Free Newport Dreams: A Breakwater Bay Novella by Shelley Noble

constitute a career. Maybe she would be better off giving in and joining the corporate office and doing some menial job to fund her “hobby” of photography.
    Of course she wouldn’t be allowed to do some menial job. She’d be forced into corner-office stuff. Her sister Alicia, who was in marketing, had married a podiatrist just to get out of the family business.
    Somehow that seemed like a really unacceptable choice.
    About as unacceptable as not being able to climb up a ladder. Why, oh why, had she refused to go back to therapy? Even on the breakers, she’d totally forgotten the techniques that she’d used in the past.
    And now she was screwed.
    Had her parents really bribed someone to take her on? Had they donated the money for her salary? It was just like something her dad would do.
    Her mouth opened into a soundless scream, followed by an ear-piercing bellow of hurt and anger. She pulled to the curb and banged on the steering wheel. The car shuddered in response.
    When she finally looked up, she realized she was on Bellevue Avenue, a block from Marble House. One of her favorites. She couldn’t imagine it ever being half as neglected as poor Gilbert House.
    Gilbert House had fallen on dire times, had been misused and disrespected for decades. And frankly, Geordie didn’t see how they would even get it halfway back to where it might have been a century ago.
    Well, to hell with it. It was no longer her concern. Let them do their own documentation. Let Bruce climb up that scaffolding and snap a few shots with his phone. Then he’d be sorry.
    The thought totally deflated her. They didn’t need her. They didn’t even want her. Neither Meri nor Carlyn had stood up for her.
    Made excuses for me.
    “Oh, stop whining.” She huffed out the last—hopefully the last—of her anger and hurt. She pulled into the Marble House parking lot, took a camera out of her bag, put the rest of her equipment in the trunk, and struck off across the street to do her own kind of pictures.
    She didn’t even slow down at the gate of Marble House, just strode up the circular drive, showed her membership card and went inside. She knew she wouldn’t be able to take any shots, not with her camera anyway. But she could in her mind. Implanting it on her brain, playing with it in her thoughts. It was a way to train the eye so you didn’t miss opportunity when you suddenly came upon a shot.
    She walked through the foyer, passing the guided tour offer. She’d been here plenty of times. Loved the steadiness of the architecture, the security of the thick, hard walls tempered by ridiculously ornate decorations.
    She tried to imagine the people who had once lived here, died here during the height of the Gilded Age with their reckless making and spending of money. Up and down the avenue year after year, moving between Manhattan and Newport, chasing entertainment, attention, power.
    She could almost see them moving around the rooms, ghostly and restless, trapped in a gilded cage, replaying their scandals, their power plays, their triumphs, their failures over and over and over into eternity. The famous and the infamous.
    Those people were trapped as surely as if they had been locked inside, dependent on their wealth to make them feel secure. She didn’t really want to consider whether she, too, was trapped by her family’s wealth. Oh, she could travel and be semi-independent, but she could never get free. Not really. Not yet anyway.
    And suddenly she wanted to be free. Break the bonds, breathe fresh ocean air. She retraced her steps and walked straight out the door, earning a strange look from the docent and leaving the old rooms behind. Leaving the ghosts behind. They would still be there the next time she came.
    But today she’d had enough of mansions, even beautiful ones. What made them special were the people who’d inhabited them. That’s what interested her. Not the ceiling paintings or the Siena marble, not even the tiles hidden beneath