How did Amelia find the time? First thing in the morning, Blythe saw her setting out a full spread of fresh-baked bread, berries, coffee, and organic granola. As if she hadn’t just whipped a party together the day before.
“I hope you’re not doing all of this just on account of us,” Blythe said.
“Please. It’s my pleasure. Ask Kelly—I don’t know what to do with myself if I’m not taking care of guests. Did you sleep well?”
“I did. Perfectly.”
Well, not perfectly. She’d fallen asleep before Marin got home, and she woke up at two in the morning worried about her. Blythe crept out of bed and down the hall and peeked into the other guest room to make sure Marin was there. At the sight of her, safely curled up, only her dark ponytail visible against the pale sheets in the moonlight, Blythe was finally able to go back to sleep.
Amelia set out a plate of golden-brown zucchini bread. Blythe thought of the Black Beauty zucchini she’d grown two years ago and looked around the yard in appraisal.
“Did you ever think of having a vegetable garden? You have the perfect space for it.”
Amelia shook her head. “It’s a lovely idea but the soil here takes a lot of work. This town was literally built on sand and silt. People with gardens sometimes have the soil shipped in. It’s just more trouble than it’s worth for us.”
“That’s such a shame,” Blythe said. She made a mental note to call her neighbor and ask her to check on her tomatoes.
“Good morning!” Rachel bounded out of the house, her long hair loose. She wore a flowing Indian-print sundress. “I’m starving.”
Rachel sat on the bench across from Blythe. The sun reflected a narrow ring of gold in her eyes. They were lighter than Marin’s but the same wide, almond shape. She couldn’t get used to seeing similarities between the two of them. But it was small, tangible things like that that made the absurdity of their situation feel real.
She wished she knew what Marin was thinking. Nearly a week since Marin had confronted her with the truth, and she was no closer to getting her daughter to talk to her, let alone forgive her, than she had been on day one.
“Maybe the three of us can go to the beach this afternoon,” Blythe said to Rachel. “I just have to find a bathing-suit shop first.”
When she had left Philadelphia, she had packed for only a few days in New York, not a trip to the beach. Had that really been less than a week ago?
The back door swung open, and Blythe looked up hopefully. Sure enough, Marin appeared. She wore her usual sunglasses and her new uniform of black yoga pants and a rumpled T-shirt. She made her way to the table without a word, sat down, and slumped over, her head resting on her arm. She reeked of alcohol.
“Hi, sweetheart. Coffee?” Blythe said, trying to sound chipper and not alarmed.
Marin nodded.
“Did you go out last night?” Rachel asked.
“Yeah,” Marin said, sitting up and sipping the coffee. Even though half her face was behind sunglasses, Blythe could see the sickly pallor of her complexion.
“Are you okay?” said Blythe.
“Fine.”
That’s when Blythe noticed it: something shiny and red on the inside of her daughter’s right wrist, the size of a quarter.
“Marin, what in God’s name is that?”
“What?” Marin said.
“This?” Blythe said, grabbing her wrist.
Rachel and Amelia peered over her shoulder.
“You got a tattoo?” Blythe said loudly. Marin had never even pierced her ears. The most outrageous aesthetic choice she’d ever made was ill-advisedly highlighting her hair the summer between sophomore and junior years of high school.
“Can you please not yell? My head is splitting.” Marin took her coffee and walked back into the house.
“Oh my God,” Blythe said.
Rachel put an arm around her. “She’s fine.”
“You don’t even know her! She is not fine. She is not herself. My daughter is having a meltdown.”
With that, she stormed into the house.
Marin flopped down on her bed, facing the ceiling. She was so hung over, the whir of the ceiling fan made her stomach lurch.
Did she really have that much to drink? Enough to get a good buzz on, sure. But to throw up three times?
Still, she had to admit it was worth it. Kelly was fucking awesome. She looked at the red flower etched inside her wrist, and smiled. Even if she hadn’t loved the tattoo—which she did—the look on her mother’s face would have been well worth it.
