It was quiet in the afternoons at the shop, and today Elle found herself looking for something to do. She’d cleaned and dusted the shelves, and admired the beautiful giftware and craft her cousins had on display. She smiled as she rearranged the collection of Outlander books on the shelf—this was the second time she’d restocked them in the past few weeks, and Aila always made sure they had plenty on hand for the tourists.

Elle loved her job in her cousins’ quirky little shop. Working here had given her the opportunity to meet a lot of the locals, and she looked forward to the daily pop-ins and hellos. She also loved walking through the co-op, the only supermarket in town, though occasionally it brought on a bout of homesickness as she reminisced about her happy years at Brown’s. She’d kept in touch with Pat on Facebook and was informed that business had been picking up lately with the unexpected closure of the big new store in Hentley, which had gone into receivership practically overnight. She hadn’t seen that coming at all.

You’ll be able to get your job back no worries at all, Pat had written.

Once, that would have been a relief. Now, she wasn’t sure. She did know that she still wasn’t ready to return to Jessup’s Creek. She’d been in Scotland for three months and the time was racing past. Her artwork had taken off in a direction she could never have anticipated; her local sketches especially were one of the shop’s biggest sellers, and now that the store was online they were selling all over the United Kingdom.

Elle had taken to using watercolours, and spent most of her free time in her makeshift studio-cum-bedroom at Aila’s cottage, perfecting her technique and often working for hours without noticing the time. Through the community art course she had made friends with a group of women and loved their weekly get-togethers exploring the nearby surrounds, where they would find places to sketch or paint. She felt as though she had found her tribe at long last—people just like her. For so long she had hidden her art away, seeing it more as an escape from reality than something she truly needed to be doing, and now that she had freed herself, she wondered how she could have possibly lived without it for so long.

Elle went along to evenings at the pub with Aila and her friends, and though Andrew had asked her out, she’d turned him down, knowing she wasn’t interested in accidentally finding romance again. Sabrina and Joe had shocked everyone by splitting up—for all of a week—before getting back together again and announcing their engagement.