Soaring (Magdalene #2)(30)

But I wasn’t taking Robin’s calls, only exchanging quick texts and emails, which would now be only texts since I’d sold my computer.

And I’d cut myself off from Robin.

I couldn’t call Josie or Alyssa because I could tell they were close with Mickey and they’d think I was crazy, stupid, weak and lame for doing what I did.

And in the awkward relationship stakes, they’d side with Mickey. He was their friend. I was just a new acquaintance who was grasping onto friendship with all I had because I was so terribly needy.

And I knew they would, not only because they’d known me two weeks and him for ages, but because my friends who hadn’t defected because I’d lost my mind after Conrad left me had defected when Conrad left me.

No.

I had to figure out what I wanted.

I had to figure out who I was.

I had to create a home.

I had to win back my children.

I had to build a life.

I had to get some self-respect.

I had to stop acting like an idiot, weak and selfish and stupid.

I had to start looking out for me.

I had to stop being so needy. I no longer had a husband to fulfill me. I had lost the children who, simply breathing, gave me all I could need. I had to find something for me that would fill those voids.

And I couldn’t sink any lower. I couldn’t live another day feeling like I had that day. I couldn’t live another week, another month, an eternity, feeling like I had since Conrad told me across the bed we shared, the bed we made our children in, that he was leaving me for another woman.

I’d left my life behind because it was not a good life.

And I’d come to Maine to change that life.

So I had only one choice.

No matter what it took, no matter how much time, no matter that it made me bleed, no matter what it cost me, no matter that it would take everything I had and force me to find more, I had to do what I’d come to Maine to do.

I had to make a home.

I had to heal my family.

I had to find me.

I had to let go of the old.

I had to pull myself together and start anew.

Chapter Five

Off and Running

“We got…a bowl.”

Alyssa announced this after she pulled said bowl out of its bag and protective tissue wrap and set it on the edge of the bar of my kitchen.

I stared at the bowl.

Josie, standing by Alyssa, spoke.

“It’s a nice bowl.”

“We’ve been shoppin’ all day, all over the county, and we bought…a bowl,” Alyssa countered.

“Decorating an entire house doesn’t happen in a day, Alyssa,” Josie informed her.

“I hear that,” Alyssa returned. “But you go to fifteen shops in three towns over a span of nine hours, you get more than…a bowl.” Then, even though I was wandering to my kitchen dazedly, my eyes still aimed at the bowl, I knew she was addressing me when she stated, “Girl, you got a couch and a bed. You don’t even have a TV. You gotta step this shit up.”

I stopped in the kitchen and took my eyes from that bowl. A beautiful bowl. No, an astonishingly beautiful bowl; big, wide, squat, the outside a rough slate gray, the inside lip a lustrous blue, so blue it was nearly black cascading into a indigo that was so gorgeous, in all honesty, it took my breath away.

Thus I’d bought the bowl, the only thing I’d bought after fifteen shops in three towns.

I moved my gaze to the sun setting over the sea.

It was still light, the hues shading the clouds baby pinks and buttercreams.

But I’d looked out those windows for two and a half weeks. I knew the shades would shift and change. There would be deep peaches, soft lavenders, blazing orange-yellows, startling fuchsias, cobalt blues…all reflected in the sea.

“Amelia, are you all right?”

I heard Josie’s question but I was staring at baby pink and buttercream.

“Babe,” I felt a light touch on the small of my back and Alyssa’s whispered words close to my ear. “You okay?”

“Syrah,” I murmured.

“Say what?” Alyssa asked, not moving from me.

I turned, dislodging her hand and looked between them. “The Syrah glasses from that shop by the cove. All the reds from there. Pinot Noir, Cabernet. I didn’t like their white wine glasses and the champagne flutes were abysmal. But I’m getting their red wine glasses.”

“Uh…is she sayin’ shit you get?” Alyssa muttered to Josie.

“She’s talking about those wineglasses at the Glassery,” Josie told her.

“She’s gonna buy different types of glasses for different types of red wine?” Alyssa asked.

“Shh, Alyssa! I’m sensing an epiphany,” Josie replied, lifting a hand and shaking it at Alyssa.

“That armchair, the beaten leather one with the tacks,” I kept going as if they didn’t speak. “That leather was so supple. Amazing. With the ottoman. Up on the landing.” I lifted my hand and pointed across the space at the large landing opposite the kitchen. “And an eighty inch TV, mounted on the wall. Big, so you can see it from anywhere in the room.”

“Gotcha. Now roll with it, roll with it, babe,” Alyssa encouraged.

I focused on her. “The stoneware from Williams-Sonoma. A mixture of the orange, blue and green with the matching swirling pieces in here and there.”