by Terri Farley
While I counted out linen napkins, Thelma began muttering again.
“He’s no business leaving her alone at the cottage with that lot from town causing havoc.”
That brought my head up from counting. Without meaning to, I looked to Nana, hoping she’d contradict or clear up what Thelma had said.
Instead, she picked up two lemons with each hand and thrust them my way. Once I’d corralled the roly-poly fruit, she gave me a cutting board and wide-blade knife.
“Lemon slices, not wedges, Gwennie,” Nana instructed. “And fan them around the edge of that plate. Then fill the center with lemon bars—those cookies with the powdered sugar topping. Yes, those—but don’t forget the doilies underneath.”
I had to think fast to catch all that, and when she thought I was engrossed, Nana answered Thelma—in a sharp whisper. “They’re harmless, and you can’t blame them for venting their high spirits—what with no fishing to tire them out.”
Who were they? The “lot” from town?
As if she’d caught my mind wandering, Nana jumped back into lecture mode.
“Tea water must go cold into the kettle,” Nana said as water rushed from the tap. “It has more oxygen that way,” she explained, but you could tell she had a thing or two more to say to Thelma.
I arranged the doily with pretend concentration.
“You’re too polite to see them as the riffraff they are,” Thelma mumbled, but she wasn’t fooled by my focus on the lemon bars, because she cleared her throat, going on louder than before. “Heat the water to 185 degrees, and always measure the tea leaves.” She handed me a tin full of aromatic black tea. “Too few and it tastes like water. Too many and it’s bitter as rue.”
“I don’t know how rue tastes, but that’s too complicated for me,” I said. “I don’t want to mess it up.”
“A few more lemons then,” Thelma said. “Here. A dull knife is more dangerous than a sharp one. Use this.”
“Don’t be silly,” Nana continued. “They’re not riffraff.”
Pretty quickly I realized she wasn’t talking about the knife, and I looked to see Nana recognize she’d said that last part openly.
She sighed and let me in on the clandestine conversation. “You remember Zack McCracken, don’t you?”
The name spun in my memory, stirring up embarrassment and anger. Did I recall a blond boy throwing rocks at gulls until they rose in whirling clouds? And sea lions. He’d threatened the sea lions that summered in Mirage Point’s sheltered cove.
“Sort of,” I said.
“Zack and his family have fallen on hard times, is all,” she said quietly, then flicked her fingers as if scattering mosquitoes. “They blame the sea lions for poor fishing, but these things come in cycles. This one’s lasted long enough that some of the boys from fishing families have started—”
“Running in packs,” Thelma supplied.
As she and Nana bickered, black and red splashed over my memories, and I winced. Had that ever happened to me before? Didn’t memories come in images, not colors?
Gradually, I remembered my third-grade crush on Zack McCracken. He’d liked me back, but for proof of it, he’d trailed me down to the cove and shot an arrow at one of the sea lions.
Sick, I thought now. Why hadn’t he just chased me at recess or written me a love letter on notebook paper like a normal little boy? He should have known the act that was meant to impress me would backfire. I’d pounded him with my fists and chased him up the cove trail, all the way to the street, even though the arrow was a toy and the sea lion’s wound little more than a scratch.
Kids who hurt animals grew up to hurt people, I’d heard.
Zack McCracken, I thought, trying to refocus on Thelma and Nana. I hope he’d forgotten he ever knew me.
“They do pal around in a group,” Nana admitted, tempering Thelma’s description. “And they’ve been known to make remarks some folks find unnerving. A few of them break rules—”
“And laws!” Thelma insisted.
Nana leaned forward, arms crossed on the counter. She was probably more tired out by this talk than by her broken leg.
“Gwen,” Nana said, touching my hand. “We’ve had no trouble at Mirage Beach, but they’ve marked up some Siena Bay shops with graffiti. Still, no matter what folks say, I don’t believe they were involved in harming that hitchhiker.”
I was not feeling good about living alone.
“Trounced him, they did, and broke his nose.” Thelma removed her soiled apron then took a clean one from a cupboard.
