[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.There were no wrongs to right between us, nothing to explain.In some ways, she understood me better than anyone.The bags were stuffed with my old clothes.They were kind of worn, but they were all good brands.I’d even put my new swimsuit and my Seven jeans in there.They wouldn’t do me any good where I was going.I hoped Delilah would keep some of the clothes for herself instead of selling everything on eBay.But the decision was hers to make, as she’d understand from the short note I’d stuffed into one of the bags.Deliah—All yours.MadisonAs for me, I was wearing my old black shorts and the pink-and-black T-shirt.My mother had finally washed them.I checked the parking spot in front of the shop: no motorcycle.I hiked over to Kimberley Cove and checked the mooring: no boat.By the time I got to the beach, the sky had lightened, but the water was still calm and silvery, the shadows long, the post-storm clouds a watercolor pink.The clouds were drifting away already, leaving a clean, sharp, blue sky.For once, there was no fog.It seemed pointless, in a way, to take pictures.My camera couldn’t stop time or save me.A photograph isn’t real life.It’s just what we think we see.But right now, instead of coming between me and the world, the camera brought us closer.It allowed me to really see the beauty around me—not just in the shapes and the shadows, but in the things that were actually there: the sand and the seaweed, the water and the rocks.There were birds and seals and the occasional human being.There was beauty in other things: a torn volleyball net, spider-web cracks on the sidewalk, Delilah’s favorite trash cans.You just needed to look harder to recognize the wonder of the shadows, the miracle of the shapes.It made me feel better to know that the world would go on without me, even as I ached to realize how much I was losing.A breeze kissed my cheek, and I thought: Duncan.His spirit was all around me, in the cool morning air, in the coarse sand, in the sound of the waves.Was Duncan looking down on me now? My family had never been big on religion, but I suddenly felt sure that death wasn’t the end.There had to be something more, something that comes after.There had to be a piece of Duncan and a part of me that would live forever.When the first beachgoers showed up, lugging coolers and beach bags, chairs and umbrellas, I pushed myself off the sand.At the water’s edge I let the cold froth lick my toes.Something glinted in a wave.I reached down and pulled out a sand dollar.Duncan said they brought good luck.I tossed the shell back into the waves for someone else to find.As I walked away, I once again felt that peculiar sensation, as if I were seeing the world with someone else’s eyes.In the parking lot, deliciously greasy smells were already pouring out of the white-and-blue snack shack.If I lived until lunch, I’d come back for a cheeseburger.I passed the ice cream store where Ron Young had bought his last sorbet and a burrito shop that Delilah said was the best.Soon I reached the surf shop.Had that green-and-white bathing suit really mattered in the end? Had it really made me any happier?Well, yeah.That suit was awesome.In fact, the very thought of the green diagonal stripe on the board shorts made me smile through my pain.I made it back to the motel without any problem.My father was finishing his cereal, and my mother was tucking her green polo work shirt into her black pants.Tears blurred my vision.“I love you guys!”They stared at me like I was a total nut job.“We love you, too, honey,” my dad said, blinking away tears of his own.“Is everything okay?” my mother asked.“Yeah.It’s fine.I just—Yeah.”“We have wonderful news,” my mother said.Her eyes were shining, happy.I tried to remember the last time she’d looked like this.“You know that funeral I did recently?” she said.“Francine Lunardi?”My stomach clenched.“Kinda.”“I just got off the phone with her daughter.Mrs.Lunardi owned a little cottage: two bedrooms, one and a half baths.Not big, but just two blocks from the beach.She left it to her daughter, but the daughter wants to wait until the market picks back up before she sells it.Besides, the cottage needs a lot of work.”I nodded, trying to follow.“And she wants Dad to be the contractor?” I wanted to know that they’d be okay.My mother shook her head.“Even better: She’s going to let us live there—free! For two years, at the very least.In return Daddy will renovate it, but she’ll pay for all the materials.We’re on our way to see it now—will you come?”I was so tired, it felt like someone had tied a big band around my forehead.But I liked the idea of knowing where my parents were in case I got the chance to look down on them.Mrs.Lunardi’s yellow cottage looked like something out of a storybook (a happy storybook—nothing with witches or trolls).It had a white picket fence and an overgrown rose garden.A blue front door opened into a boxy living room with a brick fireplace and wide-plank, scratched wood floors.There was a kitchen with black and white checkerboard tiles, a bathroom with a claw-foot bathtub, and two tiny bedrooms under a sloping roof.“First thing I’d do is bump out the back of the house and add a master suite,” my dad told Joanne Torres, Francine Lunardi’s daughter.“Then right away you’re up to a three-bed, two-bath house—much better for resale.”We all sat at the kitchen table so my parents and Mrs.Torres could sign papers.Mrs.Torres was older than I expected, with gray roots in her one-tone brown hair, and sad lines around her mouth.“The house is darling,” my mother said, visions of flowered curtains and shabby-chic furniture probably swimming in her head.“I can see why you might want to move back here sometime.”Mrs.Torres shook her head.“It’s not that.It’s just—this house meant so much to my mother, I’m not ready to let it go.”She chewed on her lip before continuing.“My mother and I didn’t talk for over twenty-five years.It was my fault.I was…a bad kid.Alcohol and drugs, and…I stole things.But my mother kept forgiving me, over and over, until…” Her voice drifted off.“You must miss her,” my mother said.Mrs.Torres nodded, eyes tearing.“I stole her engagement ring,” she blurted.“When I was nineteen.My dad had just died.I pawned the ring and we couldn’t get it back.”My father looked at his watch.My mother covered her ring.Mrs.Torres cleared her throat.“I grew up, cleaned up my act, but my mother just couldn’t get past it [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]