Leah
On the third day, Leah found herself with no more excuses to avoid the lump in her throat she’d been ignoring. She knew exactly which beach she’d go to, exactly what spot she’d sit in to cry it all out.
Since coming back, she’d not allowed her limbs or mind a second of rest. She’d aired out the house, swept cobwebs from corners, mopped floors up and down. The refrigerator was stocked, the kitchen cupboards organized. She’d even driven into town and spent way too much money at Chatham’s Cook’s Nook on a beautiful All-Clad French skillet. The kitchenware her father stocked for the renters was tinny and well-used. The discovery of her mother’s old cast-iron pan in a box in the basement was both happy and heartbreaking. She’d since oiled and seasoned it, nesting it with its pricey new companion. Leah was not planning to stay for long on the Cape, but she needed to eat, she reasoned.
It was a strangely comforting and sad thing to move into one’s old childhood bedroom. Leah’s room was smaller than sherecalled. Although all personal memorabilia had been removed for summer renters, the view outside her window of the old neighborhood had not changed. Nor had the old ceiling light she’d spend hours staring at as a teen while lying on her bed listening to John Mayer and the Fray, plotting her big, bright future.
She’d left her ex, Greg, the six-hundred-thread-count Egyptian cotton bedding for their California king. Here she threw her old Laura Ashley quilt—set aside in storage likely by her mother—back on the bed. It was as though her mom had known she’d return, sleeping alone in a single bed again, and left something familiar and comforting to wrap herself in. Staring at its cabbage rose pattern only cemented the feeling her life was going in reverse, but there wasn’t time for self-pity. Instead, she filled her childhood dresser with her grown-up clothes and placed her favorite books in a friendly stack on the bedside table. Lastly, she washed and dried the household linens on the old clothesline she was inexplicably happy to discover still strung across the backyard between two pines. The drying took ages, but how luxurious the scent of sun and salt air when she pulled her sheets from the line at the end of the day.
As a last ditch effort to make the rental house a home again, she addressed the wall art. Someone (her brother, James’s wife, Lexi, she imagined) had redecorated in a tacky mass-produced beach motif. The framed signage felt bossier than calming:Beach, Sleep, RepeatandHave the Sunniest Day!She pried them from their pegs, replacing them with framed watercolors and vintage botanical prints of her own, pushing thoughts of Greg and their Back Bay brownstone away as she did. She wonderedhow long it would be before Rebekah helped him fill in the empty spaces on the walls.
When there was nothing left to attack indoors, Leah tackled the yard. She drove to Agway and loaded her back seat with bags of dark, earthy-smelling mulch, splurging on red geraniums for the flowerpots by the front door. It took all day, and she almost succeeded in eradicating the thoughts of Greg and Luna and Morgan Press and Boston. Covered in dirt, mulch, and sweat, she sprawled on the front steps to consider her work. It was only midday, but there were no further distractions to be had. She’d have to go to the beach.
Chatham boasted some of the most beautiful beaches in New England. As a teenager, midday had been the prime time to go. She’d hang out with friends who worked the snack shack at Ridgevale Beach or lifeguarded at Harding’s Beach. One summer she had worked the little booth in the parking lot at Cockle Cove, checking beach stickers of incoming vacationers. Since coming back she’d avoided all of it; she needed to be alone, not surrounded by happy sunburnt families.
The problem was, Leah also needed the ocean. Saltwater ran in her veins, her father used to tell her. Their whole lives were spent here on the Cape. She knew where sunsets were best viewed and where riptides were worst, to exit the water if she saw seals (sharks would be right behind). She knew how to float on her back without moving, surrendering to the buoyancy of the salt: for her that simple practice was as spiritual and healing as faith or drugs were for others. The ocean was Leah’s place of calm. She’d come back to the Cape in search of that feeling.
