be sand. ’Night, Mrs. Davis.”
She smiled and had begun to walk toward her house when I called after her. “Bella?”
She turned back.
“Call me Valentina or Val, please.”
“Okay, Val. See you in the morning.”
***
I walked out onto the deck with my morning coffee and found Bella stretching on the sand behind our houses.
“Am I late?” I called down, checking the time on my phone.
“Nope. I’m early.” She bent to the right and stretched her left arm over her head. “I woke up an hour ago hearing what I thought was the sound of rain hitting my window. But when I came out, it wasn’t raining.”
“Do you want some coffee?”
“I’d actually love some. I ran out and had to make decaf this morning, which is like taking a shower with a raincoat on. What’s the point?”
“I couldn’t agree more.” I nodded my head in the direction of the house. “Come on, let’s get you properly caffeinated.”
Inside, Bella looked at the small picture frames lined up on the kitchen windowsill while I poured her a steaming mug of coffee.
“So you and Mr. Davis are divorced now?”
She focused on an old picture of my ex-husband and our son. I’d eradicated the house of all other traces of Ryan Sr., but it didn’t seem right to get rid of that picture. My son wore his Little League baseball uniform and looked up at his father in admiration. A part of me hoped keeping that photo around might someday remind my son that he was missing out by pushing his father away since our divorce. The things that happened between Ryan and me shouldn’t have to ruin the relationship of father and son—but my son was protective of his mother.
“It’ll be two years this fall that our divorce was finalized.”
She crinkled up her nose. “He wasn’t very friendly, was he?”
I chuckled. Ryan had never been a fan of the Donovans next door. He’d complained that they played their music too loud and let their kids run wild. He’d rolled his eyes when Bella’s parents danced on the back deck together, while I often secretly wished I had that type of marriage.
“No. He wasn’t the most friendly neighbor, was he?”
We shared a smile as I handed Bella cream for her coffee.
“I mean, I haven’t seen him in years. But I remember he always looked like he just finished sucking a lemon.”
That was a perfect description of Ryan the last ten years. Bitter.
After Bella fixed her coffee with cream and enough sugar to induce a diabetic coma, we sat on the chaise lounges on my back deck. The morning dawn was magical out over the beach.
“So what are you studying in college?”
“I’m not sure. I’d love to go into something like acting. I was originally a business major, but my brother took all the brains when he was born and left me none.”
“I’m sure you’re plenty smart.”
“Business majors have to take Accounting 101 the first year of school. The professor told us before the first test that if we didn’t get at least a sixty, we might want to drop the class because it only got harder from there. I got a twenty-eight.”
My eyebrows shot up. “Out of a hundred?”
“And I studied.” She sipped her coffee. “I dropped the class the next day. I don’t even know why I picked business for a major. I think I just felt like I was supposed to have a major, know what I want to be when I grow up. Like Ford.”
“Not everyone knows what they’re supposed to do right away. I was a CAT-scan technician for fifteen years. It was a good job because it allowed me to work part time around Ryan’s school schedule, although it was never something I was passionate about. I actually went back to school to become an Italian language teacher, and I’m taking the licensing test in a few weeks. My grandparents are from Italy, and I always loved the language. I’m really excited about it now. Took me almost twenty years to figure it out, though.”
“That’s really cool. I’d do that, but I sort of suck at foreign languages. It’s part of the reason I’m thinking acting might be for me. You really don’t have to be good at English or math. Plus…” She smirked. “My parents always said I was a drama queen.”
“You’ll figure it out. Just take your time.”
Since Bella had brought them up, I figured it was okay to talk about her parents. “By the way, I’m really sorry about