No,Grace thinks. She grabs her journal and purse, as well as the neon bracelet from Cece to add to the pile of other objects—sand dollar, arcade tickets—out on the coffee table, then slides on her sunglasses and hat.That’s not really why I’m here.What she came for was answers. The kind that might get her to stop spiraling and remember how to put one foot in front of the other. The sort that eventually might help her remember how to be Grace.
Before she steps into the hallway, Grace moves to the window—the same one she was looking out earlier while still in bed.
“Mom?”
It’s the first time she’s tried to talk to her—this person she can no longer see or hear or touch or smell and yet still feels everywhere she goes—since yesterday on the beach.
“I need to know if you told him I’d be here.” Her fingers trail along the chipped white trim work. “And if so, how. And why. And when.” She waits for a sign, but there aren’t any. “Why did you really send me down here?” Grace leans forward. “Was it to findmeagain?” The tip of her nose presses against the glass, her mind swirling with more questions than she has time to pose. “Or was it to find him?”
A little while later, Grace stands at the counter of the local coffee shop, where a chipped-away coastal mural hangs on the wall beside her. It took her ten minutes to bicycle up here, then another ten as she waited on the curb for the sleepy-eyed teenage employees to arrive twenty minutes past opening. While they slowly eased into their routine, Grace looked around. Even in her pre-coffee-drinking days, she often came here, always on the hunt for a tropical early-morning or post-beach smoothie (mango, pineapple, and banana every time) or some other vacation-worthy treat.
“Iced coconut-milk coffee,” a shaggy-haired staffer mumbles, and slides Grace her drink. He looks at her, his whole demeanor groggy, and tilts his head. “Didn’t I make you a smoothie yesterday?”
Only half listening, Grace grabs her beverage and investigates the creamer-to-coffee ratio, which leans too heavily white. “Sorry.” She moves to the garbage can, dumps a bit out. “Not me.”
“Yes, it was,” he insists, his tone perking up. “Remember? Right when we opened. I had to go in the back and cut up the pineapple because we didn’t have any prepped yet.”
Grace freezes mid-action, while drips of her beverage continue to spill out into the trash bin. “Remind me. What was the order, exactly?”
“It was that one.” He points at a handwritten sign. “Mango. Pineapple. And—”
“Cece,” Grace says sharply under her breath.
“What?” he poses, still gazing at the sign. “No. No seeds-seeds. Just fruit.”
“Dude,whatare you talking about?” Another boy, still wearing sunglasses, steps through a swinging wooden door in the back. “That girl yesterday was, like,ourage.”
“Was she?” boy number one states, then bursts out laughing. “I don’t know, man. Beach bonfire last night, you know? I was upsuuuperlate.” He turns, gives Grace another once-over. “You definitelylooklike her, though. Honestly, you could be her mom or something.”
Finally, Grace swivels and levels off her cup—now half empty. “Might I askwhythis young girl who somehow resembled me was so memorable?”
“Because she ran off without paying me!” he exclaims, or as close to an exclamation as his chill-guy demeanor allows. “Said she didn’t realize till after she took a sip that all she had were coins and she needed them for the Skee-Ball machines.” He shakes hair out of his face. “Swore she’d swing by today to pay me before my boss gets here and realizes my register is off.” He stops, stares at the mural. “Gotta be honest, I sort of respect her commitment to the game.”
Grace gnaws her lip. No amount of caffeine will wake her up enough for whatever this day has in store. She pulls a ten from her wallet. “That cover what she owes you?”
The boy nods. “Sweet.”
Ready to walk away and determine where to go from here, Grace heads for the door and finally takes a sip of her drink. Instantly, her mouth turns sour. She spits it out, forcing it back down into the cup through her straw, her face twisted into a sickened expression. “Oh my God!” She dashes for the trash, tosses it. “Check your coconut milk! That one went bad!”
“What? No way! It was brand new. I just opened it.”
“Well, look again.” She pulls a water bottle from a cooler. “Because something about it sure isn’t right.”
Just like the rest of the island this week,she thinks.
Sixteen
Grace exits the coffee shop in a hurry, a new sense of urgency pushing her along while an acrid taste—part spoiled creamer, part disbelief—lingers in her mouth.
Outside on the sidewalk, she tugs down her hat, slides on her sunglasses, then wrestles her bike from a metal rack while the surfer boys’ voices still rattle around like pinballs inside her brain. Cece. The smoothie. The one her younger self apparentlystole. (Had Grace ever actually been brazen enough to do such a thing?) It was impossible. And yet, it was also proof. Maybe whatever Grace had been experiencing since arriving back on Sea Drift wasn’t only happening in her mind. Which possibly made it worse.
In one ungraceful swoop, she throws a leg over the bike’s hot plastic seat, drops her belongings into the woven basket, and starts to ride. The landscape blurs past—pastel houses, slices of water. It’s been ages since she’s pedaled this hard—beach cruisers are more typically used for, well,cruising. But she can’t stop. Even though she’s surrounded by a setting where people come to get away, Grace feels an innate need to escape.
Eventually, she reaches the northern tip of the island—a place where the boulevard comes to a dead end and all that’s left other than water and a parking lot is a pine-tree-lined path. The muscles in her legs burn as she parks her bike, grabs her things, and sets off down the trail.
On certain days, the path is packed. Families posing for pictures. Kids off-roading while their mothers shout about poison ivy. Today, it’squiet. For many people, coming here is a rainy-day activity, something you do when the beach isn’t an option. Which is maybe why Grace came. Because even though she’ll technically be out in public, she’s confident she’ll be alone here so she can think.
Another few paces and Grace sees it, its black-and-white body taking shape through the dense green brush. The lighthouse. As stoic and certain as ever. A structure historically meant to safely guide people back into port. Grace and Birdie used to come here together to collect pieces of driftwood, look through the old-fashioned viewers at the ocean, then climb the lighthouse, walking the 216 narrow steps all the way to its top. Sometimes, when Grace was older, she’d come here for an hour or two by herself, often when Birdie was out getting more groceries or meeting up with Carol Murphy to enjoy baskets of clam strips for lunch.