By evening it was time. She waited until six o’clock, when the throngs of vacationers with their unwieldy umbrellas and beach chairs would have vacated the sand, when the guards would have jumped down from their tall white stands, and the parking attendants would have left their little booths for the day. Up in her room, she tugged on her faded blue one-piece, threw on an oversized T-shirt, and grabbed a fresh towel from the closet. On the way to Harding’s Beach, she stopped at Mac’s Seafood and ordered a cold lobster roll, aghast at the number of people. The once pint-size seafood shop where her father bought fresh clams had burgeoned, taking over adjacent shop space. It now offered catering and dining beneath cheerful red umbrellas. When did that happen? She ordered a cold beer while she waited, thinking how much busier the town seemed, and how much of an outsider she felt after so many years away. But when she pulled into Harding’s Beach, that outsider feeling lifted.
Here she was home. She left her car unlocked, like a local, and grabbed her bag. She jogged across the sand, still warm, to the water’s edge. The water was brisk, the sound of the incoming tide lulling. For the first time in ages she felt herself exhale.
To her right the beach stretched its arm up to a rock jetty that arced into the sea. The summer houses lining the seawall were already turning a dusty pink. To her left the view was more rugged, the grassy dunes looming over the shoreline. It reached a point so distant she had to squint to see the end of it. Instinctively, she turned that way. Climbing the dunes, she found herself a little hollow and sat. A handful of people walked on the beach below. Up here she was protected and out of sight, the call of gulls overhead and the surf beneath her only companions.
The lobster roll was fresh and cold, and she found herself wolfing it down, surprised by how hungry she suddenly felt. Lately, she’d had little appetite, but now, with the lobster roll gone, she licked her fingers hungrily. As the sky grew dusky peach, then orange, Leah wrapped her arms around her knees and stared out to sea, at the light dancing off the surface. Her mother had loved to climb the dunes with her when she was little, and they’d sit side by side, digging their toes through the sunbaked layers of sand until they reached the colder depths below. She could not remember the last time she’d climbed these dunes. Or the last time she’d come to the beach with her mother, before she died. For the past decade her whole life had been Boston and publishing and then Greg. Now she had nothing for herself, and nowhere but here to go.
A soft cry emanated through the dune grass, and Leah realized with a start that it was her own. A sob lodged in her throat. She missed her mother. And her job. She even missed Greg. In all the sleepless nights since she left they’d spoken only twice, about things she’d left behind. There was a fresh formality to their conversations. They were being polite, tiptoeing around the hurt that was still too fresh to examine, and besides, what was the point? It was over between them; their future together was as boxed up and shipped off as Leah’s personal belongings. Before they hung up the last time, Greg had wished her luck settling in. She had bitten her tongue, refusing to ask if he’d seen Rebekah since she’d left, though the effort almost killed her. Sitting in the dunes, now, she let her thoughts go there.
It was just the start of her favorite season, but already it felt likethe summer of goodbyes. Lindsay, her boss at Morgan Press, would not be reaching out again, either. Leah had been quietlylet gowith an impersonal letter of recommendation, a joke. Everyone in publishing knew about the Luna scandal. There would be no work for her at any house after that. Leah was not sure there was much of anything left for her in Boston, either. Their friends, mostly Greg’s from the beginning, had quietly slipped out of touch.
Now, Leah stood up and strode down the steep dunes. Her feet sank into the sand, and her muscles pumped satisfyingly with effort. She stopped once, to shed her T-shirt. When she reached the water and waded in, Leah’s breath caught happily in her chest. The water was brisk, reminding her that she was still alive. She waded out to waist deep and sank below the surface. Into the darkness and rippling chorus and cold she sank until she was submerged. Under water, Leah was not afraid. Nor was she alone. The ocean was a life force, a tidal universe of its own. It welcomed her back like an old friend.
When she couldn’t hold her breath a moment longer she burst to the surface. The horizon stretched out before her like mercury. She imagined the ocean tasting the sadness on her skin and laughing. Here, she was so small. Just another small human taking up her small space in the water that parted to make room for her. And yet it held her up and let her float until her limbs shivered with cold and the sunset turned dusky and she was ready to climb out.
