Satisfied, I grab my big sunglasses and my portfolio—a black leather binder with twenty-five prints zipped up inside—and race out the door. I take the long way through the alley, to avoid being spotted by Mom or anyone else, and cut through a narrow lane with a shop that always smells like Christmas and sells hand-dipped beeswax and bayberry candles, and a darkened door with a bright red FOR RENT sign: It once housed the office of Desmond Banks, Private Investigator. Beauty only has one store that stays open twenty-four hours a day, but we had a need for a PI? Or maybe the point is that we didn’t, and that’s why he’s out of business.

Who knows. Beauty is strange.

But strange isn’t a bad thing, and it’s sunny and warm, a perfect June day without a cloud in the sky, making it easy to lie to myself and pretend that I’m not anxious. As I cross the town common, tourists shade their eyes to stare at the historic town hall and take pictures on their phones of iron hitching posts and red-and-purple pansies under massive beech trees that rich families brought here from Europe in the Gilded Age. I hurry past them, hoping no one recognizes me, and I stride down a long sidewalk to my destination.

The entrance of Coast Life magazine’s offices.

I’m breathing heavily when I push through the old brass doors and stride into a silent lobby with vaulted ceilings and marble floors. A lone receptionist sits behind a glass desk, guarding a glass door: The actual offices are beyond it.

All is quiet except the sound of my flats on the marble. When I reach the desk, the young woman with short hair holds up a finger until she’s finished talking in a low, metered voice on a wireless headset. Then she lifts her head and smiles.

A smile is good. A smile means she doesn’t associate me with the police station. Or the broken window at Summers & Co. Or the nude photo of my mother that’s circulating around town …

“Josie Saint-Martin to see Nina Cox,” I say, a little breathless and nervous.

She looks confused. “Did you have an appointment?”

“Not, uh, exactly, but she was considering me for the photography internship—”

Before Levi Summers yanked my application.

“I’m sorry,” she says, making a pained face while holding up a hand to stop me, “but Ms. Cox canceled all her appointments this week. Her daughter is in the hospital.”

“Oh no,” I say.

“Do you have her email address?”

“I think I had her card”—I did not—“but if you could give it to me again … ?”