Twenty-Three
After breakfast, Jenny—pleased to be child-free for forty-eight hours—insists on cleaning up the kitchen and then driving herself to the real grocery store on the far end of the island to pick up snacks, fruit, and a few cases of seltzer (Based on that little bombshell, sounds like we’ll need wine, too!) so they’re well stocked for the next few days. Using her most stern and motherly tone, she instructs Grace to stay put (It’s your vacation; you don’t need to be running errands. That’s what I’m here for now.), take a hot shower, give her foot a good scrub (Theonetime I don’t have the kids’ first aid kit in my purse!), then get out in the fresh air for a little while to relax, think, and take care of herself until Jenny gets back.
Grace, happy to have someone else take charge, grabs a towel and heads out back. Once the water temperature from the scaly showerhead evens out, she steps into the stream, hoping to rinse away at least some of her mixed-up feelings. She washes her body and does her best to clean her heel. For the first time this week, she pauses long enough to look—reallylook—at it. She can’t recall the exact moment it transformed from a dull ache into something that truly hurt, or how long she managed to ignore it. Now, though, she sees she’s put too much pressure on it, shifting her weight while she convinced herself it wasn’t so bad, telling herself it would work itself out, only for it to turn out worse.
Once the area is clean, she flicks open the lid on the strawberry shampoo bottle and lathers her hair in the comforting artificial scent. All those years, she never wondered about who owned the house, butnow she can’t stop thinking about Caleb’s parents going to the five-and-dime every few weeks to replace the bottle, creating the illusion that the same one was always there. Maybe the memories the fragrance conjured provoked certain feelings—old times they wished they could reclaim, old wounds they were trying to heal—inside them, too.
Once she’s dressed in what’s become her uniform this week—shorts, a tee, a salt-stained hat, and a pair of sunglasses to cover her puffy eyes—she goes out front, pulls the cruiser upright, and starts to ride, knowing in which direction to head. Jenny was right. You can’t let certain things fester. Doing so only extends the pain. She heads south, past the market, beyond Dune Street and the amusement pier, until she reaches the small pharmacy a little ways past it.
Grace pushes open the glass door and is instantly greeted by a vaguely medicinal smell paired with sunscreen and citronella candles, compliments of the end-of-summer display right up front. The store is mostly quiet—a teenager stocking allergy medications, a woman squinting next to a tower of reading glasses. Grace grabs a basket. She breezes through the aisles—shampoos, baby items, dental products—then slows as she rounds the corner into the greeting card section. For a second, Grace pauses, imagining Birdie—a lover of handwritten notes, sentiments that one could hold on to and read over the years—standing there, deliberating between something heartfelt or funny, then ultimately buying both.
“You’ll miss all my silly notes someday,” Birdie always said when Grace laughed at the fact that her mother gave her multiple cards for her birthday, each one inscribed with a whole paragraph of wishes.
“I’m sure you’re right,” Grace would shoot back, then squeeze her mother’s hand. “But not today, because you’re still right here.”
How foolish Grace had been to think they had so much time.
Now she walks away from the aisle and turns again. Naturally, the items she needs—Band-Aids, hydrogen peroxide—are organized immediately beside the family-planning products. Pregnancy tests. Ovulation kits. Things she once required with such regular frequency that she had them set up on a monthly delivery subscription.She always chose the “good” brands, those that promised the earliest detection and clearest lines, like certainty and dreams were things you could buy. She reaches out, lifts one of the boxes, the false promises printed all over it branded into her memory.
“Grace?” A voice rings out from the end of the aisle. “Sweetheart? Is that you?”
Her face instantly hot, Grace shoves the box back on the shelf like it’s contraband, her fingers quickly working to grab a tube of antibiotic ointment to toss into her basket instead. She turns. Carol Murphy stands at the endcap. She holds a box of Popsicles and some children’s Motrin. Her strawberry-blond bob is brushed back beneath her visor. A pair of sunglasses hangs from the front of her preppy cover-up.
“I was hoping I’d run into you at some point,” Carol says, already making her way toward Grace. “Meg told me you two had dinner together the other night.” She folds her arms around Grace and gives her a tight squeeze, the ice-cold Popsicle box pressing against her back. “I’m so, so sorry about Birdie,” she whispers into Grace’s neck. “Meg told me about that, too.” She pulls back, a trace of wetness in her eyes. “Burt and I had no idea.”
“Thank you,” Grace says, not able to get much else out.
