The Girl I Used to Be by Heidi Hostetter (booksvooks .txt) 📗

property binders. She considered every scrap of paper inside every file folder in every drawer, lifting out whatever might be relevant. And when she was satisfied that she’d left no stone unturned, she gathered everything and left.

She dumped it all on the dining-room table and sorted through it.

What she found was a strange mismatch of things. There were drone shots of the property and the beach. Interior photographs of every room, expensively staged. And marketing copy that described the town of Dewberry Beach as an “upscale shore experience,” with a rich nightlife, shopping, and restaurants. To be fair, Jill had only driven through town, but her impression was that Dewberry Beach was a family town with not much to do apart from visiting the beach. Anyone expecting more than a quiet day would be disappointed.

However, it was possible she was mistaken.

To make sure, Jill opened her laptop and pulled up information about Dewberry Beach. Her search showed that the town was small, bordered on the east by the Atlantic Ocean and on the west by Barnegat Bay. There was a tiny train depot on the edge of town, a salt pond a few blocks from the ocean, and a walking path beside a creek. In town, shopping seemed to be limited to a few blocks along the main road, which wasn’t what Marc’s ad copy suggested at all.

Jill went to the town’s website and liked what she saw. It had a small-town, friendly feel that was inviting. The pictures of the October farmer’s market showed wheelbarrows piled high with fat orange pumpkins, and baskets of apples, and drums of fresh kettle corn. An announcement in the corner proclaimed that money earned from the pancake breakfast at the fire department would fund new equipment. Further down, a blurb congratulated the Fish Shack on winning Best Lobster Roll for the third consecutive year. And finally, there was a notice that the ice cream stand next to the beach would be closing for the season but that containers of black licorice were still available for sale, at a discounted price. Apparently, there was quite a bit left.

The real Dewberry Beach was nothing like Marc’s description.

Closing her laptop, Jill returned her attention to the papers on the table and found something interesting. Brittney had been put in charge of marketing the house and grounds, and had been given a very generous operating budget. She’d hired a real-estate firm who specialized in vacation homes in the Hamptons to consult. A bizarre choice, it seemed to Jill, given that the look and feel of Dewberry Beach wasn’t anything like the Hamptons. It appeared that Brittney had been in way over her head, completely unqualified for the job.

So maybe things weren’t as bad as they first appeared.

Maybe this house just needed a reset.

Jill continued her research, feeling a bit more optimistic. She still needed to hire someone to list the house and handle the sale, someone willing to work hard and start right away. They had to be familiar with small towns on the New Jersey shore, and given the price of the house, they had to understand upscale clients. Those requirements narrowed Jill’s list considerably, from more than a dozen to just three. Jill composed an email to each of them, introducing herself as the new property owner and expressing her desire to sell quickly. She sent them off and closed her laptop.

She’d taken the first step and it felt good.

The next task would be sorting out her closet.

Eleven

With the office sorted, Jill climbed the stairs to the master bedroom, her anxiety rising with every step. Jill couldn’t forget the selfies Brittney had sent. She remembered every detail of every picture. One of them had been taken in the master bedroom, in Jill’s bed. She’d known her marriage was over the moment she saw the pictures, but her heart was slower to understand. It did not want to revisit the scene of her husband’s betrayal.

But she had to.

Jill opened the door and stood at the threshold, steeling herself for the task at hand. As she crossed the room, she happened to glance at her reflection in the full-length mirror and she slowed, as if seeing herself for the first time. Three years of monthly salon appointments had transformed her hair to a perfect blonde. Regular keratin treatments had taken her curls, and she’d never gotten used to the longer length. Marc preferred blondes so that’s what Jill became, even though it didn’t feel right. Even though she never felt like herself.

Jill’s attention turned to the clothes she was wearing, the type of outfit she’d worn a million times before. She pinched a bit of the pants fabric between her fingers. Tweed. Expensive tweed, if Jill remembered correctly. And the twinset she wore so casually was cashmere, the cost of which would have fed her for a month in college. On her feet were a ridiculous pair of branded ballet flats that made her look as if she were on her way to the country club, which she decidedly wasn’t.

She used to live in slouchy jeans and sweatshirts. She was only twenty-six years old. When was the last time she wore jeans? Did she even own a pair anymore?

Jillian Marie DiFiore was born in South Jersey. She used her hands when she talked, frequently chopping the air in conversation to make her point. She could swear like a sailor—and often did—whenever the situation called for it. She drank beer from a can and ate cold pizza for breakfast. She blasted her music loud enough to feel the thumping in her body. She had friends. She had fun. But most of all, she would not have been caught dead in a pair of fussy tweed pants or an overpriced cashmere twinset. And her body would have rebelled at the idea of branded ballet flats instead of scuffed sneakers.

She’d changed herself to fit into Marc’s world, to the point where she didn’t recognize herself anymore.

But that stopped now.