The Cottage at Glass Beach

by Heather Barbieri

  Now her older daughter considered the rumpled sheets, the dent in the second pillow. “You moved around in your sleep a lot.”

  “I always do,” Nora replied. “You know that. Dreams.”

  “Bad ones?” Annie asked.

  “I don’t remember,” Nora said, changing the subject. “You must be hungry. I’ll get you breakfast.” What better way to divert them than catering to their most basic needs? She herded them out of the room and busied herself pouring cereal into bowls and making toast.

  Ella regarded her closely, her chin dipped down over the bowl of Cheerios, little O’s of cereal expressing collective surprise below her disapproving face. “So”—she crunched—“have you heard from Dad?”

  “No.” Nora hadn’t expected to.

  “You didn’t turn off your phone, did you?”

  “You’d know better than I would.” Nora raised an eyebrow at her.

  Ella slurped the milk.

  The noise served its purpose, setting Nora’s teeth on edge. “I know you miss him.”

  Annie’s gaze moved between them.

  “You haven’t forgiven him, have you?” Ella asked. “You tell us to forgive and forget.”

  Yes, the inconsequential things siblings tended to argue about. This was different. “Just because your father and I have separated doesn’t mean we don’t love you,” Nora said, a sentence she’d repeated over the course of the last few weeks. “We both love you, very much.”

  “Do you? Then why did you bring us here?”

  “I thought it was best. Aunt Maire’s letter arrived at the right time. You know what it was like at home.”

  “El—,” Annie interceded.

  “Coming here hasn’t really fixed anything, has it?” Ella set her spoon down on the table with a clatter.

  “I came here for you.”

  “No, you didn’t. You wanted to know what happened to your mother. You wanted to escape—from the stuff with Dad.” She flung her chair back and stormed outside.

  “El, wait.” Annie went after her.

  The door slipped its latch and creaked open. It hadn’t closed completely, revealing a slice of empty sky, heavy with clouds. It was raining over the ocean, raining hard. Nora picked up the chair Ella had thrown and put it back where it belonged. There was a gouge now in the wood. “Maybe I did.”

  A few moments later, there was a footstep on the deck, another. Nora’s heart beat faster. She would turn Owen away. She would say last night was a mistake. Because she wasn’t that type of person—

  “Good morning,” Maire called.

  Nora sighed in relief, in disappointment; she wasn’t sure which was stronger.

  “How was your evening?” Her aunt’s face was bright as ever as she pushed open the door. “You didn’t sit and brood, did you?”

  “Not too much.” Nora gave her a wry smile.

  “He’ll be back.”

  Who did she mean? “Perhaps,” she said, to be safe.

  “Anyone can see he still loves you.”

  Malcolm. Of course she meant Malcolm. “Sometimes I think he loves the idea of me, more than the reality.”

  “It’s good you’re here, to give yourself time and space. He’ll come to his senses. You’ll see.” Maire went on. “I thought you might like these.” She proffered a basket of produce—baby carrots, lettuce, radishes, and beets. “I was going to give some to Owen, but he wasn’t home.”

  “Do you know where he’s gone?” She made the question casual. She’d thought she’d built a fortress around her heart that nothing, no one, could breach. No one except her daughters.

  “Out fishing again, most likely. I suppose he must leave us someday. He has his life, though I hate the thought of him going. I’ve gotten used to having him here. He knows this coast as well as I do by now, probably better. I’ve been thinking about giving him Joe’s old boat. It’s hard for him, not having his own. I’ve gotten him started, fixing it up. He’s made remarkable progress. Must work on it day and night when he’s not on the cliffs or wherever he goes. I wonder if he ever sleeps.”

  Did Maire know more? If so, she wasn’t saying. Her aunt sat down quickly, steadying herself.

  Nora rushed to her side. “You’re not feeling dizzy again, are you?”

  “A little. Happens sometimes, in the mornings, mainly. Silly diabetes. A most inconvenient condition. Remember, I told you?”

