Winter light fell on the paintings from the floor-to-ceiling windows. This space would be the perfect workshop, as soon as she could move everything from Charleston. Every other space she’d tried had been a not-quite fit, like Goldilocks. Maybe because she’d been thinking of herself as an intruder, only finding places to work where she wouldn’t be taking up anyone’s territory. But the carriage house was hers entirely to claim, and inside it she could expand to be as big, as visible, as messy and destructive and glittery as she needed to be.

She’d lost the store she’d dreamed of, but maybe this space could be more. More personal, more vulnerable, more truly hers rather than a storefront on which she’d projected a polished version of herself for public consumption.

It could be, if she let it.

Miriam was deep in thought, staring at the paintings, when she heard Cole come up behind her. She knew his tread without having to turn around. When she finally looked up, she found him watching her, his head tilted in concern.

“We haven’t seen you in hours, even to steal into the kitchen for food and steal out again without speaking,” he said, walking around the paintings. “Do you know which one you’re going to auction off?”

“I think this one,” Miriam said, gesturing to a bright, more pop-inspired piece. “The others are more personal.”

The rest were dark, whimsical portraits.

“I sort of love this one,” Cole said, pointing to one of Baba Yaga, posed like an old king, her shoulders back and her hand on her chicken leg house like a globe. “Although I’m not sure I really get it. Noelle says your pieces have a wry political commentary underneath them, like they’re winking at the viewer, hoping they get it.”

Miriam almost broke again. Noelle understood and respected her work, and she’d destroyed that precious, once-in-a-lifetime connection. She kept quiet at first, not wanting to drag Cole into her emotional mess. But if she was going to learn how to be present and vulnerable, who better to start with than Cole? She knew he would love her through anything, if only out of sheer stubbornness.

“I don’t know if she’s going to forgive me,” she said, quietly.

“Baba Yaga?” he joked.

She rolled her eyes, and his face got serious.

“I don’t know either, pumpkin. Do you want her to? You spent an awful lot of time and effort making yourself that cocoon. Are you really ready to burst out of it?” He threw an arm over her shoulder.

“Isn’t that what cocoons are for? So we can become butterflies?” she asked. “All that time I was gone, I told myself I was healing. If that’s not true, if I’m not different, then I was always just running and hiding.”