one
The first timeMae Kellerman saw the ocean, she screamed.
At least, her parents had always described the memory as such: a long howl, torn from their toddler’s chest at the first crash of a wave. Accompanied by vicious kicks into Mae’s mother’s stomach, a pounding at shoulders her parents first interpreted as fear. And so Jodi Dupont-Kellerman had hugged her toddler tighter, shielding her bonneted head from the wind with a hand, until her husband Felix suggested they try putting baby Mae’s feet down in the sand.
And the moment they hit, Mae was off. Running in the half-sideways, mostly-drunk way of toddlers toward the green-blue of the Atlantic.
Her howl turned more shrill, chubby fists rising in the air, until gradually, Jodi and Felix understood it was a cry of wonder. One Mae kept up the entire time Felix lifted her through the shallows of the waves, the sound refusing to leave Mae’s body no matter how Jodi and Felix tried to calm her. Until, eventually, laughing and holding palms over their ears, they walked away from the sand back to their old Subaru, to give Mae’s growing lungs a rest.
Forty years later, Mae gazed at a different ocean and rather felt like screaming again. Until her lungs once more wore themselves out. Until the waves told her what to do.
Instead, she sipped too-hot green tea from a paper cup.
And glanced back, again, at the building behind her. Wide slats of worn, dark wood ran up both stories, like a saloon in an old Western. Like it was weathered half by sea salt, half by tumbleweed.
A faded red and white sign hung in its picture window, above a chipped sill covered in dust.
For Sale by Owner
503-555-9032
Mae’s eyes flicked back toward Main Street. It was rare on the Oregon Coast, a shoreline almost completely protected by state law, to have a commercial strip so close to the sea. She studied the small café across the way where she’d acquired this green tea, the waves of the Pacific visible behind it. To the left, a kiosk for whale watching tours. Just past that, a set of wide, concrete steps, leading down to the shore. Mist rose off the sand as the morning warmed, burning off the wet damp of night. Revealing more of the cliffs that stood at either end of the beach: lichen-covered brackets for both the shallow bay and the town that hugged it.
She wasn’t supposed to be here.
She was supposed to be in Newport, at the very least, visiting her parents before heading back home. She was supposed to be in Portland. She had to return to work tomorrow at the community center after almost two weeks away.
She turned and rested her back against the railing of the porch. Stared again at the smudged window and the dark space beyond. An emptiness, waiting to be made bright.
Mae dug her phone out of her pocket.
She’d had time, these last two weeks, to scream.
It was time for something new.
A rough, deep voice picked up on the third ring.
“Dell.”
Mae’s pulse jumped at the brief, monosyllabic greeting. Was that a name?
“Hi.” She cleared her throat, standing straighter, as if the person on the other end of the line could see her. “I’m calling about the vacant storefront? On Main Street?”
Silence.
Mae had dialed before she could think too hard. Figured it wouldn’t hurt to at least get some information. Had also figured procuring it wouldn’t be a terribly difficult thing to do. But as the silence on the other end of the line stretched, she got her wits about her, and retrieved her customer service voice to properly continue the conversation.
“Sorry, let me start that again. My name is Mae Kellerman, and I’m standing in front of this storefront for sale, here at the end of Main Street in Greyfin Bay. Next to the bar.”
Mae had never spent much time in Greyfin Bay before yesterday. It was south of the towns on the northern coast that were an easy day drive from Portland. A small blip along the way to Newport when she drove down to visit Jodi and Felix.
But as she’d stood on the sidewalk of Main Street last night, the ocean at her back, Jesus’s ashes now churning in its depths, she’d looked at the strip of darkened storefronts buffeted by the foothills of the Coastal Range behind them, and something about it had made her pause. Actually take it in, for perhaps the first time.
Maybe everything simply looked a little different, after you’d lost someone.
A world-weary sigh rattled in Mae’s ear.
“What do you want with it?”
