“Hey, guys,” Kit said. She was carrying a rainbow-striped beach bag. She slid it off her shoulder and plunked down on the grass beside Lucy. “Am I late? Have you been here long? Did I miss anything?”
Lucy lowered her hands. She’d been practicing her duck calls, blowing through a blade of grass pressed between her thumbs. “Nope. Haven’t missed a thing.”
Colin looked up from his shovelling. “You’re coming here pretty often now, huh?”
Kit tilted her head. “You got a problem with that?”
“Noooo, not at all,” Colin said, giving Lucy a giant eye roll that he didn’t bother to hide.
“Don’t mind him,” Lucy said to Kit. “I think he’s got sunstroke.”
“We can only hope, right?”
“Meanie,” Lucy said.
A serious look came over Kit’s face and she inched herself a little farther back from the hole. She gestured for Lucy to follow. Lucy did.
“I don’t mean to be mean,” Kit said softly.
“Oh, I know you’re only joking.”
“Because…well, about the jewellery store.”
Lucy frowned. “What about it?”
“I kind of feel bad.”
“Why? You weren’t mean.”
“I could tell you were sort of upset even before we went into the village. I probably should have just minded my own business and not been all bossy about going to Jacobson’s.”
“That’s okay,” Lucy said, trying to sound casual.
“Mom says I can be really bossy sometimes.”
Lucy smiled, imagining what Colin would have said to that if he’d heard.
“So maybe we should just put the whole necklace thing on the back burner for a while,” Kit said.
“Really? You seemed pretty gung-ho to solve the mystery.”
“Oh, I still am. But it’s when you stop looking for something that you find it.” Kit shrugged. “That’s another thing Mom says.”
“Okay.” Lucy didn’t feel so sure.
“Look.” Kit pulled her bag closer. “I brought all my mags.” She started taking them out one by one. “Got Teen, 16, Tiger Beat, Seventeen…we could look through them while Colin digs.”
“Cool,” Lucy said, fanning out the stack. “And perfect timing. Josie got some Campbell’s Soup recipe book in the mail and she’s determined to try out all the recipes. I need to spend as little time at the house as possible.”
Kit’s eyes got big. “Mom got the same one. Stay away from the Peachy Chicken. Cream of chicken soup and canned peaches do not go together. I don’t care what anyone says.”
“Thanks,” Lucy said. “I’ll be on the lookout for that one.”
“I brought my DoodleArt, too.” She dug a cardboard cylinder from her bag. “There’s one in here that’s all butterflies.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. I noticed your necklace when you came to my house, and then you had a butterfly T-shirt on yesterday with butterfly barrettes. So, I dunno. I figured you had a thing for butterflies.”
Lucy touched a finger to the butterfly hanging from her neck.
Kit pulled a piece of paper out of the tube and held it out. “I haven’t started it yet. You can have it if you want.”
“Thanks. I do have a thing for butterflies.” Lucy unrolled the paper and stared at the black-and-white print. She felt bad for all the times she’d thought Kit was a bit of a nutjob. She wasn’t so sure she would have picked up on all the butterfly stuff if she’d been in Kit’s place. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah, knock your socks off.” Kit turned the tube upside down and shook the markers out onto the grass. “Just so you know, though, the pink one is all dried up.”
“What are you guys talking about?” Colin came to the edge of the hole.
“Kit brought stuff to do,” Lucy said. She picked a magazine and held it up. “I’ll read to you aloud.”
“Don’t bother,” he scoffed. “It’s all junk.”
“Hey!” Kit said. “There are some great articles in these!”
“Okay, okay.” Lucy put up a hand. “I’ll only read you something if it’s really, really interesting.”
Colin muttered under his breath and moved to the other side of the hole.
Lucy flipped her magazine open to an article on the dangers of hitchhiking. When she’d finished and vowed to herself to never hitchhike, she leaned over to see what Kit was reading. Kit was poring over a glossy foldout picture. “I just love Shaun Cassidy,” she sighed.
Lucy liked the other Hardy Boy, Parker Stevenson, better, even though his eyes were too close together. Roberto’s eyes were close together too.
They passed the next half hour flicking through the magazines, discussing the latest fashions and movie star gossip. Colin kept on digging, but every once in a while he’d ask who or what they were talking about.
Then, as Lucy was memorizing a list of pointers on “How to Pick the Right Perm for You,” the now-familiar smell of cigarette smoke wafted through the air.
There was a rustle of leaves as Josie came around the corner. “You three have been sitting out here in the sun too long,” she said. “You’re getting brown as berries. Go down and get yourselves wet.”
What? Berries aren’t brown. Lucy shook her head. “It’s okay. We’re fine.” She was trying to figure out if she should get a perm.
Josie looked down at her.
“It’s okay. We’re fine,” Lucy repeated, exaggerating her words.
“I know what you said. But it wasn’t a question.” Josie stubbed out her cigarette. “Get down to the water. Tide’s about halfway.”
Kit jumped to her feet. “I’m ready.” She snapped the strap of her bathing suit underneath her T-shirt and nudged Lucy with her foot. “Got your suit on?”
“Yes.” Lucy sighed and got up as well. She couldn’t decide who was bossier, Kit or Josie. “Come for a swim, Colin!” she called out.
“Can’t,” he answered.
Lucy turned to Josie, pointed at Colin, and shook her head.
“Colin!” Josie jammed her hands onto her hips. “Don’t make me come over there and kick your arse.”
Colin’s head whipped up. “Huh? What?”
“She’s going to kick your arse if you don’t come for a swim,” Kit explained.
“Jeez, all right already.” He pulled himself up out of the hole and came over to join them.
Kit fanned a hand in front of her nose. “You need a swim more than anyone.”
