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picked out with bleached shells. They regarded the looming house for a few moments from the wooden porch. Then they climbed up the slick steps and pushed open the sticky wooden door.
    â€œWe’re here,” said Lottie. “Our own cottage in Maine.” Rose flipped on a couple of light switches but the electricity was evidently not working. The flashlight’s weak beam showed them the house was all wood: wood floors, wood walls, wood ceilings. It smelled of old pine, salt air, mildew, dust, wood smoke. They pushed open two of the most likely doors and found a couple of bedrooms.
    â€œThank God the beds are made up,” said Rose. “I’ll take this one for now.” She dropped her waterlogged baggage on the floor of her room. “Good night,” she said.
    Before she could close the door, Lottie stopped her. She leaned in close and gave Rose a kiss on the cheek. “I promised myself, the first thing to happen in this house,” Lottie said solemnly, quietly, “would be a kiss.”
    Rose stumbled into her small bedroom. She oriented herself, had a badly needed pee in a tiny adjoining bathroom. Then she peeled off her clothes, felt her cheek for Lottie’s kiss, and softly cried herself to sleep.

CHAPTER FIVE
    L ottie was almost afraid to get out of bed when she finally opened her eyes the next morning. What would she see out the window? A shining paradise or a muddy hillside? But it would be amazing. Whatever it was would be amazing. She could barely bring herself to look.
    There were Swiss dot curtains on the windows and a dim light was coming through shutters behind them—was the sun even up yet? She looked around for a clock and didn’t find one. She had no idea what time it was. Her cell phone had stopped getting service somewhere north of Ellsworth, and there didn’t seem to be a working outlet in her small room.
    Lottie felt as if she had slept a very long time—she hadn’t woken up so rested in ages. She thought of Ethan. She had been able to connect to Jon and him for a minute on Rose’s phone from Bangor. Would they know she was fine? Would they believe she was thinking about them? But what a joy to sleep so soundly, and by herself!
    Other than her eyelids, Lottie hadn’t moved a muscle since she woke up. She wanted to take it all in. The air was different here. It was thinner and clearer. It smelled sweet—from the promised roses outside her window? Or maybe from the old pine of the house itself? She hesitated to go to the window and look out. Could the view be as sweet as this little room? She had a double bed, but it was a double bed for very small people, a couple from a different age. You’d have to be very close to sleep with another person in this bed. But that suited her fine.
    Her sheets were crisp and white, as if someone had ironed them by hand. Lottie put them up to her face and inhaled. “They smell like sunshine,” she said to the room. She pulled off the bedclothes and placed her bare feet on the warm, worn, unfinished floorboards, flinging her arms out and throwing off her T-shirt with a single gesture. She was naked in the warm half-light of this tiny bedroom and she could feel everything waking up again—her skin, the soles of her feet, the tips of her ears. She pushed up her generous breasts dramatically. “Va-va-voom!” she said, actually laughing.
    And then she opened the shutters.
    The first things her eyes lit on were flowers, a riot of flowers—orange gold with black centers; delicate white blossoms; full-blown lilies; and everywhere, wild roses. Even though she was on the ground floor of the cottage she was perched high enough to see that the garden of flowers soon fell off, and next came a view of the dazzling water, and out on the horizon, the curving edge of the sea. She breathed in the cool, clean fresh air, which smelled like the ocean. The sun hit her skin and she felt as if she could