Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
Present Day
Celia’s curiosity kept her up at night. Wide-awake in the rental house she’d picked for herself and Sophie for the summer, she opened all the windows to bring in the soft June breeze, which fluttered through the curtains and brought a magic to the space.
Sophie was alone down the hall in her room, listening to music that Celia had never heard before.
She had half a mind to knock on her daughter’s door and ask if she wanted to watch a movie or play a game of cards.
But she knew that Sophie wasn’t exactly happy with her.
Celia wouldn’t let her touch her mother Margaret's journals. She would hardly go anywhere in town at all and had gotten so quiet when they’d gone down to the beach that Sophie had grown nervous and asked to leave.
“You don’t understand,” Celia had said as she’d gathered the journals and put them back in the wooden box. “My mother? My father? They weren’t easy people.”
“You can’t protect me from people who are already dead,” Sophie had stammered back, her chin quivering.
“I haven’t had a family, like, ever. And now we’re in the town you grew up in, and I’m even more in the dark than I was back in Washington, DC.
What’s the point of coming back if I’m never going to learn about you, about my aunts, about the past? ”
Celia wondered if Sophie was already beginning to regret coming to Maine.
All day, she cleaned out attics, swept up dirty basements, and listened to her mother talk to construction crews.
She hadn’t yet met a single one of the aunts she was so curious about.
Celia had kept the window to her past slammed shut.
“I don’t get it, Mom,” Sophie had said before she went to her room tonight. “I don’t get why you haven’t read Grandma’s journals yet. I mean, she died when you were how old?”
Celia had been stunned into silence.
It was true that her mother had passed away when Celia was ten years old, thirty-two years ago, long before she’d become the frightened, failed journalist she currently was.
Celia still remembered her mother’s final days: the drawn curtains, the shadows in the inn, her little sisters, crying for their mother, the crack in their father’s voice.
“It’s hard to explain,” Celia had said.
Sophie had given her a typical young-person response. “You need to go to therapy, Mom. Seriously.” Sophie had never spoken to her like that.
It had felt like a smack.
It had also felt painfully correct. Celia thought of her own father, who’d been faced with Celia’s brilliance and understanding of the world. He’d answered that understanding with rage and tried to box her in. Ultimately, she’d run away from him and never seen him again.
Her heart ached to think that Sophie might do the same to her.
Now, Celia crept to the kitchen of the rental house, poured herself a glass of wine, and returned to her bedroom to—for the first time—crack open the first of her mother’s journals.
All she had to do was read Margaret Harper, 1985, and It isn’t that love was ever something I fully understood… before she slammed the journal shut. Dust filled the air.
I can’t do this, she thought, pounding her chest with her fist.
What she remembered of her mother was difficult to explain.
She remembered her perfume, something between lilac and lavender and rose; she remembered her singing voice and the seventies’ folk songs she’d most liked to sing; she remembered how bright and shining she’d seemed behind the front desk of the Bluebell Cove Inn.
But there had also been dips in her moods.
There had been sorrowful afternoons when their mother refused to leave the house or tend to the inn.
There had been mornings when Wren would cry and cry in her bassinet, only for Celia to rush to tend to her.
She’d been so little, like a wrinkled potato.
Celia now wondered if her mother had been suffering from postpartum depression. But it felt as though those dark periods had been apparent long before Wren and even before Juliet, if Celia’s memory served her.
What could a cruel man like James Harper do with a depressed wife and four daughters? What could he do but close up his heart and become the villain of the house?
She finished her glass of wine and watched the early June wind toss the tree limbs outside, then reached for her phone and found a missed call from Wren. This surprised her. Without thinking, she called Wren back. She answered, her voice frail.
“Hi.”
Celia sat bolt upright in bed. She wondered if somehow, Wren had sensed that Celia had their mother’s journals. “How are you?” she asked. “Where are you?”
“I’m back in Paris,” Wren said. “It’s morning here. I’m surprised you’re still awake.”
Something was strange about Wren’s voice, something that made Celia think she was sick or crying or weak.
