Prologue
1992
The frigid yet sunny day in mid-April dared you to go to the beach, to feel the stabbing, icy winds on your face and ache for summer to draw closer.Nine-year-old Celia Harper spent the afternoon racing across the sands of Bluebell Cove with the salty ocean winds in her hair—from the rocky cliffs to the frothing waves to their mother and back again.Freedom was in everything she did; it was in the way she danced and dreamed and sang.Behind her, her little sisters, Ivy, Juliet, and Wren, worked tirelessly through the sand but failed to keep up.Wren at one and a half, a toddler with a raucous giggle and curly hair, Juliet at four, and Ivy at seven and churning to beat her.
How Celia loved them!How she loved her family, the only people she needed in the world.Before them on the beach waited their gorgeous mother, Margaret, her eyes rimmed red with tears she couldn’t explain, her arms stretched wide as they ran.“Faster, girls!”she said, which only made Wren’s giggles wilder.“You’re almost here!You can make it!”
Celia felt her legs burn as she reached out for their mother, who scooped her into a hug, just before the other three Harper sisters barreled into them both.Her laughter rang out across the Atlantic and bounced across the cliffs of Bluebell Cove.Down here on the beach, they could barely make out the top attic windows of the Bluebell Cove Inn.The inn had been in the Harper family for generations.The Harper sisters were told that it would one day be theirs, in some impossible future, when they were adults and meant to take care of themselves.Celia was more or less certain she’d be a child forever.
There was so much she couldn’t envision, even in that imaginative mind of hers.
“My girls!”Margaret cried.“How wonderful you are!How fast!How smart!”
It was a rare day that Margaret had actually left the house and packed them a picnic.They sat on a blanket with sandwiches and watched the seagulls swoop and caw overhead.Margaret was brighter than she’d been in what felt like ages.She told them countless fantastical stories about princesses, ogres, dragons, and ancient seabeasts, which she said lurked on the ocean floor beside Bluebell Cove and protected all the citizens of their town.
“That’s why we must be good to the forests and the oceans and the beaches and the earth,” Margaret told her daughters sweetly.“The earth and its creatures are always good to us.Can’t you feel the magic in the air?Can’t you hear the sea beasts?”
Celia perked up her ears to hear what she could: the rush of the winds through the forest, the crash of the waves, the shriek of the seagulls, and her little sisters, captivated, breathing as they watched their mother.She couldn’t hear the sea beasts, but she still believed they were there, lurking on the ocean floor, waiting.Who else protected Bluebell Cove if not them?
“Someday, I won’t be here to watch over you,” Margaret said out of nowhere, sliding her fingers through Celia’s hair.“You’ll have to trust in each other, then.You’ll have to trust in Bluebell Cove.”Margaret didn’t say anything about their father.
Despite her mother’s illnesses and her frequent inability to leave the house, their mother was to Celia like the weather: always present, always changing.She couldn’t imagine a time when Margaret wouldn’t be around.Celia dropped her head against her mother’s chest and listened to the pounding of her heart.She made believe the sound was the sea beasts in the water, whispering, “Buh-dum.Buh-dum.”But she realized she couldn’t speak whatever language they were speaking.It was untranslatable, like love.
ChapterOne
It was twenty-four years almost to the day since Celia Harper had last been to Bluebell Cove.She’d lived more than half her life since then.Now aged forty-two, her head fizzy from the flight up from Washington, DC, and her mouth dry with the taste of coffee and the vaguely cheesy crackers they’d given out on the plane, she stopped in the airport bathroom to tend to herself, to drink water and fix her face.The last thing she wanted was for the people of Bluebell Cove to think she was anything but put together, the “perfect” oldest sister of a family torn apart.She didn’t want anyone to see the devastation and exhaustion of her recent life stitched across her face.Which meant, she supposed, she wanted to lie.
She’d been lying more and more lately: to her daughter, to her editors (none of whom were writing her back anyway), and to herself.
Scrabbling through the bottom of her purse, she found lipstick and tapped it on, her eyes smarting.Pull it together, Harper, she thought, using the maiden name she’d taken back after the divorce, feigning a smile into the mirror.Next, she added a light dusting of perfume.The scent was nothing like her mother’s, nothing that would bring any rogue memories back.When she finished, she took a staggered breath and turned off flight mode on her phone, nervous for what she’d find there.Sure enough, there were messages from each of her sisters: "We’re all here," "See you later," and "Don’t forget."There was no warmth in the messages.Celia’s heart pounded so hard she thought she was going to collapse.Her hands shook too much to text back.
At the rental car place outside the airport, Celia slipped her sunglasses over her eyes and waited for a little man with wiry arms and a thick handlebar mustache to pass over the keys of the clunky Chevy she’d booked online.Gone were the days of renting fancy cars on her journalism assignments.Although the man looked nothing like her father, when he spoke, his accent was so entirely Maine, so entirely like Celia’s father’s, that Celia bit her tongue to keep from sobbing.She hadn’t expected that.She hadn’t expected herself to be so weak.
“Are you all right, ma’am?”the man asked, sliding a pen behind his ear.
“Just fine.”Celia forced a smile.Her cheeks shivered with pain.
As Celia walked around the Chevy to check for dings and dents, she noticed another woman approaching the rental place, wheeling a suitcase behind her, her stride jaunty and uncomfortable.Celia’s blood ran cold.She had half a mind to duck into the Chevy and get out of there before she was spotted.
But was that really the energy she wanted to bring with her to Maine?Did she really want to start this “makeshift reunion,” this “final goodbye” like that?After a career in journalism, a career in the cut-throat environment of Washington, DC, a career mostly family-less (besides her daughter, of course), she’d never been the sort of person who let fear get the best of her.Not in the past, anyway.
She wasn’t someone to be frightened of, she reminded herself as she stepped around the Chevy.Nothing that happened was her fault.
“Juliet!”Celia hardly recognized her own voice.It felt lodged deep in her throat.
Juliet froze and then lurched around to find Celia hurrying toward her.Celia struggled to read her expression but guessed it was something likeno, I’m not ready for this.But Celia was already five feet away, her arms outstretched.She was going to hug her sister, right here at the rental car place, because that was what you did when your father died.That was what you did when you hadn’t seen each other for decades.
Juliet let herself be hugged.Conscious that the rental car guy was watching them, Celia counted to four and then stepped back, her smile wide.“This is funny timing,” she said.
“Yes.Funny,” Juliet said, her voice wavering.
“I got a car,” Celia said, gesturing back behind her.
“Oh.Nice.”Juliet’s nose twitched, taking her sunglasses on a funny ride.Celia wondered how much she’d spent on them and guessed somewhere north of five hundred dollars.
“You can come with me.If you want to.”Celia suddenly felt overwhelmed by her desire to tend to her younger sister, to make sure she was warm, safe, and well-fed.She did a quick calculation and realized that Juliet was thirty-seven, five years younger than Celia.
The silence between them was deafening.
