The Cottage at Glass Beach (25 page)

“There might not be time. I can't take the risk.”

“Aren't you taking a greater one?”

“No.” Not when it came to her children.

“If anything were to happen to you—”

She didn't hear the rest of the sentence. She dove. The water closed over her, chill as ever. She was used to it by now, but she knew she needed to move fast. A seal shot past her, bound for shore. She stroked hard, head down, in its wake. Her breath, her motion, her choice. No struggle, just forward momentum. The seal surfacing, submerging, the mist swirling. She treaded water, saltwater stinging her eyes, the boat no longer in sight. The seal bobbed nearby; its head suddenly appeared human, with long silver hair. Was she seeing things?

A rip current pulled her away. She swam parallel, hoping it would relent. If it didn't, she might be carried out to sea. Her arms and legs felt leaden. She couldn't let them fail her now. Perhaps this was what she'd been training for, not that other race with its starting guns and ribboned medals, but this—to reach the shore, to find her daughters. The thought of them spurred her onward when she didn't think she could go any farther. Stroke. Breathe. Her arms flailed, her legs dangled beneath the surface, lower, lower still. If she could only make it to the beach, feel land beneath her feet once more.

N
ora wriggled her toes in the sand. It was the summer her mother disappeared. She'd followed her down to the shore, life jacket in hand. She knew her mother was taking the coracle. She'd seen her do it before. “Where are you going?”

Maeve stood knee-deep in the water, preparing to launch. “On a little trip. I'll be back soon.”

“I want to come.”

“You're not old enough.”

“I am. I am.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “If you don't let me, I'll tell.”

Maeve laughed. “Who said it was a secret?”

“No one.” But if it wasn't, why didn't she tell anyone? Why did she vanish for hours at a time?

Maeve thought for a moment. “Come on, then.”

“What about Daddy?” Nora asked.

“There's only room for two. We won't go far. Does he know you're here?”

“No.” She wanted to be part of her mother's secret, whatever it was. She wanted to find out. “Where are we going?”

“Around the bend.”

Off they went, across the cove, into the ocean.

“Look, Mamai,” Nora called,
mamai
the Gaelic word for mommy, “I'm flying.” Over the waves. Nora spread her arms and closed her eyes.

The fishing boats were farther afield, mere dots on the eastern horizon. They'd gone out early that morning, as always. Nora and her mother were the only ones on that part of the ocean. Nora thought of it as their kingdom, the paddle her mother's scepter, ruler of all that lay below. Onward they went, to places Nora hadn't been before. They sailed around sea stacks and through arches, to a hidden cave.

Her mother tied the boat to a rock. “Wait here.” She went inside.

Nora sat in the boat, counting the waves. She could never count them all. They kept coming and coming.

A short time later, her mother returned with a package, wrapped in oilcloth and tied with string.

“What's that? Is it treasure? Is it a surprise?”

“You'll see, someday.” She began paddling again.

Nora didn't want to wait until someday. She wanted to know now. She pulled away an edge of the wrapping when her mother wasn't looking. She still couldn't see what was inside. It was odd. It felt like fur.

“Nora!” Her mother snatched the package away. “You mustn't touch things that don't belong to you.”

“What happens if I do?”

Her mother didn't reply. She seemed worried now. The weather was changing, and they needed to get back to Glass Beach.

The fur reminded Nora of the story in the book of fairy tales her mother read to her. “Are you one of them?”

Maeve didn't answer. The waves rose around them, peaks of liquid glass. They swept the vessel into the channel. The sun dimmed, the clouds advancing, the wind blustering. Maeve stroked hard up one face, then another. She was strong. She could do anything. She would keep them safe. That's what Nora told herself, though she crouched in the bottom of the coracle, frightened.

The boat flipped, as if an invisible hand had turned it over and tipped them into the ocean. Nora fought against the water; it slapped her in the face. She glimpsed the boat continuing on its way, like a riderless horse, before the waves closed in on them again.

She felt her mother's arm around her. The package floated from Maeve's grasp. She couldn't hold on to them both. “You can swim, remember?”

She could, but never so far.

“Pretend you're a fish, a fish in the sea.”

“I can't. I'm just a girl.”

“Try. You have to try—”

Maeve's voice grew fainter, her breathing labored. She was bleeding. Nora saw the blood, seeping down her arm, staining both of them red. “You're hurt—”

“Don't worry. I'll be fine.” She pushed Nora up on a rock ledge.

Where were they? Everything was too far away. The boats. The shore. Nora began to cry.

Maeve hugged her. “Hush now, hush.” She hummed a lullaby, her grip on Nora, and the rock itself, weakening. Nora didn't know what to do.

“I'm sorry I peeked inside the package, Mamai. It's all my fault.”

“It's not, love. It's mine, for not making the choice.”

“What choice?”

A seal appeared, then another.

“You need to help her,” Nora said. “She's hurt. You can help. I know you can.”

“Hold on. Don't ever let go.” Her mother slid into the sea, the seals too.

“Mamai! Mamai!”

Her mother didn't answer. She was gone.

