by Terri Farley
Inside, the cottage seemed smaller than I remembered. I suppose that was because I’d been pretty little when I lived here.
“I love this place,” Jill said. “It’s so light.”
Jill’s studio sat in a hive of identical apartments shadowed by a freeway overpass, so I understood her admiration, but the truth was, the cottage was much brighter than I recalled.
The curtains were pushed back from each window. June light streamed across the plank floors of golden oak. Except where they were covered by sea grass rugs, they were smooth and glossy.
The cottage had four rooms. Downstairs, there was the living room, a kitchen, and my bedroom. From where I stood by the front door, I could see the staircase leading up to the sleeping loft my parents had shared.
Every wall in the place was painted white and the windows had pale gauzy curtains. I’m surprised Dad wasn’t fussing about them being transparent.
The couch was adobe-colored, faded but not ratty. I could very clearly see myself lounging with a book and a can of soda. My sandy beach towel would be draped over a chair pulled up to the round kitchen table. My curtains would billow like sails, and I could hear my seashell wind chimes tinkling in the breeze.
Of course, there weren’t any wind chimes in the window or beach towels yet. And, far from fussing about my thin curtains, Dad was chuckling with pleasure because Cook’s Cottage still had a dead bolt on the front door and latches on the windows.
Was he thinking of keeping me in or keeping trouble out?
I carried Gumbo’s cage and followed Dad on his inspection tour. Mandi and Jill were right behind me.
When Gumbo gave a throaty growl, I peered in at her usually good-natured calico face. Her ears were pressed flat and the gold of her eyes barely showed through the angry slits.
“Had enough, baby?” I asked, then hid her carrier behind the couch, where it would be relatively quiet. As soon as it was just the two of us, I’d let her out to explore.
Dad paused in his scrutiny, hands in pockets. He nodded to himself, as if this just might do for his daughter. Then he continued walking around, checking lamp cords for frays, sniffing the burners on the gas stove, shouldering a tall bookcase full of old hardbacks to see if it would topple in an earthquake.
“Looks like I’m safe from everything but paper cuts,” I teased.
“I’d be happier if there was a phone, but you’re only a two-minute sprint from the Inn,” he muttered.
“No phone?” Mandi gasped as if he’d said there was no oxygen. “What will you do?”
“Use the one at the Inn,” I said, and because I could see she was about to resurrect the cell phone issue, I shook my head.
Dad had read that you could spontaneously combust if you used a cell phone while pumping gasoline. Now that I had a car of my own, he found this to be a serious concern.
I had forgotten the no-phone part of living at the cottage, but I wasn’t freaked out about it.
I flicked the light switch beside the door. A porch light, pale in the sunshine, came on. At least I had electricity. I wondered if the birds had built there because the porch light kept them warm.
Of course that was unlikely, since no one lived here.
“Don’t forget where these are.” Dad opened a kitchen cabinet full of candles and held up a box of matches. “You probably don’t remember that whenever there’s a storm, nine times out of ten it knocks out the power.”
I remembered candles flickering all around me. From the mantle, the coffee table, everywhere. I remembered picnic dinners of salami and cheese and French bread and butter on a blanket in front of the fireplace, and the three of us going to bed at the same time instead of Mom and Dad staying up late.
“Power failures were fun,” I told him. Dad’s musing expression said he remembered too.
“They were,” he admitted. “But if you have one this summer, hightail it over to the Inn. Mom still doesn’t have a generator, but they’re set up for living in the 1800s.”
Jill and Mandi stood close together, looking bored and a little unsure of me. I’d totally ignored them for about ten minutes.
“Make yourselves at home. Explore,” I encouraged them. “Investigate.”
With a shrug and a smile, Mandi headed for the refrigerator and swung the door open wide.
“Oh yeah, this is what I’m talking about!” She grabbed a soda, passed one to me, then Jill, and began reading neatly labeled containers. “Four-cheese ravioli, yum. Ginger carrots—”
“Sounds good,” Jill mused.