“The sheriff is fairly certain the homeless man had a quarrel with companions, and they caught a ride out of town, leaving him behind.”
“‘Fairly certain,’ my rosy red bum.”
“Thelma!” Nana gasped.
Thelma didn’t act contrite. She tied her apron strings so vehemently that her wrists cracked.
Then, with the bow at the back of her waist looking like a white butterfly, Thelma started for the parlor, gesturing for me to follow. “Now, to serve a proper tea …”
The sooner we started, the sooner I’d finish. I lifted my tray and hurried after Thelma.
I wanted to be inside my cottage with the doors locked, before dark.
How could I not stay for dinner? All through teatime, I’d hardly noticed the guests because I’d been concentrating on serving correctly. But I had noticed the food, and it looked great.
While Nana and Thelma had soup and sandwiches for dinner, I feasted on poppy-seed scones with lemon curd, delicate shortbread wafers, and cup after cup of Ceylon tea.
“I daresay, you’re a little weary after your drive and your first day of work,” Nana said, “but tomorrow we’ll go into Siena Bay, if you like.”
“I wouldn’t mind being a hermit for a few days,” I said, yawning as if it was weariness keeping me here at Mirage Beach.
Nana didn’t say a word about facing those who remembered my childhood scandal. Still, when she reached into her skirt pocket and pulled out her scrying mirror, I wasn’t a bit surprised.
Thelma drifted toward the sink with the cleared dishes, but Nana gestured me to stay seated at the kitchen table. Nana rarely used polish on her copper mirror. Sometimes she made a paste of lemon juice and salt to burnish it. More often, though, she cut a fresh square of cheesecloth, folded it just so, and rubbed. That’s what she did now.
I lifted my teacup and pressed it against my lip, waiting. Most people like to read their horoscopes in the newspaper, and there was an element of that kind of fun in scrying. But it was more personal.
I only remembered Nana telling good fortunes. But is that all she saw?
She took a deep breath, settled further into her chair, and stared at the copper mirror. Her forehead and the corners of her mouth were suddenly free of wrinkles. Her eyes were wide open, but focused far beyond the mirror.
Water swished quietly over the dishes. From the living room came the sound of the grandfather clock’s pendulum, swinging.
Nana lifted her hand and made a brushing movement. Was she banishing a cloud that hovered between her and the message in the mirror?
Outside, the waves rushed, broke, and sighed.
“Rerun!” Nana snapped, and struck the tabletop with both palms.
“Pardon me?” Thelma turned from the sink, hands dripping soapsuds. She looked as surprised by the word as I felt.
Dread settled at the nape of my neck as Nana scooped up the mirror, deposited it back into its pouch, and pulled the drawstrings tight.
“Though I can’t fathom why,” Nana told me, shaking her head. “I’m getting some old tale—a s-story instead of your reading.”
She made a what’s up with you? gesture toward the mirror as if it could see. After that she rubbed the space between her brows, then touched her fingertips to her right temple.
Thelma pounced on the gesture.
“You’re exhausted, is what. Far be it from me to tell another adult what she should do,” Helm began
. Then, of course, she did just that. “Gwennie’s here to help, so let her, while you sit in the parlor, reciting those old tales—which sound like they’re fair strugglin’ to be told—to your guests.”
Nana made a dismissive gesture, but Thelma pressed on.
“That’s what makes the Sea Horse Inn special,” Thelma scolded. “What brings folks back again and again is your special brand of hospitality. Any fool can take care of kitchen chores.”
Though that wasn’t exactly the way I would have put it, Thelma was right.
I squatted next to Nana’s chair and made her look at me, face-to-face.
“Nana, I’ll feel awful if you don’t let me help.”
The distressed look left her face. She hugged my shoulders.
“Since you two are determined to browbeat me”—Nana yawned and her gauzy sleeves fell back as she stretched her arms toward the rafters—“we’ll try again when my mirror’s in a better mood, silly thing.” She stood, slipped the mirror into her skirt pocket, and kept her hand covering it while her blue eyes met mine. “Because Gwennie, I would cut out my tongue before telling that fortune to you.”
