good teacher as well.”
“If I wouldn’t be in the way, could I ask you some questions?”
“Sure and you can ask all you please. The roses there need deadheading. I can show you how it’s done, and you can have a go at it if it pleases you.”
Between Seamus and the rainbow, her mood lifted. “I’d love to try.”
He spent a patient hour with her, naming flowers and plants, explaining growth cycles, guiding her hands to pull a weed or deadhead a spent bloom.
He showed her what flowers to harvest from what he called the cutting garden to make a nice display inside.
When she offered him tea, he thanked her but said he had work elsewhere. So he tipped his cap again before he walked away and left her with a handful of flowers and a feeling of fresh optimism.
She went inside to arrange them, thought she had a decent hand at it. Then looked around the empty cottage. The sad wanted to come back, but she shook her head.
Marco told her to have fun, and she’d already started. She could write. Maybe it was late in the day to begin, but it was her day, after all. Her time.
So she opened what she thought of as a writing Coke and settled in at her desk.
She wrote—maybe not a flood, but a decent stream—until hunger stirred. Grateful Marco had seen she had leftovers so she wouldn’t have to dive right into cooking, she warmed up a meal. And thought of him flying over the ocean.
She hoped he drank champagne and watched movies on the smoothest air imaginable.
She did her dishes, then took her delayed walk along the bay in the long summer evening.
When she looked back at the cottage, glowing in the lights she’d left on, she felt wonder, and she felt comfort.
“Right again, Marco. I’ll be fine. This is what I want. It’s what I need. I miss you, but I’m happy. I’m going to work on staying that way.”
She took her time walking back while the moon rose over hill and water.
The water of the bay held a stream of the moonlight, and the breeze murmured of promise. She heard an owl, maybe just wakened, call out.
“Who?” she responded. “Who am I exactly? I’m going to find out.”
She went back inside, remembered belatedly to lock up. And prepared to spend the first night of her life completely on her own.
Or so she thought.
Sleeping, she didn’t see the lights dancing outside her windows, keeping watch. Or the hawk perched on a branch nearby to guard Eian Kelly’s daughter.
She woke once when the phone in her hand signaled a text from Marco.
Smooth flight and ur boy’s back in Philly. Thanks to the best pal in the world 4 an awesome trip. Now go back 2 sleep and text me tomorrow.
Glad you’re home, she texted back. Give everyone a kiss from me. Going back to sleep as ordered.
Nearly there already, she set the phone on the bedside table to dream of rainbows and dancing lights.
CHAPTER TEN
She found a rhythm.
Always an early riser, Breen usually woke at dawn. Her reward: a misty bay, a shimmering eastern sky. Fueled with coffee, she wrote her daily blog in her pajamas—and considered it her warm-up for the book.
She changed into workout gear, got her body moving before she took a second cup of coffee and whatever came easiest to hand for her morning walk by the bay.
She learned to recognize the birds, the whooper swans, the kestrels and reed buntings, and looked forward to watching them glide and soar while the mists thinned over the water.
She wrote in the quiet, just the breeze and the birds, and was always astonished how the day slid by.
A late afternoon or evening walk with the magpies and wildflowers in the woods. She kept her phone handy for photos, and once marveled at herself for framing a shot of a doe and her fawn who looked at her with more curiosity than alarm.
In a matter of days she realized being alone didn’t mean being lonely. She missed Marco, but found the challenge, and the freedom, of being truly on her own satisfying.
She could handle making a meal—especially if it happened to be frozen pizza. She had scores of books to choose from, and hours and hours to write, to walk, to consider what she wanted to do with the rest of her life.
On the last, she made a list.
I’ll keep writing, whether it’s the blog or a book or just