“Oh wait,” Mandi brandished a foil-wrapped package, “Upsy-daisy donut loaf!”
My friends moved on to the cupboards. They were fully stocked too. More evidence Nana and Thelma had really gotten into the playhouse spirit.
Gripping the diet cola as if it could fortify me, I moved stiffly to the doorway of my old bedroom.
It wasn’t much bigger than the inside of my VW, so my two suitcases took up most of the floor space not occupied by my childhood bike, which leaned against one wall, and the bed.
A purple spread stitched with multicolored wildflowers covered the bed, and a full-length mirror hung on the wall. A shelf held a collection of shells and sand dollars, and the window had extra latches.
I must have had years of peaceful sleep in here, but I wondered if that mirror still held nighttime images of me lying on that bed, spine pressed into the mattress, fists clenched, eyes burning as I stared at the ceiling, trying to stay awake.
I remembered fighting drowsiness because I didn’t know where I’d wake up.
“You could sleep in the loft,” Dad offered.
I jumped, unaware he’d stood behind me as I braced in the doorway.
“Really?” I said. “I can?”
“Why not?” Dad dipped his arm in a be-my-guest motion.
“You guys!” I shouted to Jill and Mandi. “Come with me!”
I ran up the stairs and they pounded after me. Like kindergartners, we leaped onto the king-size bed in the center of the loft. We looked left, out the triangular window fitted under the eaves, and saw my car in the driveway and the graveled path that led to the beach. We looked right, through another triangular window, and saw the Inn and the trail to the bluff.
Straight ahead, we looked out to sea.
“Oh Gwen, you’ll see the fog coming in and sailboats,” Jill sighed.
Far out on the horizon, a white sail headed south for Siena Bay. Closer to Mirage Point, something black moved in the water. Someone was swimming. Out too deep. My heartbeat pounded so hard that I felt its echo in my wrists. I hadn’t seen a swimmer so far out since that night.
When the swimmer vanished and didn’t reappear, I knew what I’d really seen.
“It’s a sea lion,” I said, pointing.
Jill nodded. “This is too cool.”
Mandi, however, wasn’t feeling the sea’s hypnotic spell.
“Kissing fish,” she cooed. “What a cute bedspread.” It was, too. I’d always loved my parents’ kissing fish bedspread. It was weird they’d left it behind. In the days after we moved to Valencia, I’d missed the beach and this quilt might have comforted me.
Mom and Dad always said we left Mirage Beach because Mom’s job offer at the newspaper was too good to refuse. I knew that wasn’t the only reason. But what was their hurry?
When it was time for everyone to leave, I discovered I’d already grown protective of my swallows’ nest.
“Careful,” I said, looking up toward the eaves. It wasn’t like the door would hit the nest, but I was afraid a good slam would dislodge those little mud pellets.
My father and my friends squeezed through obediently, and once we were outside, hugs came from all sides. Mandi’s, as I stepped off the front porch, was more like a tackle.
“I’ll be back,” she promised. “They’ll have to give me time off from the twins. And since there’s nothing to do here, you’ll need me. We’ll lay in the sun and talk trash about Jill.”
>
Mandi knew I hated gossip, but she was only trying to get a rise out of Jill, and it worked.
“Hey!” Jill protested, elbowing Mandi out of the way.
“I guess you’ll just have to come with me, then,” she taunted, then gave me one more squeeze and made way for Jill.
I could tell by her determined expression that Jill was thinking about “the incident.” I’d told her, but not Mandi.
Since Jill had a childhood full of secrets, I’d told her mine.
With one arm around my neck, Jill caught me close enough to whisper.
“You’re tough. The first busybody who stirs up that old gossip—just spit in her eye. Metaphorically speaking, of course. That’ll slow down the rest of them. Besides,” she said, pulling back, “you’ve landed in paradise.”
Dad fell in beside me as we walked down to the cars.
“When you leave to go anywhere, even down to the beach or over to the Inn, lock up.” He glanced at me, sideways, to make sure I was nodding. “If it rains, check the ceiling for leaks. If it is leaking, just put a pan under it and let Nana know so she can get it repaired.”
