Sea Glass Inn by Karis Walsh

art show.”
    Pam sagged against the wall. Every conversation with Tia came to this. “I’ll donate something from the gallery, of course. But don’t expect me to paint anything else. I have enough on my mind with…”
    Pam stopped midsentence, but Tia had heard enough to jump on the unfinished thought. “With…what? You’re painting for her, aren’t you!”
    Damn. Five minutes of nicotine withdrawal and Pam couldn’t control her tongue. She battled with the improbable hope that she could keep Mel’s commission private. She sighed. Tia would find out eventually, anyway. And Pam had never told Mel the mosaics were a secret, so she had no reason not to tell people she was supplying artwork for Mel’s inn.
    “Yes. She asked me to do a few sea glass paintings for her rooms. I don’t know how many I’ll get to, though.”
    Tia nodded her head. “Very shrewd of you,” she said as she fished out Pam’s cigarettes and returned them. “Get in good with the innkeeper before she starts drawing every lesbian in the state here for vacation. If she’s successful with her inn, you’ll have plenty of short-term lovers rolling through town.”
    Tia walked away laughing, and Pam lit a cigarette with a sense of relief. And confusion. What Tia said was true. She wondered why the thought hadn’t occurred to her before.

Chapter Ten
    Saturday morning, Pam hesitated on the bottom of the stairs.
    She had heard Danny arrive the night before, the house suddenly and palpably energized by the teenaged boy’s presence, but she had stayed in her room. When the sounds of Mel and Danny having dinner and touring the inn subsided, she had snuck down the stairs to let Piper out in the backyard. She had been tempted to join them, pulled by the changed timbre of Mel’s voice, clear and carefree—and punctuated by laughter—in a way Pam had heard only on the rare occasions when Mel told funny stories about her attempts to fix something or other, or when she described one of her numerous visits with Walter. But Mel was with her son this weekend. Pam told herself she didn’t want to intrude on their brief time together, but deep inside she knew the truth. Living in a house with a mother and son was too painful, too reminiscent of her former life. She couldn’t avoid Danny all weekend, but she didn’t feel ready to sit at a family table just yet.
    Mel had apparently finished cleaning the bathroom downstairs after her robe-clad visit to Pam’s room. Pam hadn’t even seen her upstairs, clothed or not, since then. Mel left food in the kitchen for her and chatted briefly about the various dishes, but Mel had become too busy with her work on the house to have time for them to eat together.
    Pam should have been happy with the arrangement since she had been trying to find a way to minimize their interactions, but instead, she perversely attempted to prolong their conversations. Until Danny came.
    Piper didn’t share Pam’s reticence, and she trotted into the kitchen and directly to Danny.
    “Hey, a dog! You didn’t tell me you got a dog.”
    The sound of childlike delight in the tall, nearly adult boy’s voice threw Pam. She had expected him to be old enough not to trigger her memories of Diane’s son, the boy she had loved like a mother until their breakup. But, as she watched Danny kneel to play with an ecstatic Piper, all she could imagine was a vision of what the eleven-year-old Kevin would look like today.
    “Danny, this is Piper. And her owner, Pam,” Mel said. Pam noticed Mel’s odd inversion as she introduced the pet first and the owner second. Either she considered Piper the star of the show, or she was trying to downplay Pam’s presence in her house. Maybe a little of both.
    “Pam is staying here while her house is fixed,” Mel continued.
    “It was damaged in the storm. She’s the artist who painted the mosaics in the rooms, although you’ve only seen one since she’s sleeping in the room with the