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  He lifted a hand in a casual way and dropped it. “See you around.”

  “Yes,” I replied, my voice strange, husky, like I was about to start crying. “Yeah. See you around.”

  He studied me for another second before he did a short nod, turned and walked down my front walk that was also jagged, inlaid here and there with interesting pieces of glass, edged in a thick line of travertine.

  I stood and took in the way he walked, how comfortable he was with his bulky frame. I also fully took in his clothing.

  He was a firefighter.

  That was not surprising.

  Then it struck me that I was standing in my doorway watching him, and if he caught me, what that might say, so I quickly jumped back and closed the door.

  I turned to my living room.

  Upon arriving in Magdalene the day before, I’d picked up the keys and the garage door openers and done the first walk-through of my house.

  I’d been thrilled to find that it was even better than the pictures. It was a newish build by the award-winning Scottish architect, Prentice Cameron. I knew his work because he’d designed a home in La Jolla that I’d loved so much when I saw it, I’d done something I’d never done before. I’d looked it up and then researched him on the Internet. When I did, I’d found all of his designs were breathtaking.

  They were all modern without looking space-age, instead seeming timeless. Unusual. Multi-level. Spacious. Open. With generous use of windows, in my case one whole side of the house—the one that faced the Atlantic Ocean—was floor to tall ceilings view. A view that was such a view, it was almost like you were floating over the sea.

  It was amazing.

  So when Conrad, Martine and the kids had moved from La Jolla to the small coastal town of Magdalene in Maine and my world imploded, after which I’d made my decision to move out, I’d found to my glee this Cameron home was for sale. So I’d jumped on it.

  It was only five years old but the couple who’d had it built had split. It was not amicable (oh, how I understood that) and they’d fought bitterly over the house. In the end, the judge had forced them to liquidate.

  Their loss.

  My gain.

  That was what I thought yesterday.

  Right then, staring at what was already stunning, and I hoped by my hand I could make exquisite, I worried.

  I worried if I did the right thing following Conrad and Martine and moving to Maine. I worried if my children were as angry as Conrad. I worried if I had it in me to show them all I’d changed. I worried if I could win my children back. I worried if I could create a safe place for them; a comfortable home, a happy, extended family.

  I worried if I could do what I should have done three years ago but didn’t.

  Beat back the bitterness, the loss, the anger. Give my children a mother they could love, be proud of, not be ashamed of and hate. Build a new life for myself and find some contentment.

  I worried I didn’t have that in me. I worried with all I’d done—even while doing it knowing it wasn’t right—that I couldn’t beat back that part of me that was pure Hathaway. That was selfish and thoughtless and sour and vindictive.

  I didn’t believe in me. I’d lost it all. My husband. Custody of the kids except every other weekend, which changed to once a month when Conrad and Martine moved to Maine. My self-respect.

  Heck, I didn’t even know me so there was no me to believe in.

  That thought drove me around the edge of the sunken living room, my bare feet silent on the beautiful gloss of the wood floors. I hit the doorway off to the side and walked down the short hall to the flight of four steps that guided me up the elevation of the cliff the single-story house rambled along. One side of the hall all windows, open to the sea, the other side my three car garage.

  I continued down that hall and up two more steps into the master bedroom that was gigantic. So big you could fit bed, dressers, nightstands, armoires and jewelry cabinets in there, plus couches, day beds, club chairs, a TV, whatever I decided. There was even a luscious, staggered stone fireplace, freestanding, delineating what I envisioned would one day be the bed area at the back (and currently was, as my big king was there) from a seating area (to be created) at the front.

  I walked through it to the bathroom that ran the width of the room. It included two walk-in closets and a large, oval, sunken bath at the end that had windows all around, butting up to the sea so you could take a bath and gaze at the ocean, feeling you were bathing and floating. There were also double-bowled sinks (and the sinks were beautiful bowls). The entire room was paneled in a rich, knotty wood, bringing together a rustic and elegant feel in a way that was astonishing.

  I didn’t see any of that.

  I walked by the huge mirror over the basins and into one of the closets where there were wardrobe boxes and suitcases.

  Something in me drove me straight to a box. I ripped off the tape and the front panel fell away.

  I reached in and pulled out the clothes randomly. Strewing them over the tops of other boxes, I pulled out more and did the same. Some of them landed on the boxes. Some on the floor. All haphazard. Messy.

  It was wrong to do. They were designer. They were expensive. Many women would want their whole life just to own one piece of what I had many, but they’d never be able to afford it.

  And they were all—every garment—something my mother would wear.

  It had happened. I knew it in the heart of me. I hadn’t fought it. Not even a little bit. And I knew it before the movers had packed those boxes.

  Every stitch should have been left behind. Sold. Discarded.

  So I could start anew.

  I walked out of the closet and to the basins. There were several boxes on the floor with labels on them that said “vanity.” I bent to them, ripped them open and pulled things out. Putting some on the floor, some on the countertop. I did this until, in box two, I found it.

  My perfume.

  “Every woman should have a signature scent,” my mother had told me.

