The Girl I Used to Be: A gripping and emotional page-turner by Heidi Hostetter

Author:Heidi Hostetter [Hostetter, Heidi]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781838888817
Publisher: Bookouture
Published: 2021-05-10T18:30:00+00:00

Within a few minutes she was outside again. As the autumn breeze drifted up from the ocean, Jill closed her eyes to breathe in and she was transported to Aunt Sarah and Uncle Barney’s house. The best summers of her life had been spent there, without a worry in the world. She could spend whole days on a lounge chair outside, lost in the pages of a book. Afternoons were spent on the screen porch with Uncle Barney listening to approaching thunderstorms and guessing how far off they were. At night there was camping in a backyard tent with cousins, and flashlights, and ghost stories. Jill remembered blankets of fireflies at night and itchy mosquito bites beneath sunburned skin.

The same briny scent laced the air in Dewberry Beach, but this time of year it was threaded with woodsmoke and the snap of fall. She zipped her jacket, shouldered her camera case, and made her way to the dunes. There, she found clusters of wild roses growing in a sheltered corner of the beach stairs. Jill readied her camera and started to work, experimenting first with texture and then with color, framing shots of crimson rose hips against sugary sand. She kneeled to capture the delicate petals of the last remaining rose flower against a backdrop of splintery wooden stairs, then wandered to the tidepools near the jetty. There, she photographed grumpy hermit crabs defending their shell homes with their tiny claws raised, and seagulls scavenging through clam shells. And when the angle of the sun changed, she switched to a telephoto lens to capture the curl of a perfect wave as it reached for shore.

She would have happily spent all day behind her camera. The sky was the bluest she’d ever seen it, and the rumble of the ocean filled her soul. There was so much to photograph—the wispy beach grass, the play of light against the ocean, the determined sandpiper by the jetty. But of course she couldn’t—there was still work to do at the house before tomorrow’s meeting and she had to get going. She gathered her things and packed them away, intending to return to work, but her stomach growled, reminding her that the only food in the house was unappetizing leftovers in the caterer’s pantry. She’d had enough of that. It was time for real food. Jill turned away from the house and headed into town to find lunch.

The shops in Dewberry Beach were a few blocks from the beach, and all of them had been decorated for Halloween. There were bright orange pumpkins carved with triangle eyes and snaggle-toothed grins displayed at the entrances, bundles of dried cornstalks tied to the light poles, and a banner stretched across the street advertising an upcoming fall festival. The town itself was small, with less than a dozen shops, and only a handful of those were open. In the center of town was a bakery that seemed to be doing a brisk business. Next to that was a tiny newsstand with its door propped open.

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