“Honey, honey,” Marie cooed, smoothing her daughter’s hair. “You just had a bad dream.”
Addie stared at her, wild eyed, not quite realizing that she was home, safe in her bed, and not still enmeshed in those confusing dream images.
Marie encircled her daughter with her arms and drew her close, rubbing her back, murmuring soft words of comfort into her ear. The dogs jumped onto Addie’s bed in their attempt to do the same.
“You’re safe,” Marie said to Addie in her darkened room. “It was just a bad dream. Hush now, girl. “
While Marie was comforting Addie, Marcus padded into the kitchen, lit the stove, and warmed some milk. He entered the room with a steaming cup, and all of them, father, mother, daughter, and dogs, sat on the bed for a moment while Addie sipped the warm milk.
“I had such a bad dream,” Addie said, finally.
“I guess you did.” Marcus smiled. “You woke the whole town. Now, drink the rest of that milk and settle back down. It won’t be morning for a few hours. The fish aren’t even up yet.”
Addie did as she was told, grateful for the familiarity of it. She was here, in her own room with her own parents. Safe. Marcus smoothed his daughter’s hair, and before going back to bed himself, he rapped her doorframe three times for luck, the way he used to when she was young and afraid of the dark. “This calls the angels,” he would say to her. “Now they’re here, watching over you.” Addie smiled at the memory of it and felt better instantly. Marie wasn’t so easily soothed. Addie had never awoken in the middle of the night before in such a state, and it rattled Marie into wakefulness. It was familiar. Disturbingly so.
She tucked her daughter beneath the blankets and sat with her, stroking her hair, until the girl fell into a shallow sleep. But Marie did not return to bed. No more sleep would come for her that night. She padded through the dark house to the kitchen. The stove was still hot, so she filled up the teapot. While the leaves were steeping, she retrieved the book from the hiding place she had selected for it years before, the third drawer down in her kitchen cupboard, where she kept her mother’s old lace tablecloths. Marcus certainly wouldn’t go rummaging around in there and happen upon it, nor would Addie without her permission. And there it was, a slim volume with a leather cover, weathered heavily by time.
She carried both the tea and the book to her chair at the sitting-room window. Sinking down into the chair, she put the book on her lap and sighed. She must read the story now. Her own daughter was writing the next chapter.
Marie had found the trunk in a dark and dusty corner of the attic when Addie was just a girl. Her parents had brought it with them from their former home—that and not much else. They had hurriedly packed up that horrible night, stuffing everything they could reach into the trunk, herding a young Marie out the door and quickly getting on their way. She had a vague recollection of her mother slipping the book in among more sensible things like bed linens and tablecloths and warm clothes, but when she’d stumbled across the trunk again, she hadn’t been quite sure she’d find it there. Her memories of that night so long ago were starting to fade with the passage of time. She definitely remembered her mother crying when they had to leave the china behind, but did she really take the book? Marie wasn’t so sure until she’d been brave enough to open it a few years ago. The trunk had been tucked away in the attic since the family arrived in Great Bay.
Marie thought back to that time, the day she had first laid eyes on the boy who would become her husband, during a town celebration at the lakeshore on a particularly warm August day. She and her family had just moved to Great Bay, a tiny hamlet some two hundred miles down the lakeshore from their previous home in Canada. They had fled under cover of night after what had happened to her grandmother—Marie didn’t like to think about that horrible time in their lives—and her parents had vowed to make a fresh start for young Marie in a new town, where nobody knew their dark history. Her father was soon employed by one of the richest fishing families in town, and the three of them settled into a quiet routine. Nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing to call attention to themselves.
That day in August was the annual end-of-summer celebration in Great Bay—the townsfolk gathered after a busy fishing season and gave thanks for their good fortune with a potluck supper. Everyone brought a little something to share, spread blankets on the rocky shore, and chatted about the glorious summer that had passed. While Marie’s father was introduced around by his new employer, and her mother was welcomed warmly by the neighborhood women, the young people enjoyed the unusual luxury of swimming in cool—rather than icy-cold—water after a month of temperatures well into the nineties.
Even the girls, dressed in daring new bathing costumes, ventured into the water, and with the blessing of her parents, Marie joined in the fun. She was up to her knees in the lake when she was literally bowled over by Marcus. He had been playing a game of catch in the shallow water with his brother, Gene, and was running toward an errant ball that was headed straight for Marie. His eyes on it instead of the girl in his path, he ran headlong into her, and the two of them were suddenly submerged, floating for a moment in a deep drop-off that Marie had not known was there. Beneath the water’s surface, Marie had opened her eyes and seen Marcus’s face for the first time. With his dark curls and olive skin, she thought he was the most beautiful boy she had ever seen. They were underwater for just a few seconds, but for Marie, the moment lasted forever—the stillness, the slight music of the water in her ears, the warmth of its embrace. When they made their way back onto shore, laughing, sputtering, Marcus apologizing and offering Marie his hand, she knew without a doubt that she’d spend the rest of her life with this boy.
She and Marcus still lived in the same house her parents had bought all those years ago. As newlyweds, they had moved in with her mother after her father’s death. He had been well enough to walk Marie down the aisle but died shortly thereafter, leaving her mother, Vivienne, with a sickness that could only be described as a broken heart. She was weakened by the loss, permanently it seemed. From the moment of his death until the moment of hers, she could never take a full breath in, nor could she exert herself to any degree. Even the simple act of cooking the nightly meal was too much. It was as though her life force was seeping away, bit by bit. The townspeople thought it was grief, but Vivienne knew it was more than that. Her soul was longing to be free of its confines to join her beloved husband once again. She was incomplete without him, and had no wish to walk through life as half of a whole. Before the new year dawned, she would be gone.
She had but one request on her deathbed. “Bury me at sea,” she whispered to Marie just days before she died. “Don’t put me in the ground. I don’t belong there. I want to go back into the water.”
“You don’t want to be buried next to Father?” Marie’s eyes stung as she quickly blinked away the tears.
Vivienne shook her head. “He’s not in the ground, child. That’s just the shell of his body. Your father is waiting for me, beyond. The reunion . . .” Her words evaporated into a deep sigh as she smiled, imagining it.