“It’s sad, that’s all I’m saying. They’ve had her for a decade. She’s older than Tamara.”
“Yeah, cry me an effing river,” I mutter, looking out the window, the familiar sights of my town flashing past me in a blue-and-gray blur. “So do we still live on the cape, or are you just swinging by our old place for one last haul?”
“Of course we live here, baby. Do you really think I’d take you away from your school and all your friends right before your senior year?”
I choke down a derisive laugh. I’m not sure which is funnier: her comment about all my friends or the fact that my brain can’t possibly conjure up half the crap in my life that comes from being Maggie Glasser’s daughter. I would never think any of it. But it all seems to happen anyway.
Chapter Two
TEN MINUTES LATER, MOM PULLS INTO A FAMILIAR gravel driveway. It’s one I’ve seen a million times before. As kids, my best friend, Luca, and I used to fly over this winding, rocky path on our bikes until the trees split and revealed a little sliver of adventure right there at the edge of the world.
“Mom, what are we doing here?” But she just grins as she throws the car in park and opens her door. “Mom.”
“Stop being such a stick-in-the-mud, Gracie. Come on.”
She climbs out and I follow, craning my neck up, up, up to the top of Cape Katie’s whitewashed lighthouse. A red-roofed bungalow sits below it, tucked into its side like a little secret.
Mom comes to my side and slides her arm around my shoulder. The wind tangles her dirty-blond hair.
“This is going to be so great,” she says.
“What is going to be so great?”
She giggles and gives my arm one more squeeze before practically skipping up the drive toward the house. I gulp briny air, willing the crashing ocean to swallow me whole.
I shoulder my duffle and follow her to a small detached garage next to the side entrance of the house. The yawning door reveals stacks of open cardboard boxes, some of the contents draped over the sides. Glass beads, scraps of metal, and a soldering iron from Mom’s handcrafted jewelry business are spread over a large plastic table. I spot a pair of my sleep shorts—?black with neon-pink skulls—?puddled on the dirty cement floor, along with a few piano books.
“I’ve done a bit, but we still have a lot of unpacking to do, baby,” Mom says, heaving a box overflowing with our decade-old towels into her arms. She chin-nods toward another box, but I fold my arms.
“Are you for real? Mom, the last I heard, the lighthouse keeper was about a hundred and ten years old. Please tell me you’re not shacking up with Freddie Iker. His best friend is his parakeet.”
She breaks into laughter, dropping the box in the process. Her tank-top strap slides off her shoulder as she guffaws, really throwing all she’s got into it. My mother’s laugh has always been infectious, clear, and light. I hate to crack even a hint of a smile at the stuff my mother finds funny, but most of the time I can’t help it.
“Good lord. I’m not that old.” She pulls her hair into a sloppy bun on top of her head and picks up the box again. “Or that desperate.”
My smile morphs into a massive eye roll. Over the years, Mom’s traipsed guys as young as twenty-one and as old as fifty-four through our many homes, so I’m not sure how to even begin to respond to that one.
“Freddie retired and Pete took over last week. He’s got an electrical background and has some really innovative ideas for the museum. He even wants to incorporate some of my jewelry in time for next tourist season. Isn’t that something?”
“It sure is.” I grab my sleep shorts and music books from the floor and tuck them under my arm. Not sure which is better. An old geezer who can’t even get it up or some starry-eyed electrician with ideas. Ideas are dangerous around my mother.
I shade my eyes from the sun hanging just over the tree line and take in my surroundings. My new home. An SUV with peeling black paint on the hood is parked on the other side of the garage. It looks vaguely familiar, but considering there are dozens of these kinds of cars on the cape, that’s not too surprising.
“Pete’s at some budget meeting in town, but I think Julian’s home,” Mom says, heading toward the main house. She sticks a key in the side door, and the hinges squeak as she nudges it open with her hip. Cool air rushes out to meet me.
“Julian?”
“Pete’s son. He’s a nice boy. I think he’s about your age.”
And with that, she disappears into the house, leaving me open-mouthed in the doorway. This just keeps getting better and better. What’s next? Sharing a room with Pete’s mother? Maybe a lunatic ex-wife is bunking in the lighthouse tower who screams like a banshee at night and has to be chained to her bed. Hell, at this point, I’m waiting for Mom to tell me Pete’s actually a polygamist and she’s been chosen as a sister wife. I comb through the roster of my high school for a Julian, but I’ve got nothing.
I follow Mom into a shabby-chic-styled kitchen with chrome-rimmed white appliances, white cabinets, and navy-blue curtains with red lobsters all over them framing the window above the sink. The living room is a mixture of our old leather recliner and scarred coffee table and a bunch of junk that looks like it just got dragged out of a frat house. There’s a plaid couch sporting a busted spring and duct tape, along with a TV the size of a car mounted over the fireplace. The only redeeming thing about the whole weird scene is the wall of windows revealing the sprawling blue ocean sparkling under the sun.
We head down a narrow hallway. At the end, Mom opens a door next to the bathroom and gestures me inside with a flourish of her hand.
“This is you. Isn’t it nice? So much natural light.”
I enter the room, and it’s like walking into one of those dreams where everything seems familiar and foreign all at once. The space is square and small and white. My twin bed is shoved into the far corner under the wide window that’s also facing the ocean. White furniture, mine since I was four, is arranged smartly around the room. Mom has already spread my plum-colored sateen comforter that she found for half-price over the bed and filled my closet with my hanging clothes. The few books I own are stacked neatly on my little desk, and framed photos are displayed on the dresser. Sheer white curtains sway in the breeze from the open window. My eyes drift to the wall above my bed, taking in the framed print of a beautiful grand piano on the stage at Carnegie Hall, an empty auditorium lit by golden light and waiting to be filled with an audience, a pianist, music. Luca gave it to me for my birthday two years ago. Mom’s actually managed to hang it straight, no cracks in the glass or chips in the black wooden frame or anything.