“Ella! Annie!” She called for her daughters, for minutes, for hours, it seemed, though it couldn’t have been that long. Her voice grew raspy. Shapes loomed in the mist, shifting, undefined, no sign of the girls yet.
Mama?
The word so faint she might have imagined it, an echo of her own voice ringing back to her, across the years.
Ella. Annie.
They needed her. She would not let go, would not slip away. Perhaps her mother hadn’t had a choice. Nora did, and the power of that knowledge propelled her forward.
“Mama? Is that you?”
She set off in the direction of the voices, half blind with tears, down the stony slope to that isolated beach and its ruin of a fishing shack, withered gray boards standing the test of time, yet enough to provide shelter. Her girls, sandy and scraped but whole, even Siggy, in Annie’s arms.
“Mama, you wouldn’t believe what happened.”
“You wouldn’t believe where we’ve been.”
“What we’ve seen.”
Oh, but she did, she did.
They launched themselves at her and she held them fast, and in that embrace, borne of love and relief, she saw herself, a little girl, her mother’s daughter, clinging to the rocks for dear life as Maeve slid into the water. Don’t let go. She had saved Nora the only way she’d known how.
“I knew you’d come,” Ella said.
Time bends, end on end.
A bird soaring. A whale breaching. A seal diving, surfacing.
This. This is what mattered.
To feel your children in your arms. To feel the life flowing within you, within them, in the sky and the sea and a tiny island in the middle of nowhere.
Nora presses her cheek to their temples, her girls, her lovely girls, feels their pulses thrumming with the rhythm of life.
Their life. Together.
This.
This is the place.
Acknowledgments
With affection to those who’ve helped me on the journey to writing this book, especially Kyle Lindskog, Jeannie Berwick, and Marcellina Tylee; the Dorans—my dad, Robert, who has always encouraged me to follow my own path, sisters, Robbi Anderson and Tessa Effland, and aunt, Letty Pericin; the Barbieri clan, especially Kay and Jannie; Carol Carlson; Bob and Paula Rohr; Robin Jones and Leona DeRocco, for their love of books and carpooling assistance at a crucial time; Sara Nickerson, stalwart reader and friend; Kit Bakke; Maria Semple; Seattle7 Writers; and the Fiction Writers’ Co-op. My agent, Emma Sweeney, her assistant, Suzanne Rindell, and my editor, Jennifer Barth, for their support and belief in this project. And most of all, to my dear family, Mark, Sian, Connor, and Sera. You are everything to me.
About the Author
The author of two previous novels, The Lace Makers of Glenmara and Snow in July, HEATHER BARBIERI has won international prizes for her short fiction. She lives in Seattle with her family.
www.heatherbarbieri.com
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Also by Heather Barbieri
The Lace Makers of Glenmara
Snow in July
Credits
Cover photograph © Yolande de Kort / Arcangel Images
Cover design by Christine Van Bree
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
THE COTTAGE AT GLASS BEACH. Copyright © 2012 by Heather Barbieri. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
ISBN 978-0-06-210796-1
EPub Edition © MAY 2012 ISBN: 9780062107985
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