I’m more concerned about Pete.
Mom flips on the radio while I try to decide if I want to vomit, scream, or cry. I think it’s some awful combination of all three.
“Mom, can we please talk about—?”
“Oh, baby, hang on.” She turns up the volume on Cape Katie’s one and only radio show, hosted by Cape Katie’s one and only radio host, Bethany Butler. It’s on every morning and evening, and people call in and tell Bethany sob stories about their missing cat or how their coffee burned their taste buds off or something equally inane and irrelevant. Mom freaking loves it. She’s a total sucker for anything potentially tragic and unrelated to her own life.
“You heard it here first, Cape Katians, so keep an eye out for Penny. She was last seen on East Beach . . .”
“Who the hell is Penny?” I ask.
“The Taylor family’s corgi!” Mom says, a hand pressed to her heart. “She got loose from Tamara while she was walking her on the beach, poor thing.”
“. . . And remember, Penny is very skittish around men with red hair and—?”
I flip off the radio. “Seriously, Mom? A corgi?”
“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.
