Alice
25 Years Later
It was the best sandcastle yet, with towers and a bridge and a moat filled with real water and flags made of toothpicks and gum wrappers stuck on top of the parapets.
That was the word of the day. Parapet.
Alice had been choosing words at random out of the dictionary for her daughters—Merry and Charlotte—to learn, their brains ever absorbing, clamoring for more words, more information. More stories.
“Papet!” Charlotte pointed at the lighthouse, her whole body vibrating with excitement.
“Wrong, dummy,” Merry said. She was eleven, a whole six years older than her sister and made sure Charlotte knew it. “That’s the lighthouse.”
“Papet,” Charlotte insisted, armed crossed.
Alice picked her up, wiped the sand off her belly and shoulders. “Merry’s right.”
Merry preened.
“And Charlotte’s right.” Alice tickled Charlotte under her arms and behind her knees, the girl writhing like a fish. Alice looked at Merry. “Your sister’s not a dummy.”
It was an easy mistake. They’d looked at a ton of pictures of crumbling castles this morning, and the lighthouse, with its warped catwalk and eroding stone, was falling apart. For a while, Art had been caring for the light, making minor repairs, patching broken cement, but he’d died when Alice was in college. She hadn’t touched it since, content to let the thing rot. Though she would never give up the house—her house, where the last good memories of her mother lived—the lighthouse only ever reminded her of everything she’d lost. They’d condemn it eventually. Tear it down. She hoped she was here to see it.
Merry rolled her eyes, and Alice pretended not to notice. So smart, with a fierce independent streak, Alice sometimes wondered if she’d blessed or cursed her oldest by naming Merry after her mother.
She set Charlotte down, who went immediately for the water, which sparkled under the bright afternoon light. Alice resisted the urge to stop her. Charlotte knew not to go too deep, and both Alice’s kids were confident swimmers. Still, it was hard to let them go. She believed that the curse—or whatever it was—that’d plagued her family was over. From that night, there was something different about the cape, like a shroud had been lifted. The sun felt warmer. The water more welcoming. But the pull was still there. She saw it in her daughters, too, last glances at the water when it was time to go, an anxious feeling in the pits of their stomachs when they visited Mama Kristin’s family in Virginia, a melting relief when they returned.
Alice decided it wasn’t some lingering vestiges of the curse that tied her, body and soul, to the cape. It was the knowledge that there was salt water in her veins. It was a love for this place so deeply entrenched in the blood of the women who had come before her that it passed down, an inevitable trait no different from their dark hair and hard smiles. And it was this realization that had allowed her to forgive her mother for leaving. Because of her, Alice could watch her children play, laughing in the surf, unafraid. Because of her, Alice and her children, and her children’s children, could have this place, this feeling, forever.
“Mom!” Charlotte waved from the water. “Look! I’m a mermaid!”
Merry looked up from the sandcastle. “Me too, me too!” She bolted for the water, tackling her sister and then laughing when they both came up with seaweed tangled in their hair.
Behind Alice, a horn honked.
She turned to see her husband waiting in the car, waving. She wasn’t supposed to let the girls get wet. They were heading to dinner in Ilwaco with a friend of his who was thinking of investing in their little florist shop. It’d been in his family for more than a hundred years. Almost sold it to a developer ten or so years ago, but he talked his aunt into letting him take over. He had quite the green thumb.
“Girls!” Alice waved them in. “Time to go!”
A chorus of groans followed them up the beach, where they reluctantly toweled off. Merry let out a wicked giggle, then snatched her sister’s towel and made Charlotte chase her all the way back to the water.
“Oh no,” Charlotte cried, dramatically falling back in. “My towel is wet. Guess I have to just stay here.”
“Yeah,” Merry said. “We’ll grow fins and eat seaweed.”
Alice smirked. “You? Eat a vegetable? Never.”
Merry nodded solemnly. It was a sacrifice she was willing to make if it meant she didn’t have to leave.
“Come on,” Alice said. “Out you come. For real this time.”
“Can we come back later?” Charlotte asked.
“After dinner?”
“Or tomorrow morning?”
“Please,” they said in unison.
“We’ll see,” Alice said. “Here. Use my towel.”
They batted at each other, giggling, and then squished together, shoulder to shoulder, with the towel wrapped around them. A two-headed girl-beast. An ache of sadness pressed on her chest that her mother would never be able to meet them, these two beautiful, wicked, wonderful girls she’d made.
“Thank you. Now go on up to the car,” Alice said.
“Aren’t you coming?” Merry asked, concern in the corners of her eyes.
Alice tweaked her nose. “One last swim.”
Merry studied her a moment longer before letting a smile crack through. “Okay.”
As the girls ran up the bridge to the car, Alice ran toward the water. Her breath caught with the chill, but she dove in, relishing the feel of the waves on every inch of her body. She swam harder, farther, until her chest ached, and she finally came up for air. She waved to her daughters standing on the bridge, and then closed her eyes and lay back, floating, and licking the salt from her lips. She let the water carry her back to shore, hearing the whisper of her mother, and all the women before her, in every wave.