“Got it,” I said.
“The Bug should be fine,” he continued. “But you need to drive it to keep the oil stirred up. Keep the gas tank full, and check the tire pressure whenever you think of it. And if it starts making funny noises, Jack Cates, in town, can help you out.”
I could not believe Dad had suggested that Dr. Cates—the guy who’d psychoanalyzed me when I was ten—should fix my Volkswagen.
“Don’t bristle, Gwen,” Dad said sharply. “He’s an even better mechanic than he is a psychologist. I mean—”
That struck me funny, and I laughed until I saw Dad wanted to get into a discussion of the dark recesses of my mind. I held up a hand for him to halt and gave him a pleading look. Dad took the hint.
The minute it looked like he was really leaving, I felt like crying.
“You’ll do great, Gwennie. Helping Nana this way is the most unselfish thing you’ve ever done. I’m proud of you.”
He kissed my cheek, climbed in his car, slammed the door harder than usual, then drove away.
Mandi and Jill waved out the back window. Their hands were a blur when the car turned back onto the highway and my everyday life drove away, leaving me behind.
Freedom.
I didn’t feel lonely, deserted, or scared as I walked back to Cook’s Cottage. My cottage.
I picked a berry from the blackberry hedge that marked the boundary of a little grassy yard around Cook’s Cottage. I popped the berry in my mouth, and a sour pain stabbed the tender glands behind my earlobes. I didn’t care. For the summer they were my berries, and I’d decide when they were ripe.
I eased open the screen door, slipped through, and danced into the living room, singing. I shook my hips, tossed my hair, and pointed ecstatic index fingers right, left, right, left, toward heaven. I freed Gumbo from her cage too, but she rushed under the couch, obviously not in the mood for dancing.
“Perhaps we’ll split a can of tuna later. ‘Kay, girlfriend?” I told her, then continued my celebration by clicking on my stereo.
I’d just kicked off my sandals in exultation when I heard a creak. Then my door rattled under a stern knock.
The door has a little four-paned window at eye level. At once I recognized my visitor as Thelma.
I turned off the music.
The celebration stopped.
I opened the door. After not seeing her for years, I should have come up with something better, but all I said was, “Hi.”
Thelma is built like a small refrigerator. She wears bobby socks and tennis shoes, thick-lensed glasses, and her hair—threaded by gray, now—is caught in a ponytail bound by a green rubber band. She’s always used a rubber band. She must have split ends up to her scalp.
“It’s good to see you again,” I managed, but I shouldn’t have bothered.
“Missed your dad, did I?” Thelma’s first words reminded me that some of the old folks on the coast sound sort of foreign. They don’t have accents, exactly, but their English has a Celtic rhythm. Probably because the original settlers here were British.
“Just missed him,” I agreed.
“Leaving you here alone.”
I heard cars pass on the highway. From the direction of the Point, a sea lion barked. The sound of it echoed around the cove, and I really wanted to go down there.
Thelma had underlined the fact that I’d be by myself. What did that mean? Was she worried I’d go sleepwalking? A sick feeling fizzed up in my throat again.
“Well, not all alone,” I told her. “I have my cat.”
And then I realized I was still looking at her through the screen door.
“Sorry,” I said. “Come on in.”
“I’ll take care not to disturb the nest,” she said. “Hope you don’t mind me leaving it.”
“Of course not.” I stopped short of saying the swallows would be company. That sounded kind of pitiful after her remark about Dad leaving me all alone.
I smooched toward the empty room behind me. “Gumbo, where are you, kitty?”
In the contrary way of cats, Gumbo didn’t flick a whisker to show she was there.
“Would you like to come in? Does Nana need help doing tea?” I asked, finally taking the hint from her sudden appearance.
“New guests showed up, so there’s extra work,” Thelma said, then shifted her attention over my shoulder. “Was everything as it should be? Nothing mussed or out of place?”
“I haven’t really—”
“You can arrange things to suit you, of course. The kitchen, for instance.”
