With her coffee cup and a stale croissant beside her, Colleen set to work on an article describing the Mexican resort. It was coming slowly. Too slowly. She hadn’t yet found a hook for the reader, an overarching narrative that might turn a run-of-the-mill tourist trap into something special. They’d paid her to go. She’d indulged in the Presidential Suite and the spa treatments. She’d met a guy at the bar and enjoyed an easy flirtation. She’d taken the ecotour and suffered through a slide show. She’d drunk the house margarita and tolerated the mariachi band. Now she needed to craft words to turn it all into an exotic journey.

She tapped her fingers on the keyboard and words scrolled across the white space. Music from the apartment next door vibrated the wall—her neighbor’s teenage son was home alone, obviously skipping school, and listening to the Grateful Dead. She rose from her chair and banged on the wall, knowing the gesture would be ineffectual. She turned up her own music, Nina Simone, coming from the wireless speaker on the kitchen counter version of her family’s old turntable in the kitchen at Watersend. Why she wanted to re-create a place she’d rejected, she left that to her subconscious.

She glanced around her apartment and smiled. This place made her happy. As happy as the May River? her brother had asked her one day over the phone. Yes, she’d said, although it wasn’t really true. Yet and still, this space soothed her. It was all one room—with a curtain that hung between the bed and the living space and a kitchen area with a long bar made of honed black marble. One couch of cream linen faced two bright blue upholstered chairs. The narrow windows framed in iron looked over the lanterns and sidewalks of her neighborhood streetscape. Everything inside her studio was in its place, unlike the cluttered family house in Watersend where the collections and remnants of years of Donohue life needed dusting and organizing. Here, photos of the exotic locales she’d visited were set on tables in matching white frames and hung in pleasing arrangements. The kitchen was stocked with pale blue plates and appliances. This space belonged to Colleen.

Two hours until her deadline. Procrastination usually spurred her toward productivity, but not now.

Hearing her phone ring and seeing her brother’s name on her cell made her jump up to answer. God, she loved talking to Shane, hearing his voice across the miles; he and Dad were her last ties to the Lowcountry and she wanted to hold tight to both of them.