“Cool.”
We don layers in case a squall moves in, then head the back way through town so we can stop by the little grocery that’s been on Main Street ever since I can remember. We pass the lot where the church once stood. Wild gooseberry and kinnikinnick and wildflowers have covered every inch of the burned shell. The house still stands, abandoned. I wonder why no one has ever bought this lot and built some holiday homes, but I feel the hauntedness.
“This place is creepy,” Jasmine says, taking my hand.
“It is. My dad had a church here,” I say, surprising myself. A knot of unresolved anger twists through my diaphragm. “It burned down.”
“Did he die?”
“No. Nobody died.”
She looks at me for a moment, but honestly there’s not a single thing I can offer a ten-year-old about a monster like my father, who moved away to some other poor town. The less said the better.
“I like that bus,” she says finally.
Across the alley from our old abandoned house is a Victorian in considerably better shape than it was the summer I was fifteen. The clapboard is painted bright white, with trim in several shades of blue and yellow. The porch is hung with a swing, and I remember weaving macramé plant hangers there.
An abandoned bus is still parked on the back of the lot. It’s painted cheerfully, and seems to have been done over into a she-shed sort of thing, with curtains at the windows and a flower garden planted around the door. I offer Jasmine a tidbit of history. “Can you see the murals on that bus?”
She squints. “Kinda. Flowers.”
“Your nana painted them when she was a little older than you are now.” I love that someone has taken the time to refresh them, and it occurs to me that, even then, Phoebe loved painting flowers.
Jasmine is underwhelmed. “Oh.”
The grocery has wooden floors and the kind of food tourists might pick up for a couple of nights in—a little fruit, lots of wine, bread and milk and cereal. “Let’s eat junk food,” I declare.
“Yes!” Jasmine pumps the air. “You should know that Nana doesn’t approve.”
“Oh, we all get to let go of the rules sometimes. She gets that.”
“What’re your favorites?”
We choose thin, salty potato chips and a bag of frosted circus animal cookies, a jar of whole dill pickles, Hershey’s Kisses, big red grapes, cans of root beer, and string cheese, then carry the bag down the path to the beach. A few people are walking at the other end, but here by the Starfish Sisters, we only have to share the space with seagulls and a power walker in red shoes. I spread out a blanket I brought with me, and we use rocks to hold the corners down. It’s so much like the days with Phoebe that I feel some mending going on in my soul.
“Which seagull comes to see you?” Jasmine asks, peeling a stick of string cheese. “Do you think it’s one of those guys?”
A crowd of them mills around the creek, some poking through the sand, others grooming and bathing, a sight that never tires. Is there anything more exuberant than a bird splashing water on its feathers? “Maybe. We should really notice his markings and see if we can spot him in the crowd next time.”
“Why are some of them brown?”
“They’re young. Your nana would know when they start to be all white, but I don’t.”
“She knows a lot,” Jasmine says.
I nod, watching a pair of murres super-pedal their arms, looking like little flying footballs. I pop grapes into my mouth, and catch sight of movement in the water. “Hey, I think that might be a whale out there!”
She jumps to her feet and shades her eyes. “It is a whale!” She watches, rapt, as it breaches, magnificently, and dives back into the water, leaving a sudsy wake. “Wow,” she sighs. When it is no longer visible, she plops down beside me and digs her feet into the sand. “I might want to be a marine scientist,” she says.
“Yeah? Do you want to study tsunamis?”
“Well, that’s one thing. They cause a lot of damage, you know, and if people could be warned faster, it would help.”
“Definitely.”
“But really,” she says, gazing at the horizon, “I just like the ocean. I would like to be a fish, and swim around down there and learn new things.” She peels string from her cheese. “Maybe I would find treasure.”
“Oooh, I like that idea. Pirate treasure!”
“Yeah. There were a lot of ships that sank out there, did you know that?”