Later, the individual events of the following months will crumble together in the Daughter's mind into a thick hash of impressions that she'll dilute with turpentine and stroke onto canvas:

The turquoise, aquarium-like living room where she quickly convinces the owners of the garage to take it off the market and sell it to her privately will become a lucid blue clump of sea-weed, its arms waving towards a passing swarm of mermaids.

The laughter of the pest exterminator after he finishes giving the garage the once over (why don't you just open a petting zoo? he asks between wheezes) will become lightning that cracks over the heads of farmers as they run from the fields, scythes and pitchforks glinting maliciously on the shaven earth.

The night course in business administration full of eighteen-year olds carrying briefcases and hard-coiffed women hell-bent on hair salons of their very, very own will become a minute study of an elderly brick wall, one end of its beautiful symmetry blackened and scarred by fire.

Beverley's unbelieving mouth movements when the Daughter tells her she can go and take her own photos, make her own coffee, arrange her own paperclips and indulge herself to her heart's content in office intrigue without the Daughter's participation, will become a sputtering fountain in the interior courtyard of a romantic castle ruin.

The day she moves into the garage is the happiest day she's ever known – and the scariest and the most lonely. She stands in the middle of the moving boxes in the former work area, now converted into a living space: the inspection pit cleverly converted into a walk-down mini-cellar, the former parts storage now a canvas brace and drying rack, the tool board a kitchenette.

There are so many things to do, she doesn't know where to start, so she pulls two of the three large garage doors open to the early summer morning and sits down on a folding director's chair to listen to the sound of the birds in the trees that hem the sweeping skirt of the parking lot.  She watches the occasional car passing by on the road.

The idea is simple.

She's simply going to do what she does.

The old customer waiting area with its huge floor-to-ceiling windows and teal and beige tiles, most of which are miraculously still in one piece, is the perfect show area. She's hung some of her most impressive work on moveable walls and made sure they are clearly visible from the road. Attention grabbing colors, vivid action.

And the finishing touch? – herself in straw hat and paint-splattered smock at her easel, painting in plain sight next to the rusted-out, old gas pumps.

A painting of an artist painting.

And suddenly, she's interesting.

People stop simply to watch her paint for a while. Ask what she's doing, why she's doing it. They wander inside to look at more of her work. Sometimes they show interest. Haggle, she tells them, let's see if we can both get a good deal. They smile like children on a long car trip given an new game to play, and open the bidding.

One of the curious turns out to be a journalist from the regional paper, a good-looking man in his forties with a "tell-me-everything" twinkle in his eye. He leaves with the winter seascape that hung in the real estate agency in the backseat of his car. Looks just like goddamn Cape May in the winter. Man, did I hate that place when I lived there. How much are you asking? 

The next weekend a long article about her appears in the culture section of his paper, the winter seascape in color next to a photo of her with her easel. In the article she's described as pretty and as having a firm handshake and a level, friendly gaze and lastly, but still there, as talented. Her trick with the haggling is also mentioned, a subtle encouragement to all art lovers in the region with more taste than cash.

It's now her turn to smile.