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you. It’s not glamorous like that magazine
job you had, but it’s work and you get to meet a lot of nice
people. I need a waitress and sometimes cook, if you’re looking for
something to do.”
    “ Thanks, Eileen,” Cathy said
with a smile. “I’ll give that some serious thought.”
    And Cathy did think about
Eileen’s offer over the next week as she researched paint colors
for the cottage. She had nearly twenty thousand dollars from her
retirement fund at the magazine—she had opted for the
employer-matching plan and it had paid off. She had no rent or
utilities to pay on the bay, so the money should last her for a
while.
    It had only been three weeks
since she’d left Aaron and her life in Atlanta. It wasn’t easy,
but she was getting by, letting go more and more every day the
thoughts of her former life. But she didn’t feel ready to start
working at a new place with new people. She just needed to survive
until she felt whole again.
    She deleted her Pinterest page
with boards featuring Mission-style furniture, paint colors, and
vintage Arts and Crafts era pottery. She tried not to think about how
she would have been decorating her new house as a newlywed while she
was instead refurbishing the cottage as a broken-hearted single
person.
    When she had settled on her paint
colors—creamy white, sand, and subdued greens and blues—Cathy
drove to the paint store in Fort Walton. She was looking at the
rollers wondering which type to get when someone behind her said,
“Here’s the one you want.”
    She turned to face a man with
light brown hair streaked by the sun. His blue eyes lit up in
recognition.
    “ Cathy?” he said.
    “ Neil!” Cathy said. She might
have shrieked a little. “I can’t believe it’s you. I thought
you left the bay.”
    “ Yeah, I did. I went to college
in Baltimore.”
    “ I know,” she said. “And I
heard you were a big hit and that you stayed there.”
    “ Oh, yeah?” he asked. “A
big hit? Sure wish somebody had told me that.”
    Cathy chuckled. It was the first
time she’d laughed since the woman called her over a month ago.
    “ I came back to the bay a
couple of years ago,” Neil said. “That whole art world scene got
to me after a while, all those phony people, the show openings. Not
to mention, I never knew if I would sell enough to make my rent each
month.”
    An image of Aaron flashed through
Cathy’s mind. He was so wealthy that he had paid for their new
house outright. He really had no idea what normal working people went
through just to make a living.
    “ I guess being a popular
painter isn’t all it’s cracked up to be,” Cathy said.
    “ Hey, would you like to grab
some lunch and catch up? I could give you some pointers on painting.
It’s what I do for a living now—painting houses instead of art.”
    Cathy glanced at the counter
where her cans of paint sat waiting for her to check out.
    “ Sounds good,” she said. “I
just need to get the rest of the stuff here.”
    Neil helped her choose brushes,
rollers, and pans, along with painter’s tape and a few other tools
to make her job easier. He put everything in her trunk and together
they walked down the sidewalk of the strip mall to The Orchid House.
It smelled rich and spicy when they stepped inside.
    “ I haven’t been here in
years,” Cathy said. “I always used to get the yellow curry
chicken and fried rice.”
    “ I come here about once a
month,” Neil said.
    The waitress seated them next to
a window and Cathy looked out at the highway, visualizing the ocean
in the distance. It wasn’t so bad to be home, she just wished the
circumstances had been different. Her mind started to wander to her
failed wedding, then she forced herself to get back to the present.
Neil was ordering dumplings as an appetizer.
    “ I heard you left the bay,
too,” Neil said after the dumplings had been placed on the table.
    Cathy took a bite of dumpling,
savoring its delicate flavors.
    “ I did,” she said after