It wasn’t that Marina didn’t appreciate everything Halcyon was doing for her. And her sister’s house was better than any fancy hotel—a soft mattress, an en suite bathroom, and a store of wine that beat most of the local restaurants. She also had awesome snacks. Halcyon was a professional at treating herself well and she’d extended all of those things to Marina.

But the truth was Marina needed to be alone.

She’d kept busy with the moving, cleaning, and decorating. And having other people around meant her mind had fewer chances to dwell on pointless things that would never change. But that couldn’t last forever and every night when Marina went to bed, the silence was overwhelming. Her mind raced with a million thoughts of how things could go from bad to worse to why-do-I-even-bother. And she knew that as long as she put off the serious thinking and decision-making she needed to do she’d never get past this.

She needed a plan. A long-term plan. Not just one that covered what she was doing today or tomorrow. A long-term plan meant there was a reason to get out of bed every day. Something to work toward. Something to look forward to. All that pop psychology about living in the moment was great if the moment was awesome. But if the moment was absolute shit, she didn’t see the point.

It was hard to figure out the future with Halcyon hovering, trying to fix everything with wine and cursing. Not that she didn’t appreciate both. Her sister’s heart had always been in the right place where Marina was concerned. But Marina couldn’t let Halcyon make decisions for her. That was a cop-out. She was a forty-eight-year-old woman. She’d let Harold run things for decades and look where that had gotten her. It was time to take control of her life. That way, if it stayed in the toilet, at least she had no one to blame but herself.

She opened the back door and called to Snooze, who was napping on the porch. He opened one eye and stared.

“The noisy, sneezing one is gone,” Marina said.

The old hound dog opened the other eye and both of them gave her a suspicious look, but finally, he pulled himself up and strolled inside. He glanced around, as if to make sure Marina hadn’t been lying to him, then apparently satisfied, lay down on the donated rug next to one of the old tacky recliners. Marina sat next to him and reached over to rub his ears.

“We’re going to be fine,” she said, more for herself than Snooze. The old hound appeared quite content at the cabin. Probably because Harold wasn’t there.

Marina glanced into the kitchen at the boxes on the counter and felt her energy wane. Not because they needed to be unpacked but because there were so few of them, even with Halcyon’s donations. Truth be told, Avery’s dorm room probably contained more and better stuff than the cabin did.