“Maybe I’m just hibernating like you right now,” I say to the fish swimming just below me. “Maybe I just have to learn to swim even if the world feels frozen.”

I suddenly think of Elsa in Frozen and feel slightly more emboldened. I push myself up, and the sparkly world looks different now.

I turn and baby-step my way to the shore again, past the mini-glaciers of ice that have formed on the shoreline. My head clicks from Frozen to Ice Castles, and I say out loud, “What did Lexie do in the movie? What’s the part I always forget? She got back up on her feet after she fell. She didn’t quit. She rose above her obstacles.”

A seagull stops directly in front of me and squawks. I decide it is in total agreement with me, and I shuffle back to the stairs, take a seat and pluck my cell from my coat pocket. I excitedly pull up Notes on my phone and begin to type, but with my mittens still on, I write X&@2ghPB4. I yank off my right mitten and start again.

What if I didn’t just open a B and B? What if Cozy Cottage were more than an inn...a retreat center???...based on all the rules in my life and of the cottage that people have always downplayed or made fun of... What if women not only came here to relax but also to renew, restore, reinvent, rediscover themselves... I could host Women’s Empowerment Weekends: yoga on the beach, entrepreneurship, believing in yourself postdivorce, starting over, the power of essential oils...even living by the rules of Cozy Cottage.

I stop, smile and yell back to the cottage, “I won’t let anyone ruin us again with their negativity. Not Nate, not the Dragoon Lady, nobody. Even myself!”

I hear what I think is a howling squawk—a lonely cry—and turn to see if the seagull has followed me.

The shoreline is empty.

I look at my cell and smile. “Nothing can stop me,” I say into the wind.

I begin my ascent up the stairs, when I hear the howl again, followed by the sound of car tires screeching away. I rush up the stairs—as best I can, slowed by my boots and dulled by a good dose of cheap wine, my heart thumping as loudly as a speaker at a concert—and when I reach the top, a filthy-looking dog is sitting on my landing, as though she’s waiting patiently for me to return.

“Hi, baby,” I say. “Are you okay?”

The dog does not acknowledge me. It simply lifts its head and howls a cry so sad and forlorn that I can feel my heart break. Beneath the dirt I think it’s a yellow Lab, somewhere between a puppy and a grown dog, but it’s hard to tell since it’s so excruciatingly thin.