sheer effort of working muscles too long neglected. She might be sore later, but it felt good now. After she finished the first section, she went in for the bottled water she kept in the fridge and took a long drink. Outside once more, she set the water on the grass before starting on the second section.
    Working on a particularly stubborn bubble of old, dried paint, she hoped that the fall rains would hold off until the job was completed. Then it could storm all it wanted while she remodeled