Someone pushed the door open, and for a moment the light from the streetlight leaked in through the crack, and the smell of the ocean cut through the molding smell of the bar. It was the kind of night when there was so much brine in the air you felt like you could lick it from your lips. I ordered another drink, then another after that. No Emily, no Clara, and now, no gallery. I’d thought I’d feel triumphant after rejecting Matthew’s money, but my mood was bleak. Also, a little voice piped up in my mind: What if I had just made the biggest mistake of my life? I ordered a fourth drink, a shot that slid down my throat, hot and tasteless. I didn’t want to think about anything except that beautiful burn in my gut.

“Hey!” A hand on my elbow. A voice I recognized but couldn’t place. I turned to see the man from the library.

He smelled like cigarette smoke and salt air. When I’d first arrived at the bar, the night had a cool edge to it—a hint of fall. I remembered the way it used to make me so melancholy, how hard I used to try to ignore that chill. August had only just started, but I could sense summer shutting down, autumn turning everything gray and brown. I’d noticed that already the grass at the edges of the marsh was going pale, that soon it would be the color of heather. Seeing it, I had to confront that I, who had called this a break, a stopover, a pause, was still here. And by choice, of all things. I’d chosen this. I was drunk by then, but I was also thinking that maybe, maybe I was okay. I had survived the summer. I had resisted Matthew and his offer—well, his trick.

“Can I buy you a drink?” the man from the library asked. He leaned on the stool next to mine. I focused on his hands, the tiny cuts around his knuckles.

I knew I shouldn’t drink anymore—one more might make the room slide, make my thoughts slippery and words too large on my tongue. But I heard myself ask for a Maker’s on the rocks.

“I talked to my grandma about those paintings,” he said.

“Huh.” There was something familiar about him that I couldn’t place. I had the feeling I had seen him before, not at the library, but that he had been at the edge of my life in some way. He had a brawny, short body, an athletic stance, a sports watch perched on his wrist. A substitute teacher I had in high school? Someone from the beach patrol? I was too drunk to figure it out.

“She said you can come see them whenever we want.”

“How ’bout now?” I asked. For the first time that day I felt a jolt of hope.