6
Sedgwick Cove was famous for a couple of things. The first, obviously, was for being Maine’s version of Salem, Massachusetts —a sort of mecca for witchcraft history and modern-day witchy vibes. The second was the Sedgwick Cove Playhouse.
The playhouse was set on a rocky outcropping overlooking the sea. From the outside, tourists could see miles of scenic coastline, sandy beaches, and several lighthouses. And once inside, they could see some of the best regional theater outside of the major East coast metropolises. For decades, the Sedgwick Cove Playhouse had been the home of The Wandering Mistrals, a theater company known for lush, elaborate musical productions, stunning sets, and headliner talent. All of this was thanks to Vincent Meyers, a flashy Broadway producer who had grown up whiling away his boyhood summers on the beaches of Maine. After falling in love with and marrying a woman from Sedgwick Cove, he decided to buy the land in the 1960s and turn it into a theatrical vacation destination. His connections, talent, and of course, piles of money, meant that he usually got what he wanted. The playhouse had been a tourist attraction ever since, and was still owned by the same family.
I’d known about the Sedgwick Cove Playhouse for a long time. Being a local theater kid, I would have known about it anyway. It had a national reputation, and was way up on my best friend Poe’s shortlist of summer stock theaters she hoped to audition for when she was in college. I stopped to snap a quick selfie in front of the place and texted it to Poe, because I knew she’d kill me if I didn’t. She responded in about five seconds.
OMGGGGGGGGG I’M SO JEALOUS! Are you seeing a show?!
No, just a meeting for a town festival thing.
Let’s see one when I come visit you! They’re doing Sweeney Todd this summer, and you know my Sondheim obsession!
Sounds good,I replied. Truthfully, I had mixed feelings as I stared up at the building in front of me. I’d never seen a play there, never even set foot in the place, as far as I knew. But what I did know was that my mother had a very complicated history with the place, for one very specific reason: my father.
My father had never been in my life, and for the most part, I didn’t feel the absence of him. After all, it’s hard to miss something you’ve never had. I had gotten curious growing up, naturally, but it took years of wheedling and coaxing before my mother would surrender enough details to piece together the story. My father had been a professional actor, a company member of the Wandering Mistrals the summer before I was born. He was older than my mother by a few years, and apparently he was very dashing, very talented, and very married. Not that my mother had known this last bit until afterward. He decided to keep that little tidbit to himself as he swept her off her feet in a swoon-worthy summer romance. My mom had been working her way through nursing school at the time, and had picked up a part-time gig in the box office; and there he was, with a dazzling toothpaste commercial smile, and a seemingly endless supply of charm.
“And there I was, young and stupid and desperately in love with him from the first time he spoke to me,” my mom had said one night, after she had allowed herself a second glass of wine.
“So it was love at first sight?” I had asked in the way only a naive ten-year-old could.
My mom had smiled at me sadly. “I thought so. But infatuation and love are two different things, and I learned that the hard way.”
After a two-month fling, my mother had a suitcase packed for New York City. She was sure he would ask her to come back with him when his contract was up, and she wanted to be ready. Instead, he had rumpled her hair like a precocious kid, and laughed off the idea.
“Oh, kid, that’s sweet, it really is. I’m flattered,” he’d said, like she’d asked for his autograph at the stage door, “but we were just having a bit of fun, weren’t we?”
“A bit of fun,” my mom repeated in a hollow voice. I hated that voice. I hated it so much that I never asked her about him again.
But Ihadtried to stalk him on the internet. The only place I could find any trace of him was on IMDB, where it listed him in a few small television parts, mostly on soap operas. Then he just… vanished. Nothing listed after 2008, which also happened to be the year I was born. It was an odd coincidence, and made him feel like even more of a mystery. I would sometimes watch commercials and tv shows searching for his face—the face I had memorized in the one headshot I could find of him online. I never saw him anywhere.
Now, as I stood in front of the playhouse, I felt a strange pit in my stomach. How odd that a place I’d never been could hold so much significance in my life. I’d felt that way about the entire town of Sedgwick Cove only a short time ago, but that sensation had been swiftly followed by one of belonging—of rightness.I belonged to Lightkeep Cottage, to that sweeping beach, to the crashing waves and the brine-scented air. But this place, I thought, as I looked up at the front doors… I didn’t feel a special connection here.
One of the doors had been propped open with a folding chair, and I slipped quietly into the front lobby. Instantly, I felt my body relax. Okay, I may not have felt drawn to this building, but it was still a theater, after all, and all theaters, from Broadway stages to tiny church halls, are the same at heart. They smell the same: sawdust and paint and hairspray and racks of recycled costumes. The wings are always crammed with the same things: dinged up rehearsal furniture, and boxes of random props and a jungle of ropes, and pulleys and wiring dotted with half-empty coffee cups. I took a deep breath, and felt my body relax. I tried to savor the feeling, because I knew, once I walked through the doors from the lobby to the main theater, I’d be on the defensive again. I might know in my bones that I belong in Sedgwick Cove, but I still had to convince the rest of the teenage population.
“Can I help you?”
The bored voice seemed to come from nowhere, and I let out a humiliating squeak of surprise. I spun around, and noticed for the first time that there was someone sitting in the box office booth. He didn’t even look up from his phone as I approached.
“Uh, yeah, I’m here for the meeting?” I said, turning the statement into a question.
The boy looked up and smirked at me. “You sure about that?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said, the word coming out with a snap in it like a mousetrap, partly because I was annoyed at my own lack of confidence, and partly because I was taken aback by his appearance. The boy was lanky and tall, looking like he’d folded himself into the tiny space with difficulty. His features were very angular—protruding cheekbones, a square chin, and a long,slightly crooked nose. Even his mouth, when he smiled, made a sharp slash in his face. But it was his eyes that truly caught my attention, because one of them was the greenish blue of the ocean, and the other was a startling shade of golden brown. I realized that I’d been staring at him for several silent seconds, and I felt my cheeks flood with color as I dropped my gaze to my feet. “Yes,” I repeated in a sheepish voice.
“You just need to sign in,” the boy said, gesturing toward a clipboard with his elbow, and returning his own gaze to the phone in his hands.
“Right. No problem,” I muttered, scrawling my name with the attached pen.
“Straight through those doors,” the boy said when I had put the pen down. I mumbled my thanks, and walked straight through the swinging double doors.
The theater was a traditional proscenium space, with a thrust stage on one end and rows of audience seating with those red velvet seats that snap up aggressively when you aren’t sitting in them. About two dozen teenagers were spread out in the first few rows, legs dangling over arms of seats, and phones in hands. Zale MacDowell stood up on the stage beside a large writing pad on an easel and three huge Tupperware bins. His face was flushed with excitement, and he kept rubbing his hands together, like an overconfident movie villain. He caught sight of me walking up the aisle, and his face split into a grin.
“Wren! Eva told me you were coming!”
I wished he hadn’t said my name out loud. Every head in the room turned, every pair of eyes latched onto me, so I felt like an actor in a blinding spotlight making a dramatic and unexpected entrance from the back of the house. I did my best not to cringe as a hurried the rest of the way up the aisle, and met Zale at the lip of the stage.
“Sorry I’m late,” I said, though it couldn’t have been a minute or two past seven. “Did I miss anything?”