Marin closed her eyes and draped her arm over her face to block out the sunlight. She imagined her office in New York. The conference room. The lobby. Life at Cole, Harding, and Worth was going on without her. And the truth was, it didn’t feel that strange. She didn’t miss it. What did that mean?
A knock on the door. Marin ignored it.
“Marin,” called her mother. “We’re going to the beach. Want to come?”
“No,” she said.
“It’s going to be a beautiful day.”
Marin forced herself out of bed and opened her door a crack. Her mother smiled at her hopefully.
“I can’t get sun on my tattoo,” Marin said. “I’m going back to sleep.”
She closed the door again.
She was just dozing off when another knock disturbed her. She wanted to yell at whoever it was to leave her alone, but she forced herself to call out—with just a modicum of civility—“Who is it?”
No answer. Another light rap. Groaning, she sat up and dragged herself to the door. She opened it to find Kelly.
“Amelia will kill me if you’re too hung over to leave your room today,” she said.
Marin sighed. “I am pretty hung over. But I also just can’t deal with my mother. Or anyone.”
“So you’re hiding in here?”
“That’s the plan.”
“For how long?”
“You can wake me up when it’s time to drive back to New York.”
Kelly put her hands on her hips, cocked her head to one side. “I have a better idea. Come hang out in my studio. I could use an extra set of hands for a project.”
Marin rolled her eyes. “Kelly, you don’t have to do this.”
“Do what?”
“Babysit me. I’m fine, okay? There’s just a lot going on, and I want to be alone.”
“I hate to break it to you, but I’m not asking for you. I actually do need help with something, and if you wanted to be alone, you’ve come to the wrong house. You’ve come to the wrong town, actually. In case you haven’t noticed, we’re all up in everyone else’s business. I think that’s printed somewhere on the brochure.”
Marin couldn’t help but smile. “I’m not very artistic.”
“I don’t need talent. I need manual labor. Come on.”
Marin followed Kelly up one flight of stairs to her third-floor studio.
The first thing that struck Marin about the room was color; it was everywhere. It wasn’t just the mosaics on the wall. Small end tables were tiled in cobalt and sky blue; a full-length mirror was covered in pieces of china, pale pink and moss green and red. A vivid green mermaid statue shone with opaque glass. The room was enormous, probably intended as a master suite. In the center, a wide rectangular table stretching nearly the length of the room. It was covered with plates of colorful tiles and glass, bowls of pebbles, a teacup brimming with shattered china. The table was also littered with tools: a metal ruler, a T-square, an odd device that looked like gardening shears with two round wheels at the top, giant rolls of tape, tubes of glue.
“Oh. Wow,” Marin said, walking around. The walls were lined with floor-to-ceiling shelves and cubbies that were filled with plastic bins labeled by color and material: sea glass, tiles, china, and crockery. Some shelves were piled with dishes; others had towers of teacups. One long shelf was filled with sheets of stained glass organized by color: vivid greens and blues and purple in every shade from deep, dark violet to the palest lavender to cotton-candy pink.
“I have to say, it’s my favorite place in the world. This used to be Amelia’s bedroom—back in the day. But when I got serious about mosaics, we converted it into a studio.”
“It smells good in here. Like spicy vanilla.”
“Oh, that’s perfume. It’s from a fancy store, Calypso. Amelia gave it to me as a stocking stuffer one Christmas. I don’t wear it, but I do spray it around. Very expensive air freshener.” She smiled.
Marin kind of loved her. “How did you get into this whole mosaic thing?”
“Amelia taught me. Her family—your family—has been making them for generations. She just showed me because she thought it was a hobby we could do together, but then I got kind of obsessed. And since I moved here in my twenties, I had no idea how I was going to earn a living. I just got a hundred percent focused on it, and luckily it worked out.”
“You made all of these?” she said, touching a tabletop lighthouse design constructed from mirrors and glass.
“Yep.”
“You’re seriously talented.”
A panel on the floor was one of the few monochrome pieces, all pale stones and white stained glass. A sheet of paper was taped to it: Glass and stone on panel, twelve inches by thirty-six inches, $1,600. The lawyer inside of her, the one who calculated her worth by time sheets and hourly rates, wondered how long it took to make one of these pieces. She asked Kelly.
