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Morning came on the heels of broken and restless sleep, and I suddenly didn’t have the time or the mental resources to dwell on it anymore. From the moment my mom dragged me out of bed, we were in a flurry of preparations. Bags had to be packed. Appointments had to be canceled. My mom was frantically trying to trade shifts with the other nurses in her unit to make sure she was covered.
“What about Freya?” I asked.
“We’ll have to bring her. There’s no time to find a pet sitter.”
“She hates the car.”
“Wren, we don’t have a choice. Just get the crate ready and throw her food in the trunk.”
Freya watched all of this chaos unfold with unbothered curiosity. Even the appearance of the dreaded pet carrier elicited little more than a disdainful glance.
I knew Poe wouldn’t see my text until she woke up, and sure enough, a little after 10 a.m., my phone blew up.
OMG!!!!!! Oh Wren, I’m so sorry!!!!! What can I do??? Can I do anything????
I smiled down at the excessive punctuation. Poe was extremely close to herlola, so it was no surprise that she saw the situation as inherently traumatic. When your grandmother died, you were supposed to be inconsolable. Guilt burrowed into my guts like an animal, all claws and squirming warmth.
I’m okay, thanks. I’ll be back in a few days. Sorry I won’t be able to come to the beach tomorrow.
OMG why are you apologizing?! We can go to the beach anytime. Just let me know if you need anything.
I will. Love u.
Love u back.
I pocketed the phone again and looked over at Freya.
“Let’s not make this any harder than it has to be, okay?” I murmured to her.
And, as if taking pity on me, she walked right into the carrier and settled herself down like a queen on a throne. Then she made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a sigh.
By ten thirty we were all packed up in my mom’s old Subaru and on our way out of town. My mom was wearing her big sunglasses that obscured half her face and made me suspect she’d been crying again. We double parked outside our favorite cafe so she could run inside and grab our to-go order that was waiting for us on the counter. Lorelei, the owner, waved at me through the window, and I waved half-heartedly back.
We sipped on our lattes in silence as we drove out of the city, but it wasn’t until we hit the long stretch of Route 1 North that would carry us most of the two-hour drive that I finally got up the courage to speak.
“Mom, what did Asteria die of?” I asked.
She hesitated for a moment before she said, “She died in her sleep. They think it was her heart.”
“She had heart problems?”
“Not that I knew about.”
I bit my lip. Of course my mother wouldn’t have known if Asteria had heart problems. She hadn’t seen or spoken to her in almost six years, as far as I knew. I wanted to ask her if she regretted that now, if she wished she’d changed her mind and reached out before it was too late, but I couldn’t shake the words loose. Thankfully, my mom spared me from trying to figure out what to say next.
“I’m sorry you couldn’t have had more of a relationship with your grandmother, Wren,” she began, and there was a tremor in her voice I’d rarely heard there before. “I want you to understand that I would have liked it to be different. But among other things, your grandmother was a very stubborn woman. She demanded things be done her own way, or not at all. There was no compromise, no discussion. And in the end, I had to walk away, for both of our sakes.”
I froze. My mom had just said more about Asteria in the last few minutes than she had in the last six years. Was I finally going to get some answers? “What was it she didn’t want to compromise about?” I asked, hating the desperation in my voice.
Mom laughed a short bitter bark of a laugh. “Everything. Anything. But especially about Sedgwick Cove.”
I held my breath. My mother never talked about Sedgwick Cove, the little mid-coastal Maine town where she grew up and where I spent the first few months of my life. The one time I’d asked her to visit the place, when I was maybe seven or eight, her refusal was so vehement that I never dared ask again.
“Our family has lived there for centuries,” my mom went on, her eyes fixed unblinkingly on the road ahead. “And I’m the prodigal daughter because I was the one who didn’t want to spend the rest of my life cooped up in the same tiny town I’d been born in.”
“Lots of people grow up and move away from home, Mom,” I said.
My mom shook her head. “Not the Vespers. We haunt the same old house and walk the same old streets and run the same old shop forever, or else we’re a stain on the family legacy.”