“It looks great,” I assured her. “I don’t cook much, though, and I’ve sure never had my own kitchen.”
She smiled. “It’s a treat. You’ll be wanting to go to town for some things, won’t you?” Her eyes turned watchful again.
I hesitated. It would take a little nerve to go into Siena Bay for the first time, but I only shrugged.
She glanced at her watch, and I scanned the kitchen for a clock.
“Give me a minute to change,” I said, and her nod of satisfaction told me I’d made the right move.
Leaving the cottage, I noticed two things: a spider spinning her web in my blackberry bush and a wet footprint on the deck, which formed a U around three sides of the cottage.
I don’t know what made me glance in the direction of my old bedroom window, but there it was. The print of a bare foot.
Since Thelma wore those black canvas numbers, and I hadn’t been in the water, it was kind of unsettling.
“She’ll be so glad to have you at the Inn,” Thelma said, and then she took off striding, and I had to hurry to keep up.
I glanced over my shoulder as I moved away from the cottage.
Since there wasn’t time to take a good look at it, I thought, following Thelma, maybe it was something else entirely.
So I didn’t say anything about the footprint, though it would have been something to talk about.
I didn’t know what to say to Thelma. She’d been the one who watched from the widow’s walk at Sea Horse Inn, then called 911. If she hadn’t, no one would have known about my sleepwalking and the man on the beach.
I tried not to hold a grudge. No doubt, Thelma believed she’d done a good deed. Most people thought she’d rescued me. I didn’t see it that way then, and I still don’t. If she hadn’t made that phone call, I probably would have awakened from my dream and scampered back home. I wouldn’t be returning to Mirage Beach now, uncertain as I was seven years ago.
The present overcame the past, big time, the moment I walked through the kitchen door of the Sea Horse Inn. Earlier in the afternoon when I’d been here with Dad and my friends, it had felt like a normal—if big and well-equipped—family kitchen. Now, just thirty minutes before tea was to be served to paying guests, I was surrounded by a whir of business.
It was a safe bet that I couldn’t g
et my fortune read from the copper mirror for at least a few hours.
A dozen or so lemons lay on the scrubbed pine sideboard. Silver serving pieces were everywhere. A pink and white box of sugar cubes sat next to plates of cookies and wafers. Nana commanded a counter covered with knives whose blades were so bright she could probably scry in them. Her face was flushed and her hair lifted on the breeze from a ceiling fan. She grinned as we came in.
“What a lovely thing to see you walking through my door again, Gwennie.” Nana kissed my cheek. “We have lots to do in the next half hour, but it’s fun.”
Thelma grunted.
“Oh hush, it is too,” Nana said. “Gwen’s young and eager to learn, unlike some I could name. Now, Gwennie, wash your hands, please.”
I shared the sink space with Thelma. Taking my cue from her, I rubbed liquid soap up to my elbows and scrubbed, as Nana launched into a description of the Sea Horse Inn’s guests.
“We have six for tea. The two girls from yesterday—Korean college students on a road trip—” Nana said in an aside to me. “Mr. And Mrs. Heller, the couple from—”
Thelma said something like “the swingers”—could that be right?—over her shoulder to Nana.
“Just her, I think,” Nana said, and when I glanced back, I saw her flash Thelma a quelling look. “He seems quite nice. And our new arrivals are three retired teachers driving up to Ashland for the Shakespeare festival.”
Thelma grumbled something else. And this time, since I was ready for it, I heard her say, “Took a round-about route, if you ask me.”
“And aren’t we glad they did?” Nana murmured, and I was beginning to think I could learn plenty by eaves-dropping when Nana began lecturing.
“Now, Gwennie, to prepare a proper tea, check your table first. Be certain you have your caddy spoons, mote spoons, serving plates, sugar tongs, cream pitcher …”
“Okay,” I said automatically, but Nana saw my confusion and started me off with something simpler.
“Cover that platter with a linen napkin. Yes, the cut glass—very good. We’re having a lemon-cream tea today, so select twenty napkins that fit our color scheme. From that drawer. No, that one.”