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she’d escaped from, everything that haunted her. But to do so put her fate in the hands of another. That was something she would never do again.
    â€œTomorrow I’ll serve a summer vegetable soup and a chicken, zucchini, and ricotta sandwich. That’s as complicated as it’s going to get.”
    â€œThat’s as good a start as any. Enjoy your afternoon.” Mia waited until Nell reached the door. “Nell? As long as you’re still afraid, he wins.”
    â€œI don’t give a damn about winning,” Nell replied. Then she stepped out quickly and closed the door behind her.

Three

    N ell found the stream, and the wild columbine—like little drops of sun in the green shade. Sitting on the soft floor of the forest, listening to the stream gurgle and the birds chirp, she found her peace again.
    This was her place. She was as sure of that as she’d been of any single thing in all her life. She belonged here as she’d belonged nowhere else.
    Even as a child she’d felt displaced. Not by her parents, she thought, running her fingers over her locket. Never by them. But home had been wherever her father was stationed, and until his orders changed. There’d been no single place for childhood, no pretty spot for memories to take root and bloom.
    Her mother had had the gift of making a home wherever they were, and for however long. But it wasn’t the same as knowing you would wake up to the same view out of your bedroom window day after day.
    And that was a yearning Nell had carried with her always.
    Her mistake had been in believing she could soothe that yearning with Evan, when she should have known it was something she had to find for herself.
    Perhaps she had, now. Here in this place.
    That’s what Mia had meant. Like recognizing like . They both belonged on the island. Maybe, in some lovely way, they belonged to it. It was as simple as that.
    Still, Mia was an intuitive woman, and an oddly powerful one. She sensed secrets. Nell could only hope she was as good as her word and wouldn’t pry. If anyone started digging through the layers, she would have to leave. No matter how much she belonged, she couldn’t stay.
    It wasn’t going to happen.
    Nell got to her feet, stretching up her arms to the thin sunbeams, and turned slow circles. She wouldn’t let it happen. She was going to trust Mia. She was going to work for her and live in the little yellow cottage and wake each morning with a giddy, glorious sense of freedom.
    In time, she thought as she began to walk back toward her house, she and Mia might become real friends. It would be fascinating to have a friend that vivid, that clever.
    What was it like to be a woman like Mia Devlin? she wondered. To be someone so utterly beautiful, so sublimely confident? A woman like that would never have to question herself, to remake herself, to worry that whatever she did, or could do, would never be good enough.
    What a marvelous thing.
    Still, while a woman might be born beautiful, confidence could be learned. It could be won. And wasn’t there amazing satisfaction from winning those small battles? Every time you did, you went back to war better armed.
    Enough dawdling, enough introspection, she thought and quickened her pace. She was going to blow the last of her advance at the garden center.
    If that wasn’t confidence, she decided, what was?

    They let her open an account. Another debt to Mia, Nell thought as she drove back across the island. She worked for Mia Devlin, so she was looked upon kindly, she was trusted, she was allowed to take away merchandise on the strength of her signature on a tally.
    A kind of magic, she supposed, that existed only in small towns. She’d struggled not to take advantage, and had still ended up with half a dozen flats. And pots, and soil. And a silly stone gargoyle who would guard what she planted.
    Eager to begin, she parked in front of the cottage and hopped out. The