“I can tell you this: being lonely is a lot better than pretending to be someone you’re not,” said Sophie. “Though I guess you’ll have that problem once your Christian soldiers get here.”

“I’m a poet,” Marianne said. “The idea is that I’ll write, when the students aren’t here, and do the administrative stuff. I get paid, but I don’t pay rent. It’s like a retreat for me, too.” She took another sip of wine. “It’s really a great situation.”

“I figured you were some sort of artist. There’s a community of us here, you know,” said Sophie. “I paint. For a long time just ocean mammals, especially manatees, but lately I’ve been doing the birds of Florida.”

Whenever people told her they were artists, Marianne used to say that her mother was an artist too, but invariably this involved telling them about her mother’s work, and then the fact that she was no longer alive, and then accepting the requisite sympathy or ignoring the clueless “she’s in a better place” comments. So she’d fallen back on “I wish I could paint,” which was not exactly true. What she wished was that she could watch her mother paint again, could sit in the studio breathing the earthy smell of linseed oil, listening to the scratch-scratch-scratch of her brush.

“I show every spring at the art fair in Sarasota, and getting time away from here is hard,” said Sophie. The guests had begun their trek to the sunset, slowly toting beach chairs and surreptitious drinks across the sand. “These guys take a lot out of me. Some of them have been coming since before I even owned the Manatee. I never thought of having them here for just a short time. Genius idea if you can make it work. Hey, want to see my paintings?”

There was no way for Marianne to say no, so she poured another glass and followed Sophie. The boards made a hollow, uncertain sound under her sandals, and she wondered about insurance and liability. The Ranch had plenty of similar threats, and she was never sure what to do about them. You couldn’t eliminate risk entirely.

“Here it is,” said Sophie, leading Marianne down a path that tinkled with wind chimes. “My home, office, and studio.”