“That’s as good a start as any. Enjoy your afternoon.” Mia waited until Nell reached the door. “Nell? As long as you’re still afraid, he wins.”

“I don’t give a damn about winning,” Nell replied. Then she stepped out quickly and closed the door behind her.

Three

Nell found the stream, and the wild columbine—like little drops of sun in the green shade. Sitting on the soft floor of the forest, listening to the stream gurgle and the birds chirp, she found her peace again.

This was her place. She was as sure of that as she’d been of any single thing in all her life. She belonged here as she’d belonged nowhere else.

Even as a child she’d felt displaced. Not by her parents, she thought, running her fingers over her locket. Never by them. But home had been wherever her father was stationed, and until his orders changed. There’d been no single place for childhood, no pretty spot for memories to take root and bloom.

Her mother had had the gift of making a home wherever they were, and for however long. But it wasn’t the same as knowing you would wake up to the same view out of your bedroom window day after day.

And that was a yearning Nell had carried with her always.

Her mistake had been in believing she could soothe that yearning with Evan, when she should have known it was something she had to find for herself.

Perhaps she had, now. Here in this place.

That’s what Mia had meant. Like recognizing like. They both belonged on the island. Maybe, in some lovely way, they belonged to it. It was as simple as that.

Still, Mia was an intuitive woman, and an oddly powerful one. She sensed secrets. Nell could only hope she was as good as her word and wouldn’t pry. If anyone started digging through the layers, she would have to leave. No matter how much she belonged, she couldn’t stay.

It wasn’t going to happen.

Nell got to her feet, stretching up her arms to the thin sunbeams, and turned slow circles. She wouldn’t let it happen. She was going to trust Mia. She was going to work for her and live in the little yellow cottage and wake each morning with a giddy, glorious sense of freedom.

In time, she thought as she began to walk back toward her house, she and Mia might become real friends. It would be fascinating to have a friend that vivid, that clever.

What was it like to be a woman like Mia Devlin? she wondered. To be someone so utterly beautiful, so sublimely confident? A woman like that would never have to question herself, to remake herself, to worry that whatever she did, or could do, would never be good enough.

What a marvelous thing.