“Am I doing this?” she asked the house. Silence answered her. She didn’t know what her father would have wanted. No. That wasn’t true. He would have wanted her to be happy. He didn’t care about the color of the walls or what she did with the house. Still trembling, she set the paint roller against the dark wood and brought it down in a broad stroke. White shone back at her. White, bright, beautiful paint.

She burst into tears.

Nell, whom she had once again relegated to the porch, whined at the sound of her person’s distress. Emilia recharged the brush, still sobbing, and made another pass. She’d decided to start in the living room. It was the room she most associated with her father, which made it the hardest, but it was also the room she wanted to see transformed first. The dark whorls of the knots in the wood showed through the first coat of primer. They watched her like the eyes she’d imagined them to be as a child.

Her sobs faded as the morning wore on. The primer brought sunlight into the room with it, ameliorating her doubts. No longer would shadows dominate the living area. She refused to consider the analogy between her desire to paint the house and her desire to rid her own life of its shadows. Her therapist could have fun with that. She’d content herself with the work.

She almost managed to go most of the morning without thinking about Morgan. Her mind periodically offered up images of perfectly sculpted abs, but she bit her lip until the pain drove them out of her head. Her body had enjoyed the challenge of her run with Lillian, and she listened to her father’s music as she painted. Leonard Cohen’s voice reminded her of his, and she remembered, too, his hands on the guitar.

Come lunchtime, however, the paint fumes drove her out of the house far more successfully than her attempts to banish her thoughts. She gathered Nell and walked the two miles into town for lunch. It wasn’t as if she was in a hurry. Walking, unfortunately, freed up her mind for more thoughts of Morgan, as did her destination: Stormy’s.

Running out on Morgan had been rude. After her conversation with Anna Maria and the palpable chemistry the night of Angie’s birthday, however, her body’s visceral reaction to seeing Morgan half-dressed had triggered her fight-or-flight response. And by fight, she meant fuck.

So do it, her body suggested. You’re only here for a few months. You like her friends. You clearly like her. It doesn’t matter that you’re barely managing to function, and isn’t human contact—the desire for human contact—a sign of progress?