HEATHER PUT FRESH water and seed into the small glass containers. The morning routine of moving from cage to cage was akin to a dance with smooth movements that she’d perfected over time. As she fed the birds, she sang and called them by name, and they responded to her calls.
That done, Heather went into the kitchen and started the coffee. She was very particular about the way her coffee was brewed. She used only organic, free-trade coffee beans and ground them fresh for every pot. She filled the kettle and turned on the gas, ground the beans and lined the drip filter. While waiting for the water to boil she opened the window over the sink. This one overlooked the neighbor’s yard and the large 1920s Victorian-style house trimmed with gingerbread and painted a soft blue. A white picket fence corralled the property that, like hers, rolled down to Ocean Boulevard. A woman stood trimming the hedge with large, unwieldy clippers. She was tall with short white hair under a broad straw hat. She appeared to be rather old—in her eighties, perhaps—but vigorous. She was really going after those shrubs. Heather watched her for a moment, debating whether to go introduce herself, but then another woman stepped from the house and called the gardener in for breakfast. Heather thought she’d heard the red-haired woman address her as Flo.
The teakettle boiled, demanding her attention. She poured the steaming water in the filter and, humming again, cut up organic kale for the birds. They loved their daily greens and would greedily gobble them up in no time. When all was ready, she carried a tray with her cup of coffee and the birds’ kale back to the sunroom.
Three large boxes filled with metal birdcages took up much of the floor space, waiting for her to assemble them. It wasn’t easy removing the folded metal cages from the boxes. They weighed a ton and clattered noisily as she spread them out on the floor. They took up the entire room. The task suddenly loomed larger than she’d anticipated. She’d never been handy and didn’t know a screwdriver from a wrench.
An hour later, she sat in front of a partially assembled birdcage staring at the directions with utter dismay. They didn’t make any sense. She felt sure the maker had mistranslated something. Heather had no natural talent for building, and this mishmash of directions would take a master builder. In a fit of pique, she crumpled the offending pages and threw them across the room with a growl of frustration. She would have given up, except she couldn’t leave her birds in travel cages for the entire summer.
“Don’t you worry, boys,” she said out loud to the birds, more to encourage herself. “I’ll figure something out.”
A gentle knocking sounded on the sliding doors of the sunroom. Heather startled and jerked her head toward the door. A man was standing at the screen door. His hair was a shaggy blond, which gave him a youthful appearance, but even through the dark screen she saw that his physique was too formed, his stance too confident for him to be a boy.
Heather rushed clumsily to her feet, clutching the neckline of her nightgown, poised to run. What an idiot she was to unlock all the screen doors! There was nothing to stop him from coming inside.
“Hello?” The man called out in a friendly tone.
Heather paused at her bedroom door and cautiously turned toward him. He hadn’t moved from his place outside the screen door; he might even have taken a respectful step back. He was young, about her own age, she figured. He was casually attired in jeans and a black T-shirt; she couldn’t see his eyes behind the dark sunglasses he wore. She might have scurried off but for the aura of sweetness that rose up with his smile. It changed his face, like the dawn breaking the darkness.
“Ma’am?” he called out, lifting his hand in a quick wave. “Didn’t mean to startle you. I just wanted to let you know I’ll be starting work out on the deck. My name’s Bo.”
Heather’s breathing returned to normal with the dawning of understanding. Right—Cara had told her that someone was coming to finish the deck this morning. She relaxed slightly but still clutched her nightgown close to the neckline. She was embarrassed to be seen by a man who’d come to work while she was still in her relatively revealing, flimsy nightie.
She suddenly realized that he was patiently standing there, waiting for her to respond. Her cheeks flamed as she raised her hand in a small wave. “Okay,” she called back, still half hidden by the door.
He smiled again, and this time he seemed amused by her reaction.
“Yes, ma’am,” he replied, then turned and departed.
Yes, ma’am? she thought indignantly. She was too young to be called “ma’am” by someone the same age as her. Was he teasing her? Or, she wondered with chagrin, was she behaving like an old woman? Her cheeks flamed; it was likely both. She retreated behind the doorframe, then peered from behind the slanted shutter to watch as he walked back to the edge of the deck and jumped with athletic ease down to the sand below.
When she was convinced his attention was otherwise occupied, Heather slipped back out to the sunroom and locked the screen doors. A woman living alone couldn’t be too careful, she told herself. Then she hurried to her bedroom to dress. She locked that door, too. The bathroom was small, but Cara had done a nice job renovating it all in white tile and upscale fixtures. The compact shower had a luxurious rain showerhead. As she scrubbed her long blond hair, Heather felt the miles she’d traveled swirl away down the drain. After drying off, she wiped the large mirror clean of condensation, and her large blue eyes stared back at her.
“Not a good start to your first day,” she told herself reproachfully as she pulled her hair up into a loose topknot and wrapped an elastic around it. “First you can’t figure out how to put together the cages, and then you freak out when some guy comes to work on the deck. Get a grip, girl.” She dropped her arms and gave herself a scolding look. “You’re the mistress of Primrose Cottage now.”
Filled with resolve, she began to plan a strict routine for her summer. Time to get rolling, she admonished herself. She might even create schedules she could affix to the fridge with magnets. She secretly loved making charts and to-do lists. They made her feel organized and boosted her confidence. Plus, just because she was living alone now didn’t mean she could laze around all day. She began working out what she’d need to put on the chart, things like what day to shop, exercise—and, of course, a large chunk of each day would be set aside for her art. Mulling all these possibilities, she pulled clothing from one of the suitcases that lay on the bedroom floor. She slipped into wrinkled navy shorts and a navy-and-white-striped nautical T-shirt. Flip-flops for the feet.