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Granddad was okay, I walked the other way along the beach road until I reached the private strip of undeveloped sand that Granddad had inherited from his family. When my dad had been around, he used to complain that we’d all be rich if Granddad would give inand sell his beach. Stubbornly, Granddad had never put it up for sale or even built a house on it. He liked to go there by himself and paint the ocean.
    I knew how he felt. That’s where I’d fallen in love with photography, taking pictures of the palm trees, the sand, the boats on the water. Everybody saw the same thing, but a photographer framed it to focus on one object in particular, telling a certain story.
    In fact, I was afraid I was a little too much like Granddad. Someday I would inherit his house on one side of downtown and his strip of beach on the other. Like him, I’d hole up with my art and resent having to interact with other people when I went to the grocery store once a week.
    I enjoyed being alone on the beach, but sometimes I wished my friends were there. This weekend, the public beaches were crowded enough that I could hear families laughing through the palms. As I swam out into the warm waves, I could see kids splashing together over on the park side. A teenage girl hugged a guy in the water with her legs looped around his waist. He kissed her ear. They laughed and whispered.
    Brody was probably over there too, with Grace.
    Never mind. I had work to do.
    *   *   *
    Monday morning, I got up early, as if it wasn’t a holiday, because it wasn’t—for me. I chose a fitted blouse tucked into a trim pencil skirt I’d made, and my most professional-looking glasses. I pulled back my hair into a classy bun at my nape. Then I walked from the small house I shared with Mom, which had been converted from a coach house, over to the huge Victorian, her bed and breakfast. Mom was already there, cooking her boarders’ one expected meal of the day. It was my job to help serve.
    I hated doing this. Since my parents had separated two years before, I’d tried to be supportive of Mom, but the first thing she did to rebuild her life without my dad was to borrow money from Granddad and buy a B & B. She loved people. She thought living on top of a constantly rotating group of strangers was a fun way to spend her days. It was like a sickness. She’d dreamed of running a B & B in the beach town where she grew up. Obviously Granddad’s introverted gene had skipped a generation. To me the B & B was a nightmare.
    I stood outside the pink clapboard back of the house. Palmettos shaded me from the bright morning sun. My kitten heels ground the seashells in the path. I took a few deep, calming breaths. Then I opened the door into the kitchen.
    “Good morning,” Mom sang, pulling homemade orange rolls from the oven. She wore a long, flowing beach dress andfeather earrings, and she’d put up her dark hair in a deliberate tousle. Her feet were bare. She liked to dress ultra-casual so her guests would feel at home with the beach lifestyle, but I was pretty sure serving orange rolls in bare feet was reason for an inspection by the Health Department.
    She turned away from me to snag a bread basket from a shelf, but I heard her say, “You look [unintelligible].”
    I didn’t ask her to repeat herself. I’d heard all her comments about my fashion sense before.
    She kept on me. Handing me a pair of tongs and the basket of rolls to pass out to guests in the dining room, she looked me up and down and said, “I thought you were photographing the 5K this morning.”
    “I am.”
    “You don’t look comfortable.”
    Well, I wasn’t comfortable right then , living out somebody else’s dreams of owning a business. I didn’t say this, because it wouldn’t do any good.
    “Smile,” she said, touching my lips, possibly smearing my perfect red lipstick. Now I would have to check my face before I left the house. Then she tapped her finger between my brows, possibly