  Mine was Chanel No 5. I loved it. It was everything a woman should be.

  But I had this niggling feeling it wasn’t all that was me.

  I had this feeling because sometimes I felt more flowery.

  And sometimes I felt more musky.

  Then there were times I felt more summery.

  I’d been taught that was wrong. You were what you were, only what you were, and you stuck with that.

  As for me, I was the daughter of J.P. and Felicia Hathaway, which meant I was a Hathaway. Upper class. Moneyed. Well-educated. Appropriately dressed. Conservative. Mannered. Superior. Aloof. Privileged. Elite.

  That was what I was and I was given no choice to be anything else.

  So that was what I became.

  And thus I buried the fact that sometimes I wanted just to go with the Amelia of the Day, whoever she might be, and grab whatever scent that defined her that day.

  Then the next, I could be something different.

  Whatever I wanted to be.

  Not what she wanted me to be. Not what they demanded I be.

  I glanced in the mirror but immediately looked away and walked out, through the bedroom, down the hall, the steps. I turned right into the large, open kitchen that looked down to the sunken living room, across to the cozy landing, all with views to the frothy sea. Calmly, I tore open boxes until I found them.

  My dishes. Stoneware that was very pretty but cost forty dollars a plate.

  My mother had picked it. She did it in a way that seemed she was encouraging me to pick it. But in reality, she picked it.

  Suddenly, I had the nearly overwhelming urge to scoot the entire box out to the deck and, piece by piece, throw it into the sea.

  I didn’t.

  That would be a waste and those dishes could be put to good use.

  I was starting anew. I didn’t need to do it being wasteful.

  I was going to do something else with those plates.

  I was goi
ng to do something else with all my stuff.

  I was going to make it worth something. Something real.

  Because that was what I was going to be. I was going to stop being what I was, the Felicia Hathaway mini-me all grown up.

  I was going to be me.

  I had absolutely no idea what that me would turn out to be.

  I just knew whoever she was, for the first time in her life, she’d be real.

  Chapter One

  They’d See

  By that weekend, the weekend the kids would normally fly out to California to spend a day and a half with me, they were instead coming to their new home.

  I’d been in Magdalene for three days.

  In that time, thankfully, I had not seen Mickey.

  In that time, I’d also been through every box, mostly repacking things and lugging them to walls, stacking them up.

  I had a plan.

  But first, I had to start reparation work with my children.

  I could say that due to my activities since Conrad and I separated—when joint custody turned to every other weekend, which then turned to the judge awarding Conrad custody of the children as he moved across the country, allowing me one weekend a month—along the way the visitations with my kids had deteriorated.

  In the beginning I had cause. It was just. My neurosurgeon husband had cheated on me with a nurse at his hospital, a woman fifteen years younger than me. He then left our family in order to divorce me so they could be married.

  Conrad and I signed our divorce papers on a Wednesday.

  Conrad and Martine had a massive beach wedding that next Saturday, where my son was his father’s best man and my daughter was a junior bridesmaid.

  Then, as the months passed into years, the extremity of my antics increasing, my cause was no longer just.

  No, and not only because the extremity of my antics was extreme, but because I’d done what no mother should do.

  I’d dragged my children right along with me.

  I didn’t involve them, oh no. Never that.

  But I didn’t hide it from them.

  Therefore, that first Friday in Magdalene with the kids imminently arriving, I was a nervous wreck.

  Auden, my sixteen-year-old son, drove. A month after his sixteenth birthday, his father and stepmother bought him a car. It was used. It was okay, not great. Through stilted reports from my boy, I learned what it was and knew that it ran (which was all he needed) and was relatively trendy (which was all he wanted).

  I would have bought him his heart’s desire, even if that were a Porsche or a Mercedes.

  Conrad would have attempted to educate me about the fact that if we gave everything to our children, they would become spoiled and wouldn’t know how to work for things themselves.

  Conrad would have been right.

  I still would have bought Auden the car he wanted, brand new with all the bells and whistles. And if Conrad and I had still been married, I’d have done it without thought, without discussion, giving it to Auden so Conrad would have had two choices: be the bad guy and take it away or give in and let him have it.

  Now that I didn’t have that say in my son’s life, at three thirty on that Friday, that car drove up and parked in my drive.

  A red Honda Civic.

  I stood in my open front door and watched my children alight from it.

  They didn’t look at the house. They didn’t look at me.

  Auden and Olympia Moss just grabbed small bags from the trunk of the car and trudged up to the house like they were walking into a classroom at eight o’clock on a Saturday morning to take their SATs.

  I watched them approach me.

  Auden looked like his dad, tall with a straight nose, light brown eyes and rich brown hair that had a subtle reddish cast to it. My son was bulkier than his father, maybe an inch or two shorter, but he was still growing.

  As if our lives were golden and the fates shined their smiles on us and gave us the perfect family, Auden got his looks from his father, but Olympia was just like me, petite but slightly curvy (or in Pippa’s case, her curves were filling out). Brunette hair that was several shades darker than her brother’s and father’s, with no reddish cast, but it had a natural shine that said someone up there liked my baby girl and me. She also had my hazel eyes that popped due to the darkness of our hair.

