Carolina Moon

they’d been just as poor in Raleigh as they’d been in Progress. They’d just been more crowded.
    Didn’t matter, Tory reminded herself. She wasn’t going back poor. She wasn’t the scared and skinny girl she’d been, but a businesswoman starting a new enterprise in her hometown.
    Then why , her therapist would ask, are your hands trembling?
    Anticipation, Tory decided. Excitement. And nerves. All right, there were nerves. Nerves were human. She was entitled to them. She was normal. She was whatever she wanted to be.
    “Damn it.”
    Teeth gritted, she snatched up the pen and signed the agreement.
    It was only for a year. One year. If it didn’t work out, she could move on. She’d moved on before. It seemed she was always moving on.
    But before she moved on this time, there was a great deal to be done. The lease agreement was only one thin layer of a mountain of paperwork. Most—the licenses and permits for the shop she intended to open—were signed and sealed. She considered the state of South Carolina little better than a mugger, but she’d paid the fees. Next up was the settlement on the house, and dealing with the lawyers, who she’d decided gave muggers a bad name.
    But by end of day, she’d have the check in her hand, and be on her way.
    The packing was nearly finished. Not that much to it, she thought now, as she’d sold nearly everything she’d acquired since her move to Charleston. Traveling light simplified things, and she’d learned early never, never to become attached to anything that could be taken from her.
    Rising, she washed out her cup, dried it, then wrapped it in newspaper to store in the small box of kitchen utensils she thought most practical to take with her. From the window over the sink, she looked out at her tiny backyard.
    The little patio was scrubbed and swept. She would leave the clay pots of verbena and white petunias for the new owners. She hoped they would tend the garden, but if they plowed it under, well, it was theirs to do as they liked.
    She’d left her mark here. They might paint and paper, carpet and tile, but what she had done would have come first. It would always be under the rest.
    You couldn’t erase the past, or kill it, or wish it out of existence. Nor could you will away the present or change what was coming. We were all trapped in that cycle of time, just circling around the core of yesterdays. Sometimes those yesterdays were strong enough, willful enough, to suck you back no matter how hard you struggled.
    And how much more depressing could she be? Tory thought with a sigh.
    She sealed the box, hefted it to take out to her car, and walked out of the kitchen without looking back.
    Three hours later, the check from the sale of her house was deposited. She shook hands with the new owners, listened politely to their giddy enthusiasm over buying their first home, and eased her way outside.
    The house, and the people who would now live in it, were no longer part of her world.
    “Tory, hold on a minute.”
    Tory turned, one hand on the car door and her mind already on the road. But she waited until her lawyer crossed the bank parking lot. Meandered was more the word, Tory corrected. Abigail Lawrence didn’t hurry anything, especially herself. Which probably explained why she always looked as though she’d just stepped graciously from the pages of Vogue.
    For today’s settlement, she’d chosen a pale blue suit, pearls that had likely been handed down from her great-grandmother, and thinly spiked heels that made Tory’s toes cramp just looking at them.
    “Whew.” Abigail waved a hand in front of her face as if she’d just run two miles rather than strolled ten yards. “All this heat and it’s barely April.” She glanced past Tory to the station wagon, scanned the boxes. “So that’s it?”
    “Seems to be. Thank you, Abigail, for handling everything.”
    “You handled most of it. Don’t know when I’ve had a client who understood what I was talking about half the time, much less one who could give me lessons.”
    She took a peek into the back of the station wagon, vaguely surprised that one woman’s life took up so little room. “I didn’t think you were serious about heading straight out this afternoon. I should’ve known.” She shifted her gaze back to Tory’s face. “You’re a serious woman, Victoria.”
    “No reason to stay.”
    Abigail opened her mouth, then shook her head. “I was going to say I envy you. Packing it up,