  She did. “Have you been to the doctor? You said you’d go.”

  “Yes, yes. Told me what I already knew. Now, don’t you go worrying about me. You have enough on your mind.” She took a deep breath and stood again. “There.” She demonstrated a little twirl. “All better. Besides, I didn’t come over here to bother you. It’s time to check on the bees again.”

  As they strolled next door, Maire chatted away about the state of the garden (“The lemon cucumbers are really coming on; wait until you taste them—you can eat them, skin and all”) and her desire to keep chickens (“I hear the Araucanas have particularly lovely eggs”). Nora stepped into the bee suit, the fabric crinkling, settling. She put on the veil, the gloves. There were smaller suits now too, for the girls. Maire had made them herself, since they didn’t come in children’s sizes. The women walked to the edge of the orchard where the hives were sited to catch the rising sun, the light waking the bees each morning, calling them forth to greet the day. But there would only be the two keepers today. It was better that way. The bees might sense Ella’s mood.

  “The bees command our full attention, don’t they?” Maire said. “Giving us a break from our troubles, whatever they may be.”

  Yes, if only Nora could focus on the task at hand. Her thoughts kept drifting to Owen and Malcolm. “When will the honey be ready?” she asked.

  “Not for a while yet. The bees are only getting started. They need the warmth, the sun, the flowers. We have all those things now. There’s nothing like high summer on the island.”

  “It’s beautiful,” Nora agreed. Perhaps one of the most beautiful places she’d ever been. Nowhere else had she experienced the connectedness of things, the sustenance and solace nature could offer. Beyond the boundary of the orchard, the property went wild, grass and trees and brambles running free, the bees curled into nodding bluebells nearby, humming with contentment and industry.

  “Do you like him?” Maire asked.

  “Who?” She was grateful the veil obscured her expression.

  “Owen. I know you weren’t sure about him staying on.”

  “You’ve been so welcoming—to both of us.” A successful dodge.

  “I’m happy you’re here. This place has had just me rattling around for too long.” She looked small and vulnerable then, against the wide open landscape. “Do you feel at home? I want you to feel at home—because it is your home. It always has been,” Maire said, a plea in her eyes. “I’ve been thinking. There’s so much you could do here, if you decided to stay. The island doesn’t have an attorney, or you could focus on your cooking or the jewelry you’ve been making. The pieces are lovely. Maeve would be proud.”

  Nora could imagine staying beyond the summer, more so every day, but it was too soon to be making such decisions. “We’ll see,” she said. “I love it here, but I need to think things through.”

  “I know. Life is complicated.”

  “And I need to understand the island and my history better. For some reason, I can’t let the past lie.”

  The bees buzzed louder, a dirge. “No, I don’t suppose you can.” Maire kept her eyes on the hives.

  “What is it you haven’t told me?”

  Maire hesitated. “I’ve been waiting for you to get a sense of the strangeness here, the otherness that isn’t widely understood. And I was afraid that once you knew, you’d leave, that there would be nothing for you here, that you would think us all mad. I don’t want to lose anyone else.” Her eyes brimmed with tears.

  Nora touched her arm. “You’re not going to lose me. Please. I can’t begin to unders
tand until you share what you know.”

  “I’ll tell you, but you might not believe me. I’m not sure if I believe it myself. Remember the charts in the attic and how I mentioned that our ancestors had supposedly reached an agreement with the sea and the seals that lived within it? There was a balance in all things in the beginning. That’s what people thought. But as I told you before, with my parents’ generation, something changed. I can’t help but think it had something to do with your mother’s disappearance and an argument I overheard my parents having one night. I was fourteen that summer, Maeve sixteen; she’d won the swimming race again. My mother was convinced that Maeve wasn’t hers, that she was a changeling, a creature of the sea. That her ability to hold her breath so long and swim so fast proved it. That my father had found her on the beach and substituted her for their biological baby, who had died in childbirth before my mother regained consciousness. Maeve and my mother had never gotten along, you see. The conflicts between them intensified, as they often do with firstborns in the teenage years, Maeve more so than others, her will being particularly strong. Perhaps my mother was looking for reasons for their estrangement, though I too had always felt there was something different about Maeve. Anyway, Da found me outside my parents’ bedroom door, eavesdropping. He told me to never tell a soul. That some things were best left alone.”

