Living Arrangements

When Fiorella was a teen-ager and money a mere abstraction, she planned to have four homes as an adult. One of them was going to be at the seaside.

Not that Fio had ever seen an ocean--or any other body of water large than Lake Waco, but she read a lot, and authors were always rhapsodizing about the bounding waves. It all sounded so good.

Then Husband drove her down to the coast one year and they camped out on the beach. Fio stayed awake all night, anxiously awaiting the tsunami.

Yes, as it turns out, Fio is none too fond of the seaside. In fact, it makes her nervous. She's seen far too many weather reports featuring typhoons and hurricanes and rogue waves and she just plain doesn't trust all that limitless liquid to stay in its proper place.

Scratch the seaside bungalow. And since Fio already lives in her woodland paradise, that only leaves the Aspen chalet (not that Fio knows how to ski), and the New York pied-a-terre (not that Fio knows anything about the big city).

Somehow Fio thinks the chalet and the pied-a-terre aren't going to work out either.