Chapter 10 - The Unwritten Page
The new apartment didn't smell of cedar or lavender. It smelled of old pine flooring, salt water, and the lemon oil I used once a week to polish the surface of my drafting table.
On my desk sat a stack of heavy white cardstock—the kind with the rough, handmade deckle edge that artists use for linocut prints. I hadn't drawn a logo or a banner in three days; I had been working on a series of independent digital illustrations for an online magazine about women who leave their houses in the middle of a rainy Friday and never look back to see who is standing in the doorway behind them.
My phone, lying flat on the wooden surface beside my red ceramic mug, lit up with a silent notification.
It wasn't a call. It wasn't an email from Marcus—he had stopped trying to reach out through Jenna after she changed her number in July. It was a message from the gallery in Georgetown that had agreed to take my Annapolis harbor series for their winter showcase.
We’d like to feature all twelve pieces, the curator wrote. The collection feels remarkably clean. There’s no clutter in the lines—just the water, the boats, and the space between the docks.
I smiled, my fingers resting lightly against the smooth edge of the wood.
I turned off the desk lamp, leaving the small brass fixture dark, and walked out onto the balcony. The wind off the Chesapeake was cool now, carrying the sharp, clean scent of salt and turning leaves from the hills across the basin.
May you like
Down on the water, a single sailboat was untying its lines from the wooden piling, its white jib catching the last silver light of the dusk as it slipped out past the harbor wall toward the open bay. I watched it go until the red stern-light vanished into the gray dark, leaving behind only the steady, rhythmic clink-clink of the moorings in the empty slip.
I didn't wonder where it was heading. For the first time in eleven years, the horizon didn't belong to anyone's alibi. It was just water, stretching out as far as the eye could see, wide and empty and entirely my own.