  “Did my mother know?”

  “Oh, yes. I told her. I was angry one day, and I said she wasn’t really my sister, and why. We got into a terrible fight, drawing blood, making scars, physical and otherwise.” She pulled back her collar to reveal a pale crescent on her neck. “She withdrew after that, from all of us, until your father arrived.”

  The humming of the bees grew louder, ringing in Nora’s ears. “Is it true?”

  “I don’t know. No one does.”

  “But if it were,” she said slowly, “then I’m not a McGann—”

  “Yes, you are, through my father, at least, if not more. We are bound together, aren’t we, though perhaps not in the way we supposed.”

  “Were there any medical records?”

  She shook her head. “There was no doctor on the island until after you were born. Before that, only midwives, from our family. My mother gave birth at home, no one but my father in attendance. That was the way it was done then.”

  “But the death your mother spoke of—”

  “Swept under the carpet, never recorded, or not true in the first place. The birth had been hard. She had a fever. She could have been hallucinating about the stillbirth and the substitution. It took her weeks to recover, and she had severe postpartum depression afterward.”

  “And my grandfather?”

  “He never spoke of it again.”

  Nora nodded. That sounded like her own father, a man of few words, especially when it came to difficult subjects.

  “Are you all right?” Maire asked. “I know it’s a lot to take in.”

  “Yes.” Though, truly, she didn’t know what to think.

  Maire put a finger to her lips. “We’re disturbing the bees. I guess it’s too much for them too. They’re still getting used to the new queen. If we don’t give them enough time, they might reject her.”

  “And what happens then?”

  “They could kill her.”

  “Oh, dear.”

  “Yes.” She administered liberal puffs of smoke to calm the insects, and within seconds, the air was so thick Nora could barely see. She and Maire were mere outlines then, not forms so much as suggestions, lacking definition, moving through a space in which landmarks were no longer visible, and great care must be taken.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Ella didn’t remain on the beach for long. She waited for Nora to leave the cottage, then went inside, shutting herself in the bedroom, retreating behind the pages of Little Women, “literature as armor,” as their mother called it. Annie stayed where she was. She built a fort of driftwood, made castles of sand, cairns of stone, an architect of the shore. The sun was breaking through the clouds. Clear skies were still a possibility. The ocean too seemed calmer, the underside of its waves a lovely shade of turquoise. Annie studied the herky-jerky progress of a hermit crab over the sand. He could make his home anywhere, soldiering on. She would do the same. She would choose to be happy.

  A shadow fell over her: Ronan, a bracelet of seaweed around his wrist. He wore the same shorts. She wondered if he had another pair, or if they were all identical. “You’re back,” she said, picking up the thread of their conversation, as if they’d stopped speaking moments, rather than days, before. “I was wondering where you’d gone.”

  “Visiting relatives,” he said.

  “A family reunion?”

  “Something like that.”

  “We don’t have much family left for those kinds of gatherings.” Her father’s side had many relatives, but they mainly saw each other at weddings and funerals, his sisters, except Aunt Ro, having moved far away. “Though we’ve found some here. Maire.”

  “The woman in the big house? I’ve seen her working in the garden.”

  “I could introduce you.”

  “You’re the only one I can talk to.”

  “Does your mother know about me?”

  He shook his head.

  “I’d like to meet her sometime.”

  “Maybe, someday. How long will you be here?”

  “Probably for the summer.”

  “Same here. We travel from place to place.”

  “Sea gypsies.”

  “And what about you? Where did your father go? I saw him with you on the beach.”

