Chapter Seven #5
Jake Abernathy was right. I wasn’t the type.
I didn’t know a nail from a screw. I’d never even painted a room before.
I didn’t know the first thing about weatherizing a house, or about furnaces and heat pumps; I didn’t know how to keep a garden or clean out gutters or repair stairs or fix plumbing.
I was so far out of my depth that the shore wasn’t even in sight.
My throat hurt like I’d swallowed something hard.
And in a wordless, hot hungry burst, I wanted my mom so badly.
It was a late-night wailing feeling, like the one I used to feel when Tina didn’t come home.
When everything seemed to press in on me, when all I wanted was to hear her voice outside the door, to feel her presence.
To feel like someone had come to hold me and tell me everything was going to be okay.
I buried my face in my bare knees, trying to cry quietly, so Flo wouldn’t hear.
Eventually I shuddered to a wet halt and lifted my face.
A pale pink shimmery moon was rising, almost full, swimming in the lavender night above the bay.
Its unstable reflection swirled in the rolling waters below.
Tina used to tell me the moon followed me.
She said no one in the world knew the moon was mine, but it was tethered to me like a helium balloon on an invisible string, turning its face this way and that as it spun on its string.
It’s yours, Angel. And no matter what happens, no one can take that moon away from you.
You ever have a bad day, you can look up there and see your moon looking back at you, a gift from your mom.
There would never be a day that I wouldn’t miss her, I thought wretchedly. It didn’t matter how old I got, or how many years it had been since I’d seen her, it still hurt like new. It was a deep feeling, full of grit, like a wound that had never been cleaned.
I wiped my face as best I could, given I didn’t have any tissues, and crept close to the moon-splashed water, carefully navigating the rocky edge so I could go wash my hands and face.
To my surprise I found an old set of stairs leading down to the water.
They were steep, with a curved black wrought iron banister.
There was another faded sign at the base, in the same curly writing as the Saint-Cyr sign back on the dirt road.
Private: Saint-Cyr guests only. The salty bay water was cold, the shock of it pleasant on my skin after the hotness of all those feelings.
I heard footsteps and hastily ran my cold wet hands over my face.
“Mom!” Flo’s voice cracked through the hush of the woods.
I jumped. “Just wait there, honey,” I called back hurriedly. I didn’t want Flo to see me puffed with tears. “I’ll be right up…”
“Suni’s on the phone! She says I need to get off Netflix and make sure you haven’t been eaten by a bear. She read a Stephen King book once set in Maine where a kid got lost in the woods and eaten by a bear.”
“I’m fine!” I called back, feeling the urge to laugh. I jogged back to the cabin.
“Hurry, I’m getting bitten by bugs!” She all but threw the phone at me and ducked back inside, safe behind the screens.
“Zoe?” Suni’s tinny voice sounded from the phone in my hand.
“Oh, Suni. Sorry!” I put the phone to my ear and climbed the porch steps to one of the rocking chairs. I sat down shakily and tried to answer her rapid-fire questions about the house. “I was just getting some fresh air.”
“Forget the fresh air, tell me about the house!” Suni demanded. The sound of her voice filled me with warmth. I sagged back against the rocking chair.
“It was what I expected,” I admitted. “Only maybe worse. I put in a bid,” I took a breath before I continued, “and they accepted.”
“You bought the house? Already!” Suni’s voice was a high-pitched squeal in my ear.
“Wayne! Wayne! She bought the house!” I held the phone away from my ear as she yelled.
Her enthusiasm eased the pressure in my chest, and I relaxed as I told her about the rooms full of junk, the Tiffany lamp, the kitchen, and the promise of that bedroom with its views of the sea.
“Wayne wants to know when you’ll be closing. We’ll come and help.”
“You don’t have to…” But the thought of them helping made everything feel less overwhelming.
“Alison might come too. She needs to get her mind off things. But I think Lance might be too busy with work to get away.”
“Great,” I said, even though I doubted Alison would be much help. She was in the depths of a pretty bleak depression with her divorce and I doubted she’d be up for a task as grueling as our treasure house.
By the time I managed to get off the phone, the pink moon had crested above the treetops, flooding the campground with light, and my new house felt less scary than it had when I was crying alone on the shore.
In fact, as I listened to Suni’s energetic exclamations, it felt like an adventure. I thought about the house on Tinker Street, with its layers of time and secret history. Soon I’d step through the door and into its story, joining all the people who’d lived there before me.