“Um, maybe,” Grace states, struggling to get in enough air.
“It’s just a little get-together,” Carol explains. “For Ray.” She swallows, a brief moment of hesitation. “Life’s been so hectic and unpredictable lately that, as a family, we never even had a chance to celebrate the bar’s one-year anniversary a few months back.” Behind Carol, another customer appears, excusing herself as she reaches for something on the shelf. “We’re all getting together there around six if you’d like to join us.”
Grace tries to swallow, but it gets caught in her throat. “Thank you,” she says, fighting the urge to cry. “I’ll ... think about it.”
Carol nods, choosing not to press Grace any further. “Well, I’m happy I ran into you, Grace. I’m happy I had the chance to run into your mother one more time last summer, too.” She waves, shaking the bottle of Motrin in the process, and turns out of the aisle again.
This time, she doesn’t come back.
Grace stays put so they don’t bump into each other in the checkout line.
For what feels like forever, she just stands there, beneath the glow of fluorescent lights, contemplating how anything stocked on these shelves could begin to help her.
She wonders how anyone can ever really heal.
Twenty-Four
Grace steps out of the pharmacy and into the heat. Everything feels too hot. Too bright. Too much. Despite her attempts to breathe through her feelings, her heart isn’t beating right. How could it? Too many opposing emotions have shown up all at once for it to know what to do.
She slides on her sunglasses, pulls her hat down to block out the light, then takes a seat on the curb, the asphalt warm on the back sides of her thighs. Grace fumbles through the brown paper bag in her lap, not even bothering to look into it. Instead, her fingers blindly dig down and pull out a box of Band-Aids. She tears one open and slaps it on her heel, knowing that at this point it’ll hardly do a thing.
Why didn’t Birdie tell her? All those calls from Maine. The brief early-morning conversations. The late-night check-ins. Not a single word. Never so much as a hint.
A few moments later, and with her thoughts racing, Grace hardly even remembers getting back on the bike. All she knows is that she’s moving and pedaling again. Up the boulevard, past blue hydrangeas and shuttered porches and little shops she’s been in a hundred times. By the time she reaches the amusement pier, her stomach queasy from all the motion of the morning, she’s not even really sure why she’s there.
Grace hops off the cruiser and walks with it. The tires clunk over the old wooden slats as she moves. The boardwalk always feels abandoned during the daytime—the ring toss and big wheel gamesshuttered until evening, the snack stands that sell buckets of fries and funnel cakes preparing for a busy night, the Ferris wheel and other rides all turned off.
Up ahead, Grace sees her.
She’s alone, just like every other time they’ve crossed paths this week, sitting outside the old fortune teller booth and staring at the ocean. This time, Grace doesn’t question if she’s really there. She doesn’t tell herself she’s hallucinating or dreaming or imagining. While so many of her memories on this island have blurred, this moment she remembers almost perfectly.
Cece. Thirty-one years old. What was, up until this present week, her last visit to Sea Drift. A few weeks later, she’d be married and moving on.
Although Grace walked past this booth dozens of times, always intrigued by the wooden sign that swayed above the entrance—Madame Mermaid: See Your Future and Plan for It!—and the beaded curtains that concealed the one small window and glass door, she’d only ever stopped at it one time.
“That’s a silly waste of money, Cece,” Birdie used to say as the two of them strolled past, licking ice cream cones on their way to the rides, little-kid Grace asking a million questions.Can she really see the future? Maybe she can tell us a winning lottery number! Can we go in so I can find out which teacher I’ll get in the fall?“She’s just a fake, love,” Birdie always explained. “For better or worse, no one really knows what life has in store for them.”
Cece doesn’t seem to notice Grace at first, her gaze locked on the waves. This version is more polished than the others. Her hair is still sun-kissed from a week at the beach, but it’s brushed back into a smooth, loose twist. She wears a nice linen shirt and leather sandals—simple, stylish, grown-up. The nameplate necklace hangs between her collarbones, the gold plating catching the light. On her left hand, a diamond engagement ring hugs her finger, which shekeeps touching and twisting, like maybe she’s afraid it’ll disappear if she doesn’t.
“There’s a bit of a wait,” Cece says when Grace slides onto an empty chair on the opposite side of the door from where she sits. “Someone just went in.”
“Are you waiting, too?” Grace asks and looks out at the water, both of them studying the horizon.
“I already went.” Cece rubs her ring. “A little bit ago.”
Out on the boardwalk, seagulls peck at French fries smashed between the wooden planks.
“How’d it go?” Grace asks, cautious not to say too much. Although she doesn’t recall whether she talked to another potential customer in this moment (Maybe? Possibly? Is that even how this all works?), she remembers with crystal-clear clarity why her thirty-one-year-old self came here. “Did you get the answers you wanted?”
“Hard to say,” Cece admits. She crosses her legs. Her linen top rises as she indulges in a long inhale. “I’m not entirely sure what answers I was hoping to get.”
A moment passes. Cece doesn’t say anything else. Rather, she gazes ahead while lost in a thought she hasn’t shared. Grace waits and then almost gets up to leave, wondering if this is it, that the point of this particular encounter is not to talk or to learn some lesson, but to simply see this version of herself again. The one who was standing on the edge of everything, the whole future she’d been plotting so close that she could touch it with her hands.
“I’m getting married,” Cece suddenly says out of nowhere. “In October. The venue’s gorgeous. It’s this rooftop, all glass-enclosed, in Lower Manhattan. You can see the Hudson River and Jersey City. It’s beautiful.” While she talks, she never turns her face. “Adam.” Her lips break into a smile. “That’s who I’m marrying. He’s great. Kind. A gentleman. Good job. Stable. He even folds laundry.” She laughs. “We’re going to start looking at houses in the suburbs in the spring.”
“That all sounds ... nice,” Grace tells her.
“I know. That’s why I’m completely terrified.” She twists the ring again, slower this time. “I have absolutely everything I ever wanted. At least, I’m about to, anyway. And instead of bubbling with happiness, I’ve just been a nervous wreck that it won’t work out. That someone will pull the rug out from under me. That it’s all just one big trick.”
