“Excellent. I’ll enter negotiations. She can’t start until the end of September, but relief is in sight.” Danielle clasped her hand. “I’m just sorry that it took us this long.”

•   •   •

Emilia wiped her eyes as she finished talking and blinked at her open laptop where Shanti’s compassionate face studied her from her Boston office.

“I just don’t know what to do,” she finished with a sniff.

“It sounds like you do know what to do,” said Shanti. “Although I would like to explore why you did not feel comfortable telling me about Morgan.”

“I—” Emilia swallowed. “It seemed too . . .”

“Tenuous?”

“Yes. And . . . I wanted something for myself. I needed something that was mine.”

“Something that hadn’t been touched by the recent past,” said Shanti.

“Yes.”

“We can talk about how to move into a healthy relationship—”

“There is no relationship.” Morgan’s last words cut her open again.

“But you were ready for one, which is just as important. Before we get there, however, can you talk about why you want to stay in Seal Cove?”

Emilia nodded, and the words poured out of her. Her new friends. The quiet. Her sailboat. The meadow and the distant surf and the connection she still felt here, to her father and Morgan. Morgan, despite what had happened in this room. Despite—or because—of the pain she’d seen on Morgan’s face.

“You are not running away,” Shanti observed. “Good.”

“I can’t run. Not from here.” She looked up from her computer as she spoke, her eyes glancing over the living room walls before focusing on her sleeping dog. Speaking the words made them somehow true. There was no place on earth she could go to escape the depths of darkness she’d discovered within herself, but she might learn to live with it if she gave herself a chance. She might relearn how to live.

Shanti smiled at her. Her own lips responded, and despite the gulf in her world where Morgan had been, she felt ready. She could do this. The road would be arduous and long, and she knew she would encounter things that would make her want to turn back, but that no longer seemed like a reason not to set out.

“Well then,” said Shanti. “Let’s get started.”

•   •   •

Morgan ran the last of the mesh electric fencing along the line of fence posts. Olive’s pasture was nearly complete. She’d checked it thoroughly for problematic forage and helped Stevie resurrect the old hoop house, which would act as hay storage and shelter for Olive during the winter. Stevie waved at her from the electric panel they’d installed. “Ready?”

“No,” Morgan shouted. Electric shock therapy would not solve her problems. She secured the mesh and stepped back before giving Stevie the signal.

“Okay, it’s live.”