CHAPTER THREE
The beach was still purple with twilight when I reached Cook’s Cottage.
When I set my foot on the porch and inched open the screen door, I heard a rustling overhead, which told me the bird had returned to her nest. I barely breathed as I slipped my key into the lock. It opened the door on the first try.
“Gumbo girl!” I called as I stepped inside and locked the door behind me.
I put a brimming fruit basket and a covered plate of cheesecake on the table. No one left Nana’s kitchen empty-handed.
Next I scooped my sleepy cat from the couch.
Gumbo’s face was half orange and half white. A vee of black covered her forehead. Blinking, she gave my cheek a lick.
“It wasn’t so bad,” I told her. “Except for the part where I had to stand and ask, ‘Would you like milk, lemon, or sugar? One lump or two?’ about a hundred times. And the part where I have to be back over there by seven in the morning.”
I paused to take a breath. If I were home, Mom would have been reading nurses’ journals. Dad would have been tapping at computer keys or watching some TV program on forensic blood spatters.
But the cottage sat silent around me.
When Gumbo jumped from my arms and pranced toward the kitchen, I heard each of her steps and the hum of the refrigerator.
I turned on the kitchen light. It gave a buzz like faraway bees. A breeze butted against the wall facing the driveway, and I looked up.
Something moved, and I jumped away from—myself.
I caught my breath, embarrassed that I’d been scared half to death by my own reflection in the window over the kitchen sink.
“You are too dumb,” I stuck my tongue out at my reflection and turned off the light.
I tried to work up some enthusiasm for the cheesecake, but couldn’t, so I found a place for it in the refrigerator.
Restless, I went upstairs, flopped on my parents’ bed, and tried to read a magazine. The diet and makeup tips didn’t hold my attention.
“Okay.” Exasperated, I addressed the window looking out to sea. All day I’d shoved the memories away. If I let them have their way for just a few minutes, maybe this fidgety feeling would stop. “Take over.”
Nothing happened, of course, because I remembered so little about that night. What I did recall was filtered through the mind of a little kid.
I knew I’d been on Little Beach, not Mirage Point.
I knew Thelma had lied about that, but why?
I knew I’d talked with someone. He hadn’t been a hallucination, but he probably wasn’t a Gypsy, either.
I knew he hadn’t hurt me.
Who did know the truth? Not Mom and Dad, though I hadn’t exactly grilled them for details. That night meshed with the fear and embarrassment I felt over sleepwalking. By the time I wanted to talk about it, it just seemed too late.
Thelma knew something, and so, probably, did Nana. The sheriff had moved to Boston. I knew that from Dad. But really, none of them knew anything because there’d only been the two of us on that beach.
Everything else was supposition and gossip.
During one of my talks with Dr. Cates, he’d asked if the boy on the beach was a selkie. Of course I’d heard the local legends of magical creatures that transformed from sea lions to humans. Now I realized he was guessing the stories had gotten mixed into my sleepwalking dream. But then I’d given the idea serious consideration.
My Gypsy boy had been darkly handsome, and he’d certainly had a way with the waves, but I hadn’t seen him shrug off a sea lion’s skin or gesture with webbed hands. He didn’t have little flat-to-the-head sea lion ears, either.
No, I told Dr. Cates, I’d seen all of him there was to see. He’d looked quite human.
I took an elective class called Myths and Monsters during my freshman year at Valencia High. I didn’t try to fool myself. I knew I was still looking for answers. When we had to do a term project on a myth or monster, I chose selkies, and the thing I discovered is that selkie stories are almost prehistoric, pre-Christianity for sure, and details vary.
Legends only agree upon three things. Selkies are friendly, heroic, and so handsome they take your breath away.
Lots of stories mentioned the number seven, and though they never recounted that rhyme, I’d never forgotten it.
“Beckon the sea, I’ll come to thee,” I whispered to the room. “Shed seven tears, perchance seven years.”
