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The road turned sharply around a copse of scraggly trees and the first houses came into view—a smattering of weather-beaten little capes crouching in blooming gardens behind picket fences. Then the houses began to crowd together more closely, and a battered ribbon of sidewalk appeared. Then we rounded a corner and the picturesque downtown of Sedgwick Cove came into view at last.
The road widened and spilled out into a quaint collection of shops, restaurants, and houses converted into bed and breakfasts, their tiny yards hemmed in by borders of crushed white sea shells. The buildings were painted in a rainbow of once-bright colors which had faded to pastels, as though the town had become an old photograph of itself. A bakery, pink like the inside of a conch shell, stood shoulder to shoulder with a lavender-hued art gallery and a minty-green antiques shop. A rambling blue Victorian with a wraparound porch had a sign swinging gently in the breeze that read, “The Bumblebriar Inn: Come Sit a Spell.” All of it was basking in the constant tang of the salty air sweeping in off the water like seals sunning themselves on a pebbled shore.
Narrow side streets cut down between the buildings on either side, the ones on the left leading up into further clusters of houses and shops, and the ones on the right cutting down toward the cove itself, many too narrow even for a car to drive down them. As I peered down one of them, I spotted an old woman securing an old-fashioned bicycle to a crooked fence before vanishing through the gate. These little narrow streets wound down toward the beach, dissolving into crooked boardwalks that cut down through high marsh grasses to the sandy beach below. Beyond the roofs of the buildings, little boats bobbed on the glimmering waves that stretched to the neat division between ocean and cloudless sky.
It was all I could do not to press my nose to the window like a small child as we drove slowly through the town center, but it became clear that I was not the only curious one. People were openly pointing and staring at our car as it drove through down the main thoroughfare, which seemed odd. Surely they were used to tourists here? I could see groups of them here and there, peering in shop windows and strolling the boardwalks with ice cream cones in their hands. Why in the world would we be drawing so much attention in our non-descript car on a busy, brink-of-summer day?
I turned to ask my mother the question aloud, but the words shriveled up in my mouth. Everything about her had gone rigid and tense, as though crossing the border into Sedgwick Cove had turned her to stone. I felt my own budding excitement and curiosity crumble to dust as I remembered that for every memory I wished I had of this place, my mother had a hundred she was trying to forget. I tried to cast around for something practical to say.
“Are we staying in one of these hotels?” I asked.
Mom shook her head. “My sisters wouldn’t hear of it. We’re staying in the house I grew up in. And anyway, I’d been hoping to keep a low profile while we’re here. If a Vesper checked into a hotel in Sedgwick Cove, every local would know about it before she even got her suitcase unpacked.”
“Oh, come on, you’re exaggerating,” I half-laughed.
But there was no laugh in my mom’s reply. “I promise you, I’m not.”
I thought of the staring and pointing as we drove through the center of town and decided to take my mother at her word.
We were moving away from the bustle of downtown now. We turned off the main road and down one of the narrow side streets that dropped down behind a second row of houses and skirted the rocky shoreline. Tall beachgrass waved to our right, beckoning unwary wanderers toward the cliffs beyond. On our left, the houses gave way to more trees and low, dense shrubbery. The road turned from pavement to sandy gravel, climbing a small hill. When we reached the top of it, I gasped.
A lighthouse came into view, perched out on an outcropping of rock that sheared off into a craggy cliffside. The weathered wooden tower was whitewashed, dotted with arched windows, and topped with a massive golden-green copper cupola and a weathervane. As it was daytime, no lights were shining from the top, but the sun glinted off the glimmering panes of glass that circled the top, and an open walkway encircled it, hemmed in by a metal railing.
“Wow,” I managed to breathe.
“It is beautiful, isn’t it?” my mother sighed, somewhat grudgingly.
“It’s… that’s not… are we staying there?” I asked, pointing to the lighthouse.
“No, no, no one lives in the lighthouse, not anymore. The house is down here, just around this… yes, you can see it now.” And she stopped the car in the middle of the road as though steeling herself before she dared to venture any closer.
The house was a rambling little Victorian with a turret on one side and a wraparound porch with elaborate gingerbread trim. It had once been yellow, but the salt air had faded it, and creeping fingers of climbing roses and ivy had run riot over it, obscuring the cream and pink accents and the faded lavender door. The house had a garden—or maybe it was more accurate to say that the garden had the house, for it appeared to have grown up out of the surrounding splendor like another blossom. Flowers of every color and herbs of every variety grew in glorious chaos all around it, flourishing in flower beds, spilling out of pots, twining together around fenceposts, and tangling over the walkways. The air was full of twinkling discordant music from a dozen windchimes hung from the porch roof and a purplish smoke rose in curling tendrils from the slightly crooked chimney. A tall stone wall ran through the shade-wrapped yard behind it, obscuring what lay beyond.
“There it is,” my mother murmured. “Lightkeep Cottage, home of the Vespers.”
5
Icouldn’t make sense of it. I gazed down on the little house, which looked as though it had been plucked from the pages of a fairy tale. Was this really the home my mother had fled without looking back? Could this truly be the place she shuddered to return to?
I could almost hear the house calling out to me, reaching for me with welcoming arms and waiting to enfold me in an embrace that felt and smelled like a hundred thousand memories I’d forgotten. But judging by the look on my mom’s face as we rumbled down the gravel road, her time here would be less of an embrace and more of a prison sentence.
The road didn’t continue past the house but widened into a little circular turnaround in front of it. We parked there, and my mom sat in the car, frozen.
“Mom? Are you okay?” I asked tentatively.
“Sorry. I just need a minute,” she said, her voice strained, her knuckles white on the steering wheel.
But the cottage wouldn’t give us a minute. As I opened my mouth to say that we could wait as long as she needed, a shriek erupted from somewhere inside the house and an object came crashing through one of the first-story windows, breaking the glass and landing with a thud in a lilac bush.
I let out a little yelp, but my mother just closed her eyes as though praying for patience. When she opened them again, she looked at me resignedly.
“It appears my sisters are home. Come on. It’s time to meet your aunts.”
She said this the way someone else might say, “It’s time to enter the fray,” before storming off into the field of battle. My heart began to thump uncomfortably against my ribs, and I wondered if the house wasn’t the trap that my mother feared after all.
We got out of the car. It was only when Freya yowled indignantly that I remembered her and opened the back door to retrieve her carrier. My mother walked around to the back of the car and popped the trunk, but then closed it again.
“If this goes badly, I don’t want to have to repack the car,” she said with a humorless smirk. Then she turned, lifted her chin, and marched to the garden gate. I scurried along in her wake, clutching Freya’s carrier.