On the way home, Leah rolled down the windows. Her hair was sticky with salt, her skin tingled like she’d had a good scrub. On a whim she drove past her turnoff on Old Queen AnneRoad and continued to Main Street, taking in the bright storefronts and well-heeled summer people. Young couples pushed strollers. Grandparents trailed, holding the hands of wiggly toddlers and melting ice-cream cones. Clusters of kids congregated outside the pink awning of the Chatham Candy Manor. At least some things did not change, she thought. She passed the Ben Franklin five-and-dime that had been there forever, the historic Eldredge Library with its stately wooden doors, the Wayside Inn. The famed Chatham Squire restaurant and tavern, a line already out the door. So much of Main Street seemed frozen in time, a bygone era of summertime Americana preserved like a postcard. The flower boxes, the shingled storefronts, the flags and awnings, all of it a coastal smorgasbord for the lucky vacationer’s senses.
At the end of Main the storefronts grew more staggered and the crowds thinned, as the street gave way to stately houses and private summer dwellings. At the stop sign, Leah turned right toward Chatham Light. It was a favorite scenic stretch along Chatham Bar with an overlook across from the lighthouse. Leah slowed, to savor it. When she spied a coveted parking space along the street, she pulled in. It was a beautiful night; she’d walk over and take in the view.
She did not make it to the lookout, however. She was too distracted by the big white house she’d parked in front of.Captain Harding, the placard by the front door said. It was faded and peeling, not unlike the old house itself. Both were wholly different from the other homes that bookended it. Leah looked up at the large picture windows, the wavy glass panes that rippled likethe harbor across the way. It appeared old and empty. A gloominess came over her that anchored her there on the sidewalk.
When she was young, Leah recalled the historic house had been beautifully kept. Over the years it had changed hands and uses, the last Leah remembered it had been a general store and later an art gallery. Now, the old beauty appeared vacant and in need of upkeep. The shingles were as weathered as its facade and the building looked tired. A large sign in one of the front windows read:For Rent.
The steps creaked as she walked up. Leah peered in one of the front windows. Despite the dim lighting, she could make out the large open space of the first floor. Even from the outside Leah could sense the layers of dust. There was a folding table shoved against one wall. An ornate old fireplace dominated another, an emblem of dignity amidst the decline. An old bucket and a few paint cans littered the edges of the room. The walls were heavily adorned with hooks, and a few holes, probably remnants of the long vanished art gallery. Other than that the space was barren and Leah was hit by a wave of loneliness so visceral that she wondered if it were coming from the house itself.
Leah empathized. Everything she’d built her life on had just crumbled beneath her, leaving her adrift. Her career at Morgan Press. Her relationship with Greg. The future they’d mapped out in Boston, all of it gone. After so many years filled with the noise of purpose and plans, the strange new silence that followed was deafening.
As she stood at the window, Leah’s heart ached, just as she imagined the house’s old chestnut floorboards creaked. Hernights back in Chatham were as forlorn as the empty bedrooms she imagined inside, wide open and waiting. In the old house she recognized a piece of herself.
Unable to help it, she tried the door handle. Of course it was locked. Still curious, she peered again through the smudged windows, and as she did Leah felt an unexpected plume of hope rise within. The ceilings were high and the windows large. Even at that late hour, the remains of daylight spilled into the space, highlighting the detailed moldings and trim work. It was a grand old house, and no amount of age or emptiness could diminish its elegant bones.
Something about the house was calling to her. She knew it was ridiculous, and yet she stood at the window staring at theFor Rentsign. She could not begin to imagine what it would cost to rent a building of this size in this location. Nor could she fathom the amount of work it needed. Too much for one person. Too much for one person with a small severance and no job to speak of.
Knowing all of this did not change the quick pulse of hope through her veins. Leah took out her phone. Suddenly, she knew what she needed to do.