Carol pulls back, loosens her grip on the Motrin, and wipes a tear from her eye. For a moment, she just stands there, staring at Grace with a familiar look of pity. Carol inhales, collecting herself, though it’s clear her mind’s been flooded by a million memories. For so long, their two families spent their favorite week of the season together—separate houses, yes, but so many shared moments from those coming-of-age years.
“I have such fond memories of sitting by the tide pools with your mother, the two of us having a cocktail and laughing while we watched you kids all play.” Carol’s lids briefly close, like someone pulling down window shades, before she opens them back up again. “We were justreminiscing about those times when we had lunch together here on the island last year.”
In an instant, the whole world stops.
“What?” Grace asks. “When did you see my mom?”
As far as Grace knew, Birdie hadn’t been back to Sea Drift since their last visit together, the summer before Grace was married. It was their tradition, one they’d enjoyed together over the years, and one they’d let go together, too. Or so Grace thought.
“Last August, sweetheart. You were up in New England. I think that’s what Birdie said, at least. For your birthday. We bumped into each other up at the lighthouse, then got clam strips over at that little spot we used to love near the inlet.” Carol wipes the bottom of the Popsicle box, the corner of it dripping. “Burt and I spent most of last summer staying with Meg and the kids in Pennsylvania to help them with—” She stops herself, waves a hand. “Just witheverything.” She quickly sniffles, trying to get past the emotions embedded in that single word. “Anyway, I was only on the island for the day to help Ray with some things.” She stops, one brow lifting in question. “I’m sure Birdie mentioned to you after our run-in that he lives in Sea Drift full-time now.”
Grace doesn’t answer, instead just forcing herself to smile while her heartbeat thuds.
“Anyway,” Carol continues, “he’d rented an apartment up on the north end of the island the first year he was here, but he finally bought the mostadorablelittle house on the bay late last spring, not long after he bought the bar.” She grins, proud to tell her this, but it fades fast, this one point of happiness quickly overshadowed by the other life-changing event that unfolded for their family around the same time. “After everything that happened with Ben, it took him a few months before he really started to make it into a proper home.” She rolls her eyes, but in a loving way. “My son is great at a lot of things, but picking out curtains and bath linens isnotone of them.”
While Carol talks, Grace thinks back to her trip to Maine last August. She and Adam sitting on the water. Adam telling her he wasn’t sure heshared her dream for a family anymore and that he needed a long—maybe permanent—break from the topic before he could consider whether he wanted to try again. They were just sentences, but they carried such weight. The future they envisioned together, the one they were clinging to with relentless hope in countless waiting rooms and on endless examination tables for years, just ... gone. Throughout that trip, Grace snuck off a dozen times to call her mother. To talk. To cry. To fill her in.
Birdie was home that week. She told Grace that fact plenty of times. Making lesson plans for the upcoming school year, the last she planned to work before retiring, something she kept putting off until she had a grandchild to spoil and regularly visit. Working in her little vegetable garden in the back of the town house. Meeting friends in the nearby park for walks.
Was she here, alone, back at the beach—theirbeach—and never said it? And if so, why? Was she looking for something? Or someone? Was there a reason she didn’t tell Grace?
“Grace, honey?” Carol says now. “Are you okay? You look a little ... off.” Her lips curl with worry. “I hope I didn’t say the wrong thing or ...”
“It’s fine,” Grace states, even though her mind is a swirl of new, even more complicated questions than those she had when she first woke up. “I’m still just ... processing.”
Carol nods just as another customer walks down their aisle. “Well, I’d better get going.” She holds up the items in her hands. “I’m sure Meg told you the other night about Quinn’s ear infection. Naturally, now Emma’s fighting one, too.” She shakes her head at the ludicrous nature of motherhood. “I should probably swap out these Popsicles and get a fresh box. They’re likely half melted at this point.” They embrace again. “I’m glad I saw you, sweetie.”
When Carol finally lets go, she steps back and offers Grace one last smile before she walks away. Grace, too shaken by Carol’s news to concentrate, begins to toss a random assortment of first aid items from the shelf into her basket, her fingers moving on autopilot as she hardly even looks to see what she’s throwing in.
“You know,” Carol says an instant later, popping back around the endcap, “Meg told me a little bit about your conversation at dinner the other night.” She looks down at the ground, like she’s uncomfortable stating this next part. “Not just about Birdie.” Slowly, she raises her face again. “I understand you’re staying at the house by yourself. If you don’t have plans tomorrow night, you ought to drop by Ray’s bar, the Dive. All of us Murphys will be there, even the kids, so long as Emma’s antibiotics kick in.”
