Moonglass
Page 20
This time, as I stood at the top of the sagging stairs in her little upstairs room, I felt her there with me. Out the framed window the exposed rocks covered in vibrant green moss stood out against the softness of the beach. The sand had been swept clean; no wood or glass, seaweed or bits of shells. The ocean had washed away everything, leaving behind a calm that spread out in me as I breathed it in. Beyond it all lay the expanse of the ocean, just beginning to sparkle beneath the rising sun as a new day unfurled itself. She’d captured it all perfectly in her frame, and in the pale morning light, it felt like peace.
I wrapped my quilt around me and ran my eyes over the painted window frame, thinking of the small canvas that now lay on my nightstand. Of the care and grace that she’d taken in her brushstrokes. For me. A brilliant artist, Joy had said. A side of my mother I never knew about, but the side she wanted me to know from the very beginning. And now, standing in the room that was once hers, looking out over the beach she once loved, it felt like I could.
A small, inside wave breaks, and cool water rushes up around my feet, carving out the sand beneath them as it recedes. I think of her then, and take another step into the water. And this time, as it swirls around my calves, I close my eyes and picture her as I want to remember her.
We walk the beach together, my little hand closed inside of hers. We are looking for treasures—pieces of glass, broken upon the beach, then smoothed over into more beautiful, softer versions of themselves, gem-like in their beauty. She tells me how the very best ones have been tossed beneath the waves so long they no longer have any sharp edges. I nod seriously, but inside think of how I’d one day like to see the center of one of those smooth pieces, where it’s still clear and pure, because even the ocean can’t shape that.
When I open my eyes, I look down instinctively, and it’s there, beside my foot. She’s returned it to me. I kneel down and reach with my free hand, through the water just in time to grasp my piece of moonglass before the white water wipes the slate clean. When I hold it up in the morning sun, I can see it has cracked wide open. Split where a hole had been drilled for the chain. And inside it’s the truest, most beautiful red I’ve ever seen.
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real
locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are products
of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons,
living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2011 by Jessi Kirby All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
is a trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
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Book design by Krista Vossen.
The text for this book is set in Fairfield.
Manufactured in the United States of America
2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kirby, Jessi.
Moonglass / Jessi Kirby.
p. cm.
Summary: At age seven, Anna watched her mother walk into the surf and drown, but
nine years later, when she moves with her father to the beach where her parents fell in
love, she joins the cross-country team, makes new friends, and faces her guilt.
ISBN 978-1-4424-1694-9 (hardcover)
[1. Beaches—Fiction. 2. Moving, Household—Fiction. 3. Fathers and daughters—
Fiction. 4. Guilt—Fiction. 5. Suicide—Fiction. 6. California—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.K633522Moo 2011
[Fic]—dc22
2010037389
ISBN 978-1-4424-1696-3 (eBook)