Bluebell Dreams (The Bluebell Cove #1)

Prologue

The frigid yet sunny day in mid-April dared you to go to the beach, to feel the stabbing, icy winds on your face and ache for summer to draw closer.

Nine-year-old Celia Harper spent the afternoon racing across the sands of Bluebell Cove with the salty ocean winds in her hair—from the rocky cliffs to the frothing waves to their mother and back again.

Freedom was in everything she did; it was in the way she danced and dreamed and sang.

Behind her, her little sisters, Ivy, Juliet, and Wren, worked tirelessly through the sand but failed to keep up.

Wren at one and a half, a toddler with a raucous giggle and curly hair, Juliet at four, and Ivy at seven and churning to beat her.

How Celia loved them! How she loved her family, the only people she needed in the world.

Before them on the beach waited their gorgeous mother, Margaret, her eyes rimmed red with tears she couldn’t explain, her arms stretched wide as they ran.

“Faster, girls!” she said, which only made Wren’s giggles wilder. “You’re almost here! You can make it!”

Celia felt her legs burn as she reached out for their mother, who scooped her into a hug, just before the other three Harper sisters barreled into them both.

Her laughter rang out across the Atlantic and bounced across the cliffs of Bluebell Cove.

Down here on the beach, they could barely make out the top attic windows of the Bluebell Cove Inn.

The inn had been in the Harper family for generations.

The Harper sisters were told that it would one day be theirs, in some impossible future, when they were adults and meant to take care of themselves.

Celia was more or less certain she’d be a child forever.

There was so much she couldn’t envision, even in that imaginative mind of hers.

“My girls!” Margaret cried. “How wonderful you are! How fast! How smart!”

It was a rare day that Margaret had actually left the house and packed them a picnic.

They sat on a blanket with sandwiches and watched the seagulls swoop and caw overhead.

Margaret was brighter than she’d been in what felt like ages.

She told them countless fantastical stories about princesses, ogres, dragons, and ancient seabeasts, which she said lurked on the ocean floor beside Bluebell Cove and protected all the citizens of their town.

“That’s why we must be good to the forests and the oceans and the beaches and the earth,” Margaret told her daughters sweetly. “The earth and its creatures are always good to us. Can’t you feel the magic in the air? Can’t you hear the sea beasts?”

Celia perked up her ears to hear what she could: the rush of the winds through the forest, the crash of the waves, the shriek of the seagulls, and her little sisters, captivated, breathing as they watched their mother.

She couldn’t hear the sea beasts, but she still believed they were there, lurking on the ocean floor, waiting.

Who else protected Bluebell Cove if not them?

“Someday, I won’t be here to watch over you,” Margaret said out of nowhere, sliding her fingers through Celia’s hair. “You’ll have to trust in each other, then. You’ll have to trust in Bluebell Cove.” Margaret didn’t say anything about their father.

Despite her mother’s illnesses and her frequent inability to leave the house, their mother was to Celia like the weather: always present, always changing.

She couldn’t imagine a time when Margaret wouldn’t be around.

Celia dropped her head against her mother’s chest and listened to the pounding of her heart.

She made believe the sound was the sea beasts in the water, whispering, “Buh-dum. Buh-dum.” But she realized she couldn’t speak whatever language they were speaking. It was untranslatable, like love.