Free Beach Colors by Shelley Noble Page B

was what she was, not the cold, aggressive look she had become.
    Where was her joy? She’d become so serious, so competitive, so intent on staying on top that she’d lost the joy of designing.
    The realization hit her hard. Had that lack of joy been partially responsible for her losing everything?
    No, she argued back. Louis is responsible for your losing everything. You would have recaptured the joy. Maybe when the fall show was over.
    Now, she wouldn’t have that chance.
    She returned the sketches to the portfolio, tied it together, and put it back in the closet. Joy was fine, but it didn’t pay the rent.

Five
    I t continued to rain through the night and Margaux opened her eyes the next morning to a rain-speckled window. She watched dumbly as the drops ran in rivulets down the pane; listened to the continuous splat-splat on the overhang beneath her window and closed her eyes again.
    Nothing had changed. She was at the beach house, broke and out of work, and now it was raining. For a few moments while sketching out on the jetty, she’d felt almost optimistic. When she went to bed last night, she thought she might be on the mend. She fell asleep with colors dancing in her head. But this morning it was gray again. And the energy she’d felt had dissipated. She couldn’t seem to muster the energy to get out of bed.
    Nor did she want to. She just wanted it to all go away. To go back a few months and make things different. To go back a few years and make things different. Do anything to keep herself from being where she was now.
    She pulled the covers over her head. Maybe the next time she woke up, life would be better.
    The next time she woke up, she had to pee. She pushed the covers back and, shivering, trotted across the hall to the bathroom then climbed back in bed. Pulled up the quilt. Put the pillow over her head . . . and stayed awake. She turned over, cleared her mind, but it just filled up again.
    A branch brushed steadily against the cedar shakes of the house. Its swish-swish gradually became a tormenting mantra. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
    Stupid to have missed the signs that Louis was not her loving husband. Stupid to not keep total control of her business. Stupid to not notice the missing money. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
    She stared out the window, the view blurred by the rain. And stupid to sit here and do nothing.
    That was the trouble with being a high-achieving, workaholic A type; it was nearly impossible to sit back and do nothing. Even when she had nothing to do.
    She got up and dragged on a pair of jeans she’d found the day before, surprised to find that they hung loosely on her. Not many thirty-four-year-old women could boast of still being able to fit into clothes they wore in high school. Of course most women hadn’t had their life destroyed in one massive screwup.
    She pulled an old T-shirt over her head and looked down to the word scribbled across her chest. Nirvana. If only. There wasn’t a pair of socks in sight so she stuffed her bare feet into the paint-smeared sneakers and went to the bedroom door.
    A glance over her shoulder told her she was in big trouble. The organized, neat-as-a-pin person she had been was MIA. Her clothes from the night before were lying where she’d left them on the floor by the bed. The dress she’d worn to Mass was crumpled on the seat of her desk chair. The quilt had fallen half off the bed and the sheet was twisted into a knot.
    She turned her back on them and went downstairs.
    She made coffee and stood with her forehead pressed to the window, looking out at the windswept beach. The lifeguard stand rose like a forlorn sentinel, clumps of seaweed twisted around the wooden stilts. A sheet of newspaper tumbled across the sand. Whitecaps chopped up the surface of a gunmetal gray-green sea.
    The coffee grew cold in her mug. She flopped down into the chintz easy chair and ran her index finger around the outline of a huge faded cabbage rose.
    The telephone rang. She let