1.
When a door closes, somewhere, a window opens.
How true.
Justine Beaudry stood in the reception office for the Passion Key Resort and pushed shut the door. As had happened the three previous times she had performed this act, Justine heard a clang somewhere down the hall and a clatter in the ceiling.
The breeze off the water was strong, but Justine suspected that her newly acquired property was not merely responding to atmospheric conditions, but rather the result of more than one rental season in neglect.
She walked down the hall and found the culprit window. The latch wasn’t broken, but she could see the screws were loose and that the actual window frame was out of line. The entire opening seemed warped.
So she had a screw loose, was out of line, and possessed a warped view of the world.
If it hadn’t been so true, on so many levels, she would have laughed out loud. But she did anyway.
Justine tried to tighten the screws with her fingers but they came right out in her hand. The metal latch mechanism fell onto the floor and clattered, the metal frame creaked in protest.
Great.
She bent down and picked the latch back up and set it on top of the window sill. Add that to the list, she thought.
Justine walked out of the reception area, into the outdoor courtyard, down a paved path to her condo and went inside.
She had just moved in and still felt out of place. It was hard for her to think of the place as home just yet. But the fact remained that she was now the proud owner of Passion Key Resort. Being in the Florida Keys, naturally the place was beautiful. The resort itself consisted of five good-sized condos each with its own full kitchen and balcony.
Hers was the largest and the most private.
She went in, closed the door, locked it and looked at her half-empty suitcases that still sat on her bed. It would be great to just dump the bags onto the floor and flop on the bed and sleep for a few years, but Justine knew she couldn’t do it.
This was her new life, after all.
With a deep sigh, Justine went into the kitchen, poured herself a glass of chardonnay and went back into the bedroom where she diligently finished unpacking, hanging up clothes and settling in.
By the time she was done, her stomach was grumbling.
She left the resort, and walked up to the main village of Passion Key.
The little community, like every small town on the Keys, was cut in half by Highway One. Justine’s resort was on the Gulf side, but most of the town was on the Atlantic side. However, there were sidewalks most of the way and she loved to walk, especially when the sun was out and there was a breeze.
Even though Passion Key was a narrow body of land Justine noted that as soon as you moved away from the water, the breeze died down and the sun heated up. Of course, the island was less than a mile wide on either side of Highway One, so it was never easy to get very far from the water. Still, her resort was right on the water, and walking even five hundred feet away was enough to raise the thermometer by several degrees.
Even though she wasn’t from Florida, she visited on several occasions and had always dreamed of the sun and beaches during Chicago’s long, cruel winters. Well, she was done with Chicago. Done with her old life.
It was a new day and a new Justine.
As she walked, she thought about what she had to do. First, she needed to visit the hardware store and see if they knew of someone who could make the repairs she needed. Even though she had been told the resort had a part-time employee, he was mostly in charge of basic landscaping and maintenance on the pool. A new person had been hired to work in the office and Justine would meet her tomorrow. In the meantime, she needed to find some dinner.
Which she would be eating alone.
Justine sighed.
Another thing she would just have to get used to.
2.
Justine
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