  “I wondered if you had. I looked for you.”

  “I was hiding.”

  “You’re good at that,” she said, adding, “We took him out in the coracle. It was fun, mostly.”

  “Mostly?”

  “When my parents weren’t arguing. They don’t know how to be together, but they don’t know how to be apart.”

  “It’s like that sometimes.”

  “What about your father?”

  “He’s gone.”

  “Gone? Did your parents get divorced?”

  “They were never married.”

  “Oh. What was he like?”

  “You already know.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’ve met him. He’s the man you know as Owen.”

  “Annie?” At the sound of Ella’s voice, Ronan dove into the surf with barely a splash.

  “Who were you talking to?” Ella clambered down the bank. “I heard voices.”

  “I thought you wanted to be alone.” Annie was still processing the startling piece of information Ronan had given her, which she couldn’t mention, not even to Owen himself. The secret was getting bigger, almost too big for her to contain. But she had to. She’d promised. She’d already slipped that one time with Aunt Maire. She couldn’t slip again.

  “What can I say? I got bored.” Ella sat down beside her. “So? What’s going on?”

  “Nothing. Playing with one of my imaginary friends. I have lots of them, remember?” Her heart pounded. It was hard to deceive Ella. Her eyes were sharp. Sometimes it seemed as if she could read Annie’s mind.

  “Didn’t sound so imaginary to me. I could have sworn there was someone else talking. And I thought I saw something in the water.”

  “I guess you’re seeing things too.” She smiled. “Because there’s no one here but me.” And there wasn’t, not any longer.

  Ella grunted.

  “Are you still mad?”

  “I wish we could go home.” Ella sighed. “That things could be the way they used to be.”

  “But they aren’t. They’ve changed. Things are always changing.”

  Ella took Annie’s hand, interlacing her fingers, the way she used to do when they were small. “Promise me you won’t change, not in the ways that matter.”

  Another promise she would do her best to keep. “I promise.”

  Polly was late with the mail
that day. Her hair color was less vivid. “At least my hair doesn’t look like grape Kool-Aid anymore. My husband has been singing the song from the old commercial every time I walk into the room.”

  “What’s he calling you now?” Nora asked. She sat on the porch with a cup of coffee, mulling over what Maire had told her in the orchard. She still couldn’t get her mind around it. Perhaps it was another family myth, a smokescreen for that which no one wanted to confront. She was happy to be distracted by Polly. She always lightened the mood.

  “Lavender. Soon I’ll be back to Poll, which would be fine with me.”

  “I’ll miss it. The hair.”

  “Maybe I’ll do it again sometime—on Halloween.”

  “You’re later than usual.” Polly generally came by late morning. “Did something happen?”

  “The radiator overheated,” Polly explained. “What a to-do. Had to stay put until Dozer McGettigan lent a hand. Have you met him? We called him that in school, because he always fell asleep during math class. Never did have a head for numbers, that one. But he’s good with anything mechanical, including dealing with my recalcitrant vehicles. He put in some Stop Leak, which should do until I can get it into the shop.” She turned to address the van directly. “I might have to sell you, if you keep this up, though I doubt anyone would have you.”

  The van hiccuped dolefully.

  “Ah, that’s right. All penitent now, aren’t we?” She turned to Nora. “Got an important letter for you. Looks official—you have to sign for it. Never happens around here.”

  The papers, at last? Nora scribbled her signature at the X, an all-too-apt designation, she thought ruefully, wishing she’d set things in motion herself.

  “I’ll file this”—Polly waved the receipt—“when I get back.”

  As Malcolm must be filing for divorce. What conditions would he set? She didn’t want to be in the same room with him again, facing off across a table, attorneys by their sides. What stories would he spin to cloud the issue, to get the advantage?

  Polly’s eyes darted from the letter to Nora’s face, inquisitive as ever.

  Nora didn’t open it, not then. She didn’t know when she would—that letter, a Pandora’s box of legal motions.