I made a face that he hopefully could not hear in my voice when I lied, “Consider that done too.”

“Liar,” he muttered and I smiled again.

Then I said, “I should let you go.”

“For now, sweetheart. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow, Henry.”

“Be bad,” he said quietly.

“I’ll try,” I replied and both of us knew that was a lie too.

There was another pause before he whispered, “Chin up, Josephine. Always.”

“It’s up, Henry. Always.”

“Okay, sweetheart. Talk to you tomorrow.”

“’Bye, Henry.”

“Later, honey.”

I disconnected and threw my phone on the cushion in front of me.

Then I looked out to the sea.

There was no buttery yellow in the sky, the peachy pink was fading and the lavender was taking over.

It was stunning and it made me wish that Henry was, indeed, here with me. He’d take a fabulous picture of it.

I was in the light room at Lavender House, the house Gran inherited from her mom and dad when they died which was thankfully after she’d divorced her husband.

The house that had this room, five stories up a spiral staircase. A circular room that was curved windows all around so you could see everything. The sea. The outcroppings of rock and beaches along Magdalene Cove. The centuries old, tiny town of Magdalene. And the landscape beyond.

This room with the window seats all around. The big desk in the middle where I knew Gran always wrote her letters to me. Where she sometimes took and made her phone calls to me. Where she paid bills. Where she wrote out recipes. Where she opened my letters to her and she probably read them right here too.

The room that had the half-circle couch she found and bought because it was, “just too perfect to pass up, buttercup.”

And it was. That couch was perfect. It had taken seven men, a pulley and who knew how much money to get it up there through a window. But Gran had seen it done.

She loved it up here.

I loved it up here.

And I sat in this very spot years ago after I became well enough to move around a bit after she saved me from my father. I also sat in this very spot after I called her and told her I had to get away, I just had to get away, and she flew me here.

Here. Home.

Here was where I put my father behind me.

Here was where I put my world behind me.

Here was where I got the call from a girlfriend who had moved to New York to do something in the fashion world (anything, she didn’t care, and she succeeded and was then working as a minion for flash-in-the-pan diva designer who thought he was everything who had recently been fired from his job designing clothes for discount department stores).