I walked through it to the bathroom that ran the width of the room. It included two walk-in closets and a large, oval, sunken bath at the end that had windows all around, butting up to the sea so you could take a bath and gaze at the ocean, feeling you were bathing and floating. There were also double-bowled sinks (and the sinks were beautiful bowls). The entire room was paneled in a rich, knotty wood, bringing together a rustic and elegant feel in a way that was astonishing.

I didn’t see any of that.

I walked by the huge mirror over the basins and into one of the closets where there were wardrobe boxes and suitcases.

Something in me drove me straight to a box. I ripped off the tape and the front panel fell away.

I reached in and pulled out the clothes randomly. Strewing them over the tops of other boxes, I pulled out more and did the same. Some of them landed on the boxes. Some on the floor. All haphazard. Messy.

It was wrong to do. They were designer. They were expensive. Many women would want their whole life just to own one piece of what I had many, but they’d never be able to afford it.

And they were all—every garment—something my mother would wear.

It had happened. I knew it in the heart of me. I hadn’t fought it. Not even a little bit. And I knew it before the movers had packed those boxes.

Every stitch should have been left behind. Sold. Discarded.

So I could start anew.

I walked out of the closet and to the basins. There were several boxes on the floor with labels on them that said “vanity.” I bent to them, ripped them open and pulled things out. Putting some on the floor, some on the countertop. I did this until, in box two, I found it.

My perfume.

“Every woman should have a signature scent,” my mother had told me.

Mine was Chanel N^o 5. I loved it. It was everything a woman should be.

But I had this niggling feeling it wasn’t all that was me.

I had this feeling because sometimes I felt more flowery.

And sometimes I felt more musky.

Then there were times I felt more summery.

I’d been taught that was wrong. You were what you were, only what you were, and you stuck with that.

As for me, I was the daughter of J.P. and Felicia Hathaway, which meant I was a Hathaway. Upper class. Moneyed. Well-educated. Appropriately dressed. Conservative. Mannered. Superior. Aloof. Privileged. Elite.

That was what I was and I was given no choice to be anything else.

So that was what I became.

And thus I buried the fact that sometimes I wanted just to go with the Amelia of the Day, whoever she might be, and grab whatever scent that defined her that day.

Then the next, I could be something different.

Whatever I wanted to be.