After the wedding, she’d taken on more of the regular overnight shifts at the radio station where, for years, she’d only been doing them on weekends. Providing the soundtrack to her fellow people of the night—emergency room crews, bartenders, security guards—had great appeal to her. A month after the wedding, a notice to 99.7 K-ROCK employees was tucked in her paycheck: The owners had put the radio station up for sale. Something in her stirred as she read the announcement on blue copy paper. It informed 99.7 K-ROCK employees that “While no immediate changes are expected, another owner will have the right to change the station’s format.” That meant that 99.7 K-ROCK could become a country station and they’d all lose their jobs. It felt like a sign.

Her grandfather Simon Webster, founder of the Kerrigan Falls Express, had left her half of his fortune—which wasn’t so much of a fortune as he’d pretended it was, but it was enough to buy the radio station assets at the $200,000 asking price. Seeing an opportunity, she went to her father to see if he’d be interested in running it with her.

A week later, she saw that the FOR SALE sign was still up on the 1902 four-bedroom painted-brick Victorian that she and Todd had looked at before the wedding. They’d dreamed of fixing it up together. With its large porch, opulent woodwork, marble fireplace, and French doors, the house was $40,000. It also had ruined floors, drafty windows, and a non-functioning kitchen. She settled on the house for $5,000 less than the asking price the day before she bought the radio station assets.

She knew that both had been impulsive decisions, but she needed to put distance between herself and that wedding. All these things, these moving parts, night shifts, and broken-down houses, had kept her busy and exhausted and stopped her from thinking. She’d closed on the house in January. And after five months of sanding walls, painting, pulling out nails, replacing drafty windows with historically accurate ones, and replacing the old heating system, the mere mention of Todd didn’t cause her heart to pound like an infected wound anymore.

Surveying the disaster that was now her dining room floor, Lara thought seriously about hiring a professional. She’d thrown herself into sanding the Georgia pine floors. Of course the house had no air-conditioning, and with summer approaching she was thinking of buying a few window units. Last week’s heat wave had her sleeping in a puddle of sweat.

Her mother had been hovering over her lately, stopping by the station or her house daily under the guise of helpful remodeling advice, lugging paint chips and rug samples with her.