“It always varies, depending on the size, the material, the design. My energy level. And I’m really busy right now—that’s where you come in. I’m making a surprise piece for Amelia.”
She unrolled a large sketch and set it on the table.
“It’s a Beach Rose Inn sign she can hang out front to replace the old one. My not-so-subtle hint that I want her to reopen next summer.”
“Is this a color legend?”
“Exactly. I’m going to fill in this entire sketch with colored pencil but I’m working off this for now. This shows the areas that will be tiles and smalti. The lettering is going to be all shells that Amelia has collected over the years, and then here will be a beach rose. These notes are my materials: sea glass, Venetian tiles, smalti, shells.”
She gestured for Marin to follow her to one of the shelves.
“All of these bins are filled with stuff Amelia found.”
The containers were labeled: ANGEL WINGS, MOON SNAIL, BLUE MUSSEL, SLIPPER SHELL. On the bottom shelf were mason jars filled with sea glass.
“She collected all of this stuff?”
Kelly nodded. “Every morning for years, she’s walked the beach looking for pieces to bring back to me.”
Marin decided she wanted to walk the beach looking for its treasures at least once before she left.
“That sounds like a great morning routine.”
“Personally, I like to work first thing in the morning—or very late at night. It’s when my mind is most open and creative.”
“I want to collect a few things to bring back to New York. To remind me of this trip.”
“Go along with Amelia tomorrow. I’m sure she’d love it. Okay, are you ready to get to work?”
“Yes,” Marin said, surprised by how excited she felt to do something productive.
“Okay, so you see these mosaics are constructed of hundreds of little pieces. Some are tiles, some are glass, some are smalti…all need to be cut. That takes time, and if you can do some of the cutting, that frees me up for working on the actual sign.”
“Don’t you have a lot of this stuff already cut? I mean, all these shelves…”
“I ordered specific materials for Amelia’s piece. Like this metallic smalti that’s too expensive to buy for no reason.”
“Smalti?”
“It’s special material produced in Venice just for mosaics. It gives us more options than tile because it has various opacities and the colors are extremely vivid. It arrives in sheets and has to be cut by hand.” She picked up the odd tool that looked like gardening shears with wheels at the top. “A wheel cutter. Amelia calls it a nipper.” She handed it to Marin. “Are you ready?”
“It’s worth a try.”
Blythe stood outside on her bedroom balcony hoping for decent reception and dialed Kip’s phone. Straight to voice mail. Undeterred, she called his office. His secretary started giving some song and dance about a meeting, but Blythe—uncharacteristically—cut her off and said, “Just get him on the line.”
“Blythe, this isn’t a good time,” Kip said when he picked up.
“Have you spoken to Marin?”
Kip sighed. “Not since the middle of last week. I’ve left messages on her phone. You said you were heading up to the city. Are you still with her?”
“Yes. Actually, I thought she should get away for a few days, so we’re in Cape Cod.”
“A change of scenery is probably good for her.”
“It hasn’t been good for her. She’s getting worse.” Of course, she was omitting a large piece of the Marin puzzle. It was impossible to convey Marin’s mental state without telling him the truth about what was going on. But she didn’t want to have that conversation over the phone.
“She’s had a rough few weeks. She’ll rally,” Kip said. “Do you want me to talk to her? Put her on the phone.”
“She’s locked in her room. She’s depressed. I’m really worried.”
Blythe realized that the only way Marin would accept the situation was if Blythe and Kip showed a united front. She would have to tell him the truth. What was the worst that could happen? He was filing for divorce. Their marriage was over. She didn’t want to hurt him, but if it meant saving Marin’s sanity, she’d do it.
Kip sighed. “When are you getting back? I’ll drive up and spend some time with her.”
“I think you should come out here.”
“To the Cape? Blythe, I’m bogged down here. I can’t just pick up and fly out there right now. Get her back to New York and I’ll talk some sense into her.”
“Kip, I realize we are getting divorced. I am not asking you for me, I’m asking you for our daughter. For once in your life, put family first.”