  My boy was already handsome, like Conrad.

  My girl was far, far prettier than me.

  When they got close, my throat feeling clogged, I forced out, “Hey, honeys.”

  Auden looked up. My beautiful boy who got all I loved from his dad (and then some), his eyes on me emotionless, my throat completely closed.

  My fourteen-year-old daughter, Pippa, flinched at the sound of my voice.

  That slashed through me.

  I took that cut and it sliced deep as I moved out of their way and they walked by me, Auden averting his eyes, Pippa never even looking at me.

  I followed them in and closed the door, seeing they’d stopped and were taking in the view.

  Hoping they liked what they were seeing, I moved to their sides, wanting to hug them, touch them, kiss their cheeks, draw in their scents. I hadn’t seen them in weeks.

  But I’d learned affection from me was not wanted.

  Not anymore.

  So I didn’t do this.

  I stood not far, not close, and said, “This is it, kiddos. Our new place.”

  Auden had a curl in his lip.

  Olympia looked bored.

  That cut deep as well but I forged ahead.

  The new me.

  The new us.

  No matter the wounds they inflicted, I had to keep going. Never fall back. Never retreat. I couldn’t allow any of my weaknesses to delay me in restarting my family.

  “Your rooms are that way.” I pointed to the opposite end of the living area from where the kitchen was. “I had the movers put your furniture in the two rooms that had sea views. If you want different—”

  “Whatever,” Auden muttered, talking over me and starting the way I indicated. “It’ll work.”

  Olympia followed him silently.

  I did the same, not silently, instead calling, “I haven’t unpacked your stuff. I had an idea. I thought…new house, fresh start. You two might want to have a look at your things. Decide what you want to keep. What you don’t. We can get rid of what you don’t, go out and get you new. You can decora—”

  “Only got two years with this crap, not worth the bother,” Auden cut me off to say.

  Pippa said nothing. She just followed Auden around the lip of the sunken living room and into the hall that, opposite to the one on the other side of the house, had stretches of straight and steps that led down the cliff rather than up.

  I chose the front sea view room for Pippa and thinking Auden, as a boy, would want more privacy, the back room for him.

  I considered putting him in the room that ran the length of the far end, which was large and could be anything, a den, a family room, an office. I decided against it because the two front rooms had their own baths and the back room only had a half-bath.

  The two bedrooms opposite shared a Jack and Jill. I wanted my kids to see the ocean, to have access to the deck right from their rooms. But I also thought they were too old to share a Jack and Jill.

  I stood at the mouth of the hall as they moved down it and said, “You can drop your bags in your room. Then I’ll give you a full tour.”

  “We can look around,” Auden replied as he stopped and looked into the first room then kept going and disappeared in the second.

  Pippa looked in the first room and walked in, out of sight.

  I stood there, waiting, thinking this wasn’t going well but knowing it wouldn’t.

  Patience.

  Perseverance.

  This was going to take time and I had to put in the time. Take my licks. Endure the cuts. Bleed inside. Give them what they needed to take it out on me because I deserved it.

  Th
en I’d show them this was different. This time it was a promise I wouldn’t break. This time we really were going to rebuild our family.

  And they’d come to me. They were my babies. We’d once been close. We’d once been affectionate.

  We’d once been happy.

  They’d come to me.

  At that moment, they didn’t come to me.

  Auden came out of his room mere seconds after he entered it and he called, “Pippa!”

  Immediately she came out of hers.

  They both moved along the hall, toward me then past me and right to the front door.

  “Pip’s curfew is eleven o’clock on weekends,” Auden stated as they walked. “I’m dropping her off at her friend’s. Leave a key under the mat or something. She’ll be home then.”

  I stared, my insides frozen, my throat burning from the chill.

  “You’re leaving?” I asked.

  Auden opened the door and Pippa walked right through, never looking at me.

  But my son looked at me.

  Or through me.

  Though, his words were directed at me.

  “Goin’ out with the guys. My curfew is midnight. Pip’ll leave the key somewhere for me. Later.”

  With that, he went through the door and closed it behind him.

  I stood immobile, allowing the vicious feel of the fact my children had walked into their new home they would be sharing with me (not often, but they’d be doing it), dropped their bags and walked out. They didn’t greet me. They didn’t look around. They barely looked at me. My daughter didn’t even speak to me.

  And then they were gone.

  I stared at the door and whispered, “I deserved that. I deserved it. Take it. Bury it. Move on. Move on, Amelia.”

  I didn’t know how I did it but I forced my body to move. I went to the kitchen counter and grabbed the keys I’d had made for them. I found some notepaper. I wrote their names on two sheets. Under that, on each sheet, I wrote, “Welcome home. These are yours to keep.”

  I went to the front door and lifted the mat, put the papers down side by side, laid the keys on top and dropped the mat.

  Then I closed the door, took in a deep breath and decided against dinner that night. I had the groceries to make one of the few dishes that was a favorite of both my children.