Page 45 of Echoes at Driftwood Cottage

“It sounds like you’ll be buying a lot of paint down the road.”

“Count on it. An old house that needs sprucing up.”

“Then I’ll leave you alone to browse through the paint chart on the wall.”

After selecting several shades of browns, grays, and blues, she culled through the golden hues, dumping the obvious gaudy orange before moving to the more subtle green color wheel. As a graphics designer who worked with colorsonscreen every day, she knew well that paint often looked very different on a laptop than it did covering the walls at home. She refused to rely on the much-touted online room visualizer. No doubt it could be a great tool, but in reality, the finished room rarely resembled anything like it looked online. If she intended to spend a fortune on paint, she needed to pick the perfect colors the old-fashioned way.

With her hands full of color chips, she headed to checkout to pay for the flapper.

Her second stop was Reclaimed Treasures, conveniently located next door.

As soon as she stepped inside, a voice called out from behind the counter, “I’m Keva Riverton. Let me know if I can help you with anything.”

“Okay. I was just wondering if you might have any interest in buying used furniture. The stuff is decades old.”

“That’s the best kind,” Keva replied with a grin. “Lots of customers these days are looking for second-hand dressers, nightstands, hall trees, or entryway tables.”

“Ah. Well, all I have is a sofa and chair in a garish seventies floral pattern. Here, I took photos of them before I left the house.”

Keva studied the pictures. “Those might work in a large bedroom. I think we could sell those but it wouldn’t be much profit margin. By any chance, did they belong to Lynette Dewhurst?”

“Yes. I’m her granddaughter, Rowan Eaton.”

“I feel like I already know you through your artwork.”

“Excuse me? My artwork? The stuff I painted back in high school?”

“Landscapes, right? Your grandmother sold us at least thirty of your paintings. More than two years ago, she stopped in here with a couple of them under her arm. I picked the rest up myself and brought them to the store. We sold them all except one. Come on back. I’ll show you the one that’s still here.”

Stunned, Rowan followed Keva to the left side of the store, where the décor section took up the entire back corner. There, in the middle of the display hanging above a stylish mid-century eighty-five-inch sofa in a dreamy shade of green, was a canvas she’d painted when she was sixteen. The landscape—twenty-four by twenty-four inches square—depicted a moody mansion in the background surrounded by whisps of fog and a glowing full moon reflecting off a body of water in the foreground.

Rowan wanted to die right there on the spot.

“I don’t mean to come off as an art critic—because I’m not—but the reason it hasn’t sold is, and this is my personal opinion, it’s a little too gothic, too Collinwood Manor for anyone in Pelican Pointe.”

“I bet. My Dark Shadows phase,” Rowan uttered in disbelief.

“That would explain it. All your other paintings were so bright and coastal cheerful, like that one of the dunes. I bought that one myself. I thought for sure this one would eventually sell if for no other reason than the beautiful full moon rising out of the clouds.”

Rowan snickered with laughter. “Yeah. All it needs is a werewolf howling over to the right and you could’ve gone for the horror crowd. Why didn’t you just trash it?”

“Oh, well, I didn’t want to destroy art, even if it is—”

“Horrible,” Rowan supplied with a laugh. “Why not? I would. But let me get this straight. One day, my grandmother showed up here carrying canvases I’d painted as a kid, wanting to unload them?”

“Pretty much.”

“So much for sentimentality,” Rowan noted. She thought about the four thousand dollars in the safe deposit box. She remembered her gran’s bank balance at the time of her death. “I know she didn’t need the cash.”

“Well, maybe she wanted everyone to see your work.”

“Maybe.” Rowan spun around to face Keva. “You know what, how much will you give me for the ugly sofa and chair?”

Keva threw out a number.

Rowan didn’t haggle. “It’s a deal.”

She picked up the tag on the mid-century couch and smiled at the price. “And I’ll take this green sofa.”

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