Celia wondered if she should tell Wren about the journals. But something told her that news of the journals would bring more harm than good. “Are you all right, Wren?”
Wren cleared her throat. “I’m okay. I’m fine.” She paused. “Going back to Bluebell Cove was crazy for me. I haven’t been fully present in Europe since.”
“You know you’re welcome here,” Celia said. “We don’t have to stick to our plan of trading off. We could work together. There’s still so much to be done.”
Wren was quiet. Celia could hear a French ambulance screaming through the morning.
“Are you feeling all right?” Celia asked, her throat tight.
“Oh, I’m fine. Just jet-lagged a little,” Wren said.
It didn’t make sense that Wren was still jet-lagged. Hadn’t she been back in Europe for ages? Celia chewed her lower lip. “Have you talked to Ivy or Juliet?”
“Juliet’s back in the city,” she said. “Ivy’s busy with the flower shop.”
I’m the only one available, Celia thought, because my life is worth nothing.
“Come back, Wren,” Celia pleaded.
But Wren told her she couldn’t. “There’s too much happening here,” she said.
Celia ended the call by begging Wren to take care of herself. Wren hung up without saying she loved her. She barely said goodbye.
When Celia woke up the following morning, her mouth was dry, and her head ached, but the coffee in the kitchen was percolating. Sophie was up, dressed, and smiling a smile that meant I’m going to beat you at your own game, Mom. But instead, she said, “Good morning!”
“Good morning, honey,” Celia said. She searched her mind for an explanation, willing herself to explain. But she poured her coffee and read a newspaper instead, marveling yet again at how awful the current journalists were at telling essential stories.
My time is through, she reminded herself.
Celia and Sophie worked tirelessly at the inn all morning.
They spoke only of logistics, which gave Celia a chilly feeling in her stomach.
At one thirty, she went to the second suite upstairs to find Sophie removing rogue nails from the walls.
She felt a surge of love for her daughter, who’d imagined a much glossier summer for herself than all this.
Celia hadn’t experienced professional disappointment till she was in her late thirties.
She couldn’t imagine what that might have done to her drive, to her sense of purpose.
“Should we get lunch?” Celia asked, hoping to fix the strange air between them.
“Sure.” Sophie wouldn’t look her in the eye.
Celia and Sophie walked three blocks to the downtown sandwich-and-soup shop.
It was a rainy sixty-seven degrees, and clouds swirled close overhead, casting a teal tint to the shop windows.
En route, they passed seven townspeople, most of whom greeted both Celia and Sophie by name.
Sophie giggled nervously and said hello back before muttering to Celia, “Small towns are something else. It’s more like college than being in a big city.
I mean, it must have been crazy to have everyone know you growing up. ”
“Someone was always watching you,” Celia said darkly.
“Someone was always looking out for you,” Sophie corrected.
Celia sighed, rubbing the back of her neck.
She wasn’t sure if it was possible to ever bring Sophie into the madness of her past. She’d begun to think that Sophie blamed Celia for leaving Bluebell Cove and never returning.
Nobody was here to back her up; nobody was here to tell her side of the story, save for herself. She wasn’t sure she had the strength.
At the little table in the sandwich shop, they studied their menus quietly before ordering a bowl of broccoli cheddar, a bowl of French onion, and two slices of rye bread.
“Thanks, girlies,” the server said, gathering their menus and returning with big glasses of ice water. Sophie drank half of hers in three gulps.
Just as Celia was trying to come up with something to say to Sophie, something to explain why she was acting so strange in Bluebell Cove, Sophie raised her chin and delivered some news that changed everything. “I’ve been talking to the editor of the Bluebell Cove Gazette.”
Celia’s ears rang with surprise. “I beg your pardon?”
Sophie smiled brighter. She looked the way she had when she’d been four or five and taught herself how to ride a bike.
“Bethany Everett? She’s the editor. She says she knows you?
Or used to know you? Anyway, I reached out to her about any potential internship opportunities at the paper.
You know, because I don’t want to lose my edge.
I want to keep writing. She told me they don’t offer internships, but she’d be happy to hear any pitches I might have. Which means they want to pay me.”