I’ll come to thee. The language was old-fashioned. It sounded formal, too, although my sophomore English teacher had told us that Shakespeare and people who’d lived in those days would’ve used you to talk with someone formally. Thee was reserved for friends.
Whatever.
I hadn’t called him back. I never would.
Still, reciting those words into the silence had given me nonstop chills.
The sure cure for silence was television, even if it was a miniscule black-and-white set from my parents’ college days. I ran downstairs with Gumbo at my heels and plopped onto the brick-colored couch.
TV did the trick.
I was two hours into a Brady Bunchathon and a bag of nacho chips when Gumbo jumped on the sill of the big living room window.
The couch was on the same wall as the door, facing the shelf that held the TV, and the window was on my left. If I concentrated on the screen, I could ignore those sheer curtains.
Gumbo didn’t find it quite so easy. Switching her tail, she stared out into the night. If I hadn’t already been startled by my own reflection, the sight of her golden eyes, mirrored by black glass, would have freaked me out.
“Knock it off, kitty,” I said forcefully. Of course she didn’t.
In fact, she vibrated with a rumble which rapidly turned into a growl. This wasn’t the hunting hum she reserved for birds. Gumbo sounded almost vicious.
I couldn’t help looking, but I didn’t get up and go to the window.
Suddenly she darted at the glass as if she wanted to leap through. She banged her nose hard enough that she fell, twisting to get her feet beneath her.
This had gone beyond creepy, but there was no way I’d go outside. Not to investigate. Not to run for help.
I couldn’t call the Inn, because I had no phone. Even if I had one, I wouldn’t want Nana or Thelma running down here for a false alarm. Not that Nana could run these days.
After awhile, sinking into the couch, I convinced myself Gumbo had only seen another cat. She was quite the flirt, my Gumbo. She sounded fierce, but she liked yowling in the moonlight, twining around tomcats, driving them crazy. Maybe she was just playing hard to get.
My eyelids were drooping when I heard her hiss.
“You’re spayed,” I told her gently. “Get used to it.”
But then I remembered the footprint. And “that lot” from the village. And Zack McCracken.
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I sat up straight and released the breath I was holding, when I saw Gumbo had turned her attention to cleaning a paw, with her back to the window. I forced myself to turn back to the Bradys, and a few minutes later Gumbo was curled on my lap.
“Boy, that Marsha makes me glad I’m an only child,” I told her.
Pushing off my thighs for a single leap, Gumbo returned to the sill.
Even though I knew the deck around the cottage creaked, and I’d hear anyone who came near the house, I thought of the shoulder-high blackberry bushes. They’d make a great hiding place. Feeling brave, I left my safe couch and crossed the room. I felt vulnerable and exposed as I removed Gumbo from the windowsill.
“Bedtime for you!” I said, and when she tried to squirm free, underlining her request with claws, I held her at arm’s length and carried her upstairs.
I should have tidied downstairs, but my hands were shaking. I wasn’t going back down there until dawn.
At least I’d be in bed, under the kissing-fish quilt, if someone broke in. Vain as it sounds, if there was an ax-murderer out there, I did not want my body discovered amid a bright orange litter of nacho chips.
I made it through the night.
Gumbo survived her crisis of nerves and passed out on my chest. I could feel her weight as I surfaced from sleep.
Opening my eyes in the loft was like waking up inside a rainbow. I rolled from beneath Gumbo, pulled myself upright, and just stared.
The loft window showed silvery ocean all the way to the horizon. An iridescent sky glimmered pink, green, and blue like the inside of an abalone shell.
Last night I’d set the bedside clock radio for six fifteen, though I didn’t have to be at the Inn until seven, to help with seven thirty breakfast. It was 5 A.M.
I couldn’t believe it. The last time I’d been up this early, I’d been waiting for Santa Claus. There was no time difference between Valencia and Mirage Beach, or that would have explained it.
A gray and white gull skimmed right by the window, turning its head to study me. I gave a wave, amazed at how quickly my life had rolled back in time. As a kid, I’d begged to take my nap upstairs.
