“Can we go in now?” Everlee dug herself out of the small pile of leaves and stood to brush off her dress.
Quinn bent over and helped her out, plucking leaves from the clingy corduroy and the unruly mop of Everlee’s hair. The red had dulled to a strawberry blond that almost seemed intentional—ombre coloring was all the rage. Still, they were eager for that last physical trace of what had happened to disappear entirely. Everlee’s other scars were indelible. But fading. Growing faint and fine as silver.
“Good question,” Liz piped up. “I think Walker’s changed his mind. I think today might not be ‘the day.’?”
“Oh, it’s the day, all right.” Walker emerged from behind the black sheet and slipped his arms around his wife’s narrow hips.
Quinn straightened up and swiveled to brush a kiss against his cheek. “We’re a very patient bunch,” she teased.
“Clearly.”
“So,” Liz broke in. “Are you ready? Do we finally get to see it?”
Walker shrugged, feigning nonchalance. “If you want to.” He turned to squint at the angle of the sun. “It should be perfect just about now.”
In spite of their earlier prickliness, a wave of excitement rippled through the entire group. The past three months had been some of the hardest of their lives. Quinn came to grips with the fact that she wasn’t pregnant—and might not ever be. Nora grieved the loss of her best friend and the years she had spent living a lie. Liz began the slow process of forgiving her husband—and learning to be a mother again. But no one had suffered as much as Everlee, and Quinn expected Walker to reach for her hand and lead her through the door of the boathouse first.
He didn’t. Walker stepped away from his wife and stuck out his arm for Liz.
“Me?” She fluttered her fingers to her chest, surprised at being singled out, and was just a little hesitant.
“I want you to be the first to see it.”
“Why me?”
Walker didn’t answer her question; he just stood with his elbow out and waited for his mother-in-law to take it.
“Oh, fine, fine.” Liz tried to come off gruff, but she sounded like she was going to cry, and that made her more than a little flustered. “Everlee, honey, take Walker’s other arm.” And because no one questioned Liz Sanford, Everlee did as she was told.
Quinn hurried ahead of them and pulled back the sheet, swinging it wide so they could enter the boathouse unhindered.
“Thank you,” Walker said.
And then they were inside.
It was blinding white, and Liz blinked against the onslaught of light. She dropped Walker’s arm to shield her eyes, but she couldn’t stop herself from whirling around, from trying to take it all in.
Suspended from a frame high above her, a thousand pieces of glass (thousands?) shimmered in the sun. Dusk poured in through the high windows on the west side of the tall boathouse and illuminated each spinning shard of glass so that it reflected light like water. As Liz tried to absorb what she was seeing, she realized that the glass hung from silver wires so slender they were almost invisible. They were all arranged in progressing layers so that they seemed to swell and heave.
Waves. Wind. Sails.
“Walker,” Nora whispered from somewhere behind her, and Liz was struck with the desire to catch her daughter’s hand and hold it tight. “What have you done?”
“It’s the ship,” Quinn breathed. “The Queen Elizabeth.”
They all looked at Walker as he nodded. “I’ve never seen sea glass in a lake,” he said. “But the little bowl of it in the cabin and the story of the steamboat made me realize there must be tons of it at the bottom of Key Lake. I dove for it all summer.”
“It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen,” Ethan said. “What is it called?”
Walker put one hand behind his neck and rubbed the tender skin beneath his ponytail. He looked sheepish, almost afraid when he said: “Elizabeth Undone.”
It was dazzling, resplendent, the face of the sun. And the depths of the ocean when the world was filled with light. Hope and despair, for how could this have happened, how could it be undone if it had not at first been done? Making and remaking in a constant round, and as Liz spun beneath the twinkling light, the glittering, gleaming, otherworldly bright, she felt something inside of her shatter free.
Elizabeth undone, indeed.
They drank champagne beneath the upside-down ship. It was the world upended, a beautiful disaster. Worthy of a second bottle of champagne and music. Everlee danced abandoned, throwing her hands up and laughing so hard she fell down clutching her sides and howling.
At one point, Liz found herself face-to-face with her daughters, the first, the second, the unlikely third in her arms with her head on Liz’s shoulder. How can this be? Liz thought. But it was, and it would be.
They talked of insignificant things. Funny stories and small-town gossip, a new recipe and plans for Christmas. And then, when Everlee was heavy and quiet in Liz’s arms, drowsy with something that drew very near to joy, Liz told her girls: “I’m going to find her. Someday.”
Neither Nora nor Quinn had to ask her what she meant. They had a scarf, a name, an antique Egyptian box with the remains of a woman who was as much a mother as any of them. Lorelei belonged with Tiffany and in some way Everlee did, too. With all of them, actually.
And the Sanford girls were fierce and determined, tenacious and brave. The sort of women who refused to give up. Who knew that all the loveliest things were broken.
And in all the broken places they were strong.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
IN DECEMBER OF 2013, my husband and I stepped off a plane in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, with the newest member of our family. We had known our daughter for years, but the catastrophic event that precipitated her adoption was just beginning to rewrite our personal story. At the time, we knew just a few things: she was sick, she needed our help, and we desperately loved her. In the weeks that followed her arrival on US soil, we became increasingly aware that the trauma she had endured would shape our lives forever. This beautiful girl was wary, watchful. She didn’t speak much and she held her emotions tight to her chest. We often wondered what she was thinking and feeling, because she certainly wasn’t going to share those thoughts and emotions with us. I spent my days loving her and reaching for her, trying to bridge the gap between us and earn the title that the Liberian and US governments had already given me: Mom.
Little Broken Things grew out of that time. In a quiet moment as I held her in my arms and we both cried, I knew I wanted to write a story about a girl searching for home—and a woman becoming a mother in a broken but beautiful way.
My heartfelt gratitude and forever love to Eve for making me the mother of a daughter. I am so glad that you are ours and I will spend the rest of my life trying to be a good, good mother to you.