B
e strong. Swim. You know the way.
Maeve's voice again. Nora thought she was losing her mind, falling through time. Then she heard seals barking nearby. Land had to be close. The current lessened, her strength too. There was nothing else for it; she had to make a hard break for shore. Her lungs felt as if they might burst.

She was all motion now, memory. She sensed the tide with her, carrying her in on the crest of a wave. She scraped her legs against a rock, kicked with everything she had left. The sea spat her out onshore, the seals sliding off the rocks into the water. She struggled to stand, her legs so wobbly they gave out the first time. She'd crawl if she had to. She pulled herself up on the granite boulders lining the bank, sensation slowly returning.

“I'm here,” she shouted. “I'm here.” There was a trail, heading upward. A trail she would take.

Granite, sand, pebble, that was all Little Burke was, chosen by seals and birds for its natural ledges, leading up and up, to a stone plateau. Tide pools flourished along the shoreline, shadow boxes filled with delicate starfish and anemones, in shades of orange and green, rocks slick with seaweed, barnacles, and mussels. The beach was littered with sea glass, shells, floats, a single glove, a shoe, a cobalt blue bottle—the treasures, the debris, of those who lived or spent time by the ocean.

The island's stones held its history, of creatures large and small, the living and the dead—of the earth reshaping itself, this place too, the waves that never stopped, would never be still.

The way was far from clear. The path seemed to peter out, then started again a short distance ahead. She needed to be alert to find the way. Her feet were numb from the cold, bleeding from barnacle cuts. She felt the pain only mildly, as if it belonged to someone else.

She heard the blast of the ship's horn in the distance, Owen letting her know he was there. She imagined the seals circling the boat, as if to tell him she'd landed safely, that she'd finally come home—and she had. She understood that now. That this was part of a journey begun years ago, left incomplete, the site of her abandonment, of beginnings and ends. The island had been waiting for her. Everything circles back on itself in the end, she thought. Everything is connected. The geography of the land, of the soul. The edge of a curtain had lifted, and she glimpsed what lay beyond, if only for a moment, and yet that moment was enough to comprehend, in part, her mother's sacrifice.

“Ella! Annie!” She called for her daughters, for minutes, for hours, it seemed, though it couldn't have been that long. Her voice grew raspy. Shapes loomed in the mist, shifting, undefined, no sign of the girls yet.

Mama?

The word so faint she might have imagined it, an echo of her own voice ringing back to her, across the years.

Ella. Annie.

They needed her. She would not let go, would not slip away. Perhaps her mother hadn't had a choice. Nora did, and the power of that knowledge propelled her forward.

“Mama? Is that you?”

She set off in the direction of the voices, half blind with tears, down the stony slope to that isolated beach and its ruin of a fishing shack, withered gray boards standing the test of time, yet enough to provide shelter. Her girls, sandy and scraped but whole, even Siggy, in Annie's arms.

“Mama, you wouldn't believe what happened.”

“You wouldn't believe where we've been.”

“What we've seen.”

Oh, but she did, she did.

They launched themselves at her and she held them fast, and in that embrace, borne of love and relief, she saw herself, a little girl, her mother's daughter, clinging to the rocks for dear life as Maeve slid into the water.
Don't let go
. She had saved Nora the only way she'd known how.

“I knew you'd come,” Ella said.

Time bends, end on end.

A bird soaring. A whale breaching. A seal diving, surfacing.

This. This is what mattered.

To feel your children in your arms. To feel the life flowing within you, within them, in the sky and the sea and a tiny island in the middle of nowhere.

Nora presses her cheek to their temples, her girls, her lovely girls, feels their pulses thrumming with the rhythm of life.

Their life. Together.

This.

This is the place.

Acknowledgments

W
ith affection to those who've helped me on the journey to writing this book, especially Kyle Lindskog, Jeannie Berwick, and Marcellina Tylee; the Dorans—my dad, Robert, who has always encouraged me to follow my own path, sisters, Robbi Anderson and Tessa Effland, and aunt, Letty Pericin; the Barbieri clan, especially Kay and Jannie; Carol Carlson; Bob and Paula Rohr; Robin Jones and Leona DeRocco, for their love of books and carpooling assistance at a crucial time; Sara Nickerson, stalwart reader and friend; Kit Bakke; Maria Semple; Seattle7 Writers; and the Fiction Writers' Co-op. My agent, Emma Sweeney, her assistant, Suzanne Rindell, and my editor, Jennifer Barth, for their support and belief in this project. And most of all, to my dear family, Mark, Sian, Connor, and Sera. You are everything to me.

About the Author

The author of two previous novels,
The Lace Makers of Glenmara
and
Snow in July
, HEATHER BARBIERI has won international prizes for her short fiction. She lives in Seattle with her family.

 

www.heatherbarbieri.com

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Also by Heather Barbieri

The Lace Makers of Glenmara

Snow in July

Credits

Cover photograph © Yolande de Kort / Arcangel Images

Cover design by Christine Van Bree

Copyright

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

THE COTTAGE AT GLASS BEACH
. Copyright © 2012 by Heather Barbieri. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

FIRST EDITION

ISBN 978-0-06-210796-1

EPub Edition © MAY 2012 ISBN: 9780062107985

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