Chapter 1
“Grandma, tell me about when you and Grandpa met?”
Marina’s big, soft brown eyes stared at me across the kitchen table. Tea and cookies were a midday tradition when she came to visit. She had been spending her summers, and sometimes her falls, out here with me.
I enjoyed the company, and Marina was such a little light that she made the world a little brighter wherever she went…she reminded me of her father that way. I sighed, thinking back…so much had happened, and my life was not nearly what I thought it would be.
But Marina was 15 now…and I had a sneaking suspicion that she might just be trying to figure out what the first pangs of love were…or, at the very least, an intense crush. So I smiled at her. “You know that story very well, Rina.” I took a sip of my tea. Ahhhh, Earl Grey, restorative.
She looked down shyly, her deep brown hair falling in loose waves around her face to hide it—she took after her mother. “I know, Gram, but I’d still really like to hear it anyway.” She smiled up at me.
I smirked knowingly. “It was a long time ago, sweetheart…”
She curled her legs up in the chair, just like when she was small, and took a cookie to settle in for the tale that she always asked about.
“It all started at the seaside carnival and a Ferris wheel…”
She frowned. “That’s not right!...you said…”
I nodded. “You’re correct. I apologize. It all started the winter before, when I went to see the dockside fortune teller. She told me that I would meet the love of my life that next summer. I hadn’t thought much of it at the time…but as it would turn out, she was right.” I smiled, thinking back, and lifted a cookie to take a bite.
Rina frowned again. “But…but you met Grandpa at the winter carnival?”
I gave her a long look. “Are you telling this story, or am I, little one?”
She pulled into herself a little tighter. “Sorry, Gram!”
I laughed and shook my head. “Oh, Rina, love comes in many, many forms…each one different, and every one leaves a mark on your heart. But true love…that’s something else entirely….that changes you in the best possible way.”
Her eyes got big. “Really?!”
I nodded. “Really.”
She chewed her cookie for a bit and seemed to mull that over.
I dunked the remainder of my cookie in my tea and continued. “Now, I didn’t think much about what Psychic Wilhemina said. I hadn’t gone there looking for answers about love anyways.”
Her sable brows furrowed tightly. “What did you go to the fortune teller about?”
I sighed and leaned my elbows on the table. “To find out if I was going to make my mark in the world…how I would go about it…and if I’d ever get away from the town and quit living with my mother. I had thought to go to school or maybe travel a bit…but I wanted to have a purpose, and I had no idea what it might be. Love was actually the absolute last thing on my mind.”
Rina just blinked at me, stunned…like she couldn’t fathom that mindset.
Now, to be fair, Marina has grown up in a different environment than I did, and I’m glad of it. She grew up with parents who are madly in love with each other.
I did not.
My mother and father did not suit each other very well at all. But there was love there. It was always tripped up by a clash of everything else.
My father had been a quiet and bookish man…hardworking, caring, considerate, and genuine. He was also sensitive, but in a quiet and dignified way.
My mother, Pearl…well, even if she had another 50 years on this earth, she would still be but a girl. Wild, free-spirited, boy-crazy, beautiful, and consumed by her passion for life.
Mother was a wild soul and needed more larger-than-life passion than my father ever could have given her. Still, she loved him, and they were good parents…one contributing what the other was weak in.
I took after my father, and truth be told, I was always closer to him simply because of our natures and the fact that he was naturally inclined to be at home more often when he wasn’t working. So we bonded quite a bit over walks by the ocean to collect treasures and making up stories to go with them. At bedtime, he would tell me tales of the myths and legends of the area…or sometimes he would make up stories as he went. We cooked and caught fireflies and made worlds with chalk in the driveway…or built castles in the sand on the beach.
When we got Skip, the half-drowned black-and-white Border Collie we had happened upon on the beach when we were on one of our treasure hunt walks, it became the three of us off on adventures.
While Mother went to her parties and social events and had a blast, she took wonderful care of me…but the magic belonged to Dad.
Things were wonderful, and we were happy….until Dad had his heart attack. He passed away by the sea on his morning jog. He did this twice a week, no exceptions…and then he didn’t make it home.
Mother was devastated for a time.
I didn’t know what to feel…I kept thinking Dad would just walk back in the door one day, saying that there had been a line at the market, or he had run late from work, or something…anything…I would sit by the door with his favorite mug (the yellow one that we had made when we tried out pottery) of cooling coffee that I had fixed just the way that he liked—2 sugars, 1 cream—until I fell asleep.
I’d wake up swaddled in blankets in my bedroom with Mother curled up around me. I couldn’t process how much she was hurting back then, but I knew it was good that we had each other.
It was the day that I came out to see the yellow mug in the sink…cold coffee congealing inside it…that I made peace with the fact that Dad wasn’t ever coming home.
He passed away by the sea that he loved so much…that was something. And I knew that he would never have left us if he had any say in it.
I missed him all the same. But I was grateful that I had him for the time that I did.
After a year, Mother began dating a nice man from the next town over—Web Beaumont—and they spent a lot of time together.
I turned 13 that year, and it was honestly a blessing to have Mother occupied rather than grieving. I had a lot of time alone in the house to process my own grief.
It was that year, and the next few, that saw me dive into not just local legends, but so many more.
Looking back…I think it was my way to keep my connection with Dad.
Time moved on, and slowly, life found its rhythm again…different, changed, but familiar and comforting all the same.
I grew, and being bookish by nature, I didn’t need much coaxing in my studies to excel at my schoolwork.
I took advanced placement classes and a few at the community college before I graduated.
But even though I did well academically, I couldn’t find something to hold my interest. I dabbled here and there…then I decided to try writing my own legend. I entered it into the town over’s contest and won. So I thought I’d try writing for a career.
Turns out writing doesn’t actually pay a whole lot, and I ended up living with Mother after graduation.
She didn’t mind—said nobody has everything figured out anyway, so not to stress over it. She was currently in the throes of the early phase of a relationship with George Spencer. Web had lasted around 16 months before the passion cooled off hard, and there had been a steady stream of potential loves of her life since then. George being the latest—he was a good man, warm and caring, very good to her and nice to me. He even read some of my writing, saying he enjoyed it. That was nice.
And George kept Mother well entertained—taking her dancing and to the movies and anywhere else he could think of—and for the most part I had the house to myself. It was nice and relaxing and perfect for writing.
But I was honestly getting a little bit bored.
It didn’t help that my friend Ginger was always remarking that I never got out and that if I didn’t start dating, I’d be an old maid!
