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herself to be a lot of things, some of which might not be that appealing. But she’d never been a whiner.
    She concentrated on facts. “I’ve been working hard getting this place in shape so I can stay here until it sells.”
    “You’re doing it yourself?”
    “Yep. Oh, and I’ve had a couple of setbacks. Actually, I just had one, repairs I have to make to one of the cottages or the renters won’t pay. But the old guy in the next cottage had a doozy. He died. Just like that, and I found him.”
    “Wow, bummer!”
    “You’d better believe it. That part was really bad for him. The fact he won’t be around to pay rent anymore’s bad for me, but at least I’m still walking and talking.”
    Sherrie made a tsk-tsk noise. “Did you know him?”
    “Not really.” She decided to be honest. “I kind of tried to avoid him. I was busy, and I’m new at this. I’m not sure it’s a good idea to get involved with the renters.”
    “Ah, Trace, who do you get involved with?”
    “What’s that supposed to mean?”
    “I mean, as long as I’ve known you, you’ve made a point of just dipping your toes into relationships. You never just jump in and risk getting in over your head.”
    “Well, I was kind of over my head with CJ, wouldn’t you say? I mean, I married him, I divorced him, and in between I sort of had fun. Until the big surprise.”
    “No, if you’d jumped into that relationship and really gotten to know CJ, you wouldn’t have been surprised. You were surprised because you didn’t bother finding out who he was.”
    “What kind of psychobabble is that?”
    “The voice of somebody who knows you. Like, this is Sherrie, remember? One of the few people you ever let in, and mostly because we were in college and partying too hard to hide anything.”
    “I wish I was as deep and mysterious as you’re makingme out to be, but I’m a ‘what you see is what you get’ kind of gal.”
    “Right. So you say.” Sherrie paused. “Is there anything you need? Anything I can do from here?”
    “You could find me another rich husband.”
    “Do you really want one?”
    “Make that a sugar daddy. I’ll do an Anna Nicole Smith.”
    “You don’t have the boobs for it.”
    “Wade could take care of that.”
    “Over my dead body.”
    “With CJ’s connections to the mob, that part could probably be arranged, too.”
    “The girls and Wade send their love.”
    Tracy made smooching noises into the phone.
    In the last rays of twilight, the walk over to Herb’s seemed twice as long as it should have. As she drew closer, she could hear the sound of waves from the gulf side of the key. Her cottage was closer to the bay, and the view was blighted by mangroves and underbrush. Herb’s cottage faced in the same direction, but Alice’s peeked out at the gulf. Once the cottages were gone, and the vegetation was plowed under or tamed into submission, the owners of the luxury condos planned for this spot would have million-dollar views, which was a good thing, since they would be paying that much or more.
    Tracy wasn’t a whiner, and she wasn’t a wallower. After life as she’d known it ended, she had taken hold of herself and put one foot in front of the other to get herself to this point. But now, as she approached Herb’s door, she wondered exactly what was in store for her future. She couldn’t dismiss the possibility that she was going to be living on Happiness Key until, like Herb, she was found dead in her bed.
    No, that was silly. That was never going happen, because unless something changed quickly, she wasn’t going to have enough cash to hold on to the property. The taxes were enormous. She had enough money for another year, but if the land didn’t sell, she was in deep trouble.
    But hey, that wasn’t the only thing she had to worry about. There was everything else, besides. Tracy supposed she had better take Lee Symington up on that introduction to the yacht club event planner.
    Although the temperature was