“Not if you count when Adam still lived here. Or when I visited my therapist. Or grief group.” Grace tries for a sarcastic smile. It hurts, like lifting weights after months of skipping the gym. “Plus, I sawyouwhen you helped me pack up Mom’s house. I’m basically a socialite.”
“Grace, come on. It’s me. You don’t have to pretend. I’m not a stranger.” Jenny stops herself. “You can fall apart with me.”
Grace’s phone dings. She checks the screen and finds a notification from an affirmation app.Feel what you’re feeling. You’re not the same person you were yesterday. She swipes it away. “I’ll think about it.”
“Liar.”
“Probably.”
As Jenny wrangles her children, Grace lifts something new from the box. It’s heavy and wrapped in tissue. Whatever it is, Birdie apparently believed it was worth protecting. Piece by piece, Grace removes the paper, half expecting to find an old snow globe or figurine. Instead, she discovers a large mason jar full of sun-bleached shells. A lump forms in her throat. Every summer, on the last day of vacation, they made one together before heading home.
“Dear God, Birdie,” Grace whispers through a sad gasp of a laugh. “You kept this?”
“I knew it!” Jenny proclaims, then pauses. “So? What is it?”
“It’s ... nothing.” Grace traces the lid with a fingertip. “Just old beach memories.”
Everyone has a place. For years, Sea Drift was theirs. A stretch of barrier island off the southernmost tip of New Jersey. Twelve miles long. A half mile wide. Close enough to Delaware to touch. On a map, it was so small it looked like a mistake—a smudge of ink versus a place.
It wasn’t the Jersey Shore most people probably pictured. Everyone had Atlantic City crime dramas and bad reality TV to thank for that. Sea Drift wasn’t glamorous. No old New England money. No wild horses. But it was quiet. Timeless. Saltwater taffy shops. Rickety boardwalk rides. Decades-old bungalows that leaned from the wind.
Every August, beginning the summer after James died, Birdie rented the same two-bedroom house the week of Grace’s birthday. It never changed. Not the springy mattresses. Not the dusty beach decor. Not the terrible plumbing. Each time they arrived, Birdie—dressed ina floppy hat and bright, breezy dress—dropped her bag, looked around, then proclaimed, “Well, Cece, looks like the only thing that’s changed since last summer is us!”
When she was young, Birdie’s parents brought her to Sea Drift on day trips. She fell in love with it. The fudge stores. The specific way the ocean sparkled. The fact that it was an actual island, like something from the adventure books she liked to read.
When Birdie married James, they couldn’t afford a faraway honeymoon. Upon her suggestion, they booked three nights at a Sea Drift motel instead. Though they grew up in the same Pennsylvania town, James had never been to the island. During that trip, he fell in love with it, too. When they returned home, they put a jar on the dresser in their first apartment and dropped loose change into it every night. Little by little, they promised to save for the life they wanted. A home. A child. A family vacation by the sea.
Birdie kept her word.
As time passed, Grace’s visits dwindled. Something always got in the way. Jobs. Adam. The lake house. Book deadlines. Pregnancy losses. Justlife. For a while, Birdie kept renting it, even when Grace only came for a few days. Eventually, she got the memo. The year Grace set out on her first book tour, Birdie simply let the tradition go.
“Grace,” Jenny says now, “you can’t sit there staring at your old things. Come here for a few days. You need air. And sun. And—”
“You’re making me sound like a houseplant,” Grace says, wishing she could reclaim those last few summers with her mom. “Which isn’t great, considering my track record.”
“I’m serious,” Jenny laughs. “You’ve spent all season packing up Birdie’s house, dealing with Adam, and beating yourself up about your book. You need a fresh perspective. A reset.”
“Maybe,” Grace murmurs, setting down the jar and deciding to leave it at that.
Seconds pass before either of them speaks again.
“So other than your old orthodontics, find anything good in there?” Jenny asks.
“Only if you count a shoebox of notes we passed senior year.”
“I’m surethat’sfull of literary masterpieces to inspire you,” Jenny deadpans.
“You have no idea.” Grace continues to pick through the box’s contents—mix tapes, a knot of friendship bracelets—not sure what she hopes to find. Maybe an instruction manual Birdie wrote on how to live once she was gone. Instead, she pulls out her old Magic 8 Ball. “Deliberating about prom dresses consumed months of our time.”
“That sounds like an actual vacation to me right now.”
“Tell me about it.” Grace sets the toy aside, continues to sift. A moment later, her fingers curl around the edges of a department-store gift box, the kind Birdie used to get from the local Macy’s. She opens it, certain she’ll find a pair of her flared teenage jeans. Instead, her hands go cold. “Oh, God.”
“What now?”
But Grace can’t speak. All she can do is stare at the photo album, and the title,Summer Memories, written in Birdie’s familiar handwriting. Her grip tightens on the cover. She flips and is greeted by photo after photo of summers past. Birdie and toddler Grace eating swirl cones on the boardwalk. Birdie and middle-school Grace reading paperbacks in the sand. Birdie and preteen Grace on the Ferris wheel, arms raised. She turns the page again and finds her sixteen-year-old self—hair kissed golden, skin gorgeously tan, that faded-blue tank she practically lived in that season—staring back at her.
“Grace?”
