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Lily fuht out, to be left alone, to check out a local band and

"Come on, luvvie," the boyto , aye?"

She had onlywith his jaw So Lily on, tossed their beers in the boy’s face

Beer sprayed on his friends Then the girls were doused Then their dates got involved And, before Lily knew it, she ’d started an all- out pub fight She had slipped out a side door to the sound of crashing beer bottles

Lily had always prided herself on not being one of those ti a pub braas beyond the pale Studying her sketchpad, she thought with more than a little dread that she would need to return to the bar soize to the owner for the ruckus She tossed the pad aside and, knotting her unruly pale blonde hair into an impromptu braid, marveled anew at the scenery She had always heard tales frohlands, but no words could capture the vastness, at once beautiful and bleak She looked around, awed by the contrasts Wind howled and ripped tendrils of her hair loose from her braid, yet the coarse plants that dotted the ry tangle with the purple and white of heather and thistle Mean, scrubby little plants pronouncing to the world, what, this little breeze? Much, she i, impermeable, and quick to understate a bad situation

In the distance there seeether as birds swooped lazily over one of the Highlands’ innued mountains stood like austere sentinels on the far shore, their jagged silhouettes appearing solassy water Except for the flickering shadows of gray storm clouds across the surface, the water was dark blue and violet in the ined lochs could harbor such enorathered her pastels back into their tattered cardboard box and wondered that before co to Scotland, years had passed since she had done any artwork at all She had stu, and aspirations of arts education for underprivileged kids into an eighty-hour-a-week job in Silicon Valley No art No kids And certainly no underprivileged anybody

Touring Scotland had see done To have a little alone time to reflect on where she had been in the last few years What the haze of late-night hours, stock options, and board

Mostly she carandhlands when she was not er to see what the rest of the world held in store Graht in her eyes

She had always said that Gra her as she did when her biological rade school Sandra, as Lily had insisted on calling herue baseball player who’d breezed into town for training camp When the tis packed and ready, figuring she had a better shot at romance not saddled with a kid, and while she was still on what she liked to call "the right side of forty "

Sandra rambled back into town so banker by her side and was thinking to pick up where she left off, eager to fill out her new role of staid suburban ith a ready-made child Lily wouldn ’t have it, which didn’t rave;n"--as she had lovingly nicknaeously curly white -blonde hair--were inseparable The old wohter, and it was only after so that she allowed Sandra and the new husband even to see Lily

And now Graone

It had always been easy for Lily to deny just how old Gra over her crafts and poetry and roses

Though she was coone peacefully in her sleep, Lily found no consolation Rather than celebrate Grarets Gra and made endless sacrifices to raise Lily, when she should’ve been playing bingo and touring the globe with her seniors ’ group instead

Now that her grand the next big thing in her career, all she wanted to do was escape to Grahlands " that her grandht it’d be an opportunity for a little reflection The landscape was so solitary, though, she found she had almost too otten used to not dealing withoutside of her work It had started in the 1990s, when her teazine had spiraled into a creative director position as she reached the ripe old age of twenty-four A number of years, thousands of hours and one soured relationship later, she found herself with nothing but a used luxury sedan, a sizeable nest egg, and a ferinkles Not even laugh lines, those Just a couple of creases developing in her usually furrowed brow

Lily wondered what it had all been for anyway She had been an artist And instead of following her drea layouts for other people ’s photographs of places she’d had no ti, to prove that she could get an art degree and not end up panhandling in the street All she kneas that she surprised even herself when she hit the business world Lily’s colleagues had thought she was shrewd, viewing the temper that had been a liability in her personal life as a take- no-prisoners attitude She kept thinking, just onestock options and then she could quit and paint to her heart’s content But she never did quit

Then the technology market crashed It started out slowly at first: the occasional s But before she knew it, she was the lone designer a tracts of empty cubicles, left to pack up the pieces of a failed online venture for an anonyle" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true"></ins>