Colin lifted his arm and sniffed his armpit. “Yeah, you’re right.”
As they followed Josie down the lane Lucy couldn’t help notice Colin had an odd look on his face. “You don’t smell that bad,” she assured him.
“No, it’s not that. It’s Josie’s dress.”
Josie was sporting a sundress patterned with orange, lemon, and lime slices. It was pretty understated by Josie’s standards. “What’s wrong with it?”
“I think it’s the same as our new kitchen curtains.”
“That wouldn’t surprise me.”
After getting dunked, Lucy stood waist deep in the water. It was so clear she could see right to the bottom. She watched a hermit crab as it scuttled along the side of her foot and across the ripples of the sandbar. She could feel the sand slowly creep over her toes, and the soothing sensation of the waves as they gently tugged her forward then pushed her back. It was like being rocked to sleep.
Kit swam up behind her. “You wanna look for beach glass?”
Colin was doing underwater handstands and Josie was stretched out on the air mattress she always left stuffed under the bottom step. She’d run aground in the shallow water and there was a plume of smoke floating above her. “Sure,” Lucy said.
They waded ashore, stooped over, and began to slowly shuffle along the water’s edge.
“So you collect beach glass too?” Lucy asked.
“Yup,” Kit said. “For Mom. She pays me.”
“She pays you?”
“She has this giant bowl shaped like a seashell. She thought it would look cool filled with beach glass. I get a nickel for white, a dime for green and brown, and a quarter for blue. It’s not glamorous, but it keeps me in candy.” She stopped as she spied a piece of white and tucked it in her fist.
“I really want to find blue,” Lucy said. Josie had given her a pickle jar. So far she’d managed to cover the bottom. “There’s a jar at home on our kitchen windowsill with only blue. It was my mom’s. I want to try to fill it.”
“Oh, here, then.” Kit pressed a triangle of blue glass into Lucy’s hand.
“No, no. I didn’t mean for you—”
“Relax, cuz. There will always be more glass.”
Josie placed a dish of something on the table in front of Lucy.
Lucy eyed the plate warily. Please don’t let it be Peachy Chicken. She picked up her fork and slowly pushed the mystery food around. Some kind of bean, chunks of…beef? “What is it?”
“Mexican Fiesta Beans,” Josie announced proudly. “Figured it wouldn’t kill us to try something exotic.”
Are you sure?
“I think I may have scorched it on the bottom,” she continued. “If you come across any bits of black, just pick them out.”
Lucy nodded grimly.
“It doesn’t look much like the picture in the book.” Josie frowned. “Maybe I shouldn’t have stirred in all that Cheez Whiz. That was my own personal touch.”
Yuck. “I’m not that hungry,” Lucy said, glad Josie couldn’t hear her stomach growling.
Josie raised a forkful to her mouth, then set it back down. She scrunched up her nose and pushed the dish away. “Maybe exotic isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. How does cinnamon toast sound?”
Lucy smiled. “Perfect.”
It was when she was fastening her butterfly necklace the next morning that Lucy remembered her dream from the night before. She had been wearing one of the emerald necklaces. Someone had been standing behind her. Even though she couldn’t see her face, she was sure it was her mom. She asked Lucy to take it off, but every time she did, another one appeared around her neck. Spooky.
She headed outside, the screen door slamming behind her. Colin wasn’t going to be at the hole. He had to babysit the twins while his mom went to the Co-op. And because Lucy didn’t have anything better to do, she had agreed to help him sort and hang all his photos in his room. His mom had been nagging him and threatened that he wasn’t allowed to leave the house again until it was done.
The twins were running around in circles and waving bubble wands through the air when Lucy entered the yard. Their faces were already covered in chocolate and it was only nine thirty.
Colin was waiting for her on the front step. “Oh Henrys,” he explained. “Breakfast of champions.”
Lucy laughed and followed him into the house and up the stairs. “Don’t worry about Kit,” she said, knowing full well he hadn’t given her a thought. “She went into Truro with her mom.”
“What?” He stopped on the stairs and turned. “Oh, right. Kit. Yeah, I was worried.”
She gave him a shove.
“Wow,” she said, entering his room. “You’ve got a lot of stuff.” Piles of framed pictures lay on the floor and a bunch leaned against the wall. “How do you want to do this?”
“I dunno. Hang them on that wall?” he pointed.
Lucy shook her head. “We can’t just hang them willy-nilly. Let’s at least map out some kind of arrangement.” She knelt down on the floor.
He sighed heavily and crouched beside her. “Can’t you just do it? Hang them any way you—”
“Hey. Is this you?” Lucy picked up a picture and looked at it closely. It was Colin on a sailboat.
“Yeah. And my boat. We had to sell it before the move,” he said wistfully. “Dad promised to put the money towards a new one. Won’t be until next summer, though.”
“You sort of look like you know what you’re doing,” she joked.
“I did. I do. I can teach you if you want,” he offered. “Like, if you come back next summer.”
It hadn’t occurred to Lucy that she might come back. “Maybe.” She spread out some more of the pictures. “Wait. What’s this?”
Colin frowned. “Oh, that one shouldn’t be here; it goes in the den.”
It was a large black-and-white framed photo of a huge, elegant building. There were a ton of people in assorted uniforms lined up on the sweeping front lawn. “Is it a hotel?” Lucy asked.
“It’s the resort my parents worked at out west.”
Lucy’s eyes scanned the picture, picking out bellboys, maids, cooks, waitresses, even a tennis instructor. “Your mom and dad are in here?”
Colin leaned over her shoulder. “Yeah. There’s Mom”—he tapped his finger on the glass—“and there’s Dad.”
Esther looked younger, but pretty much the same as she did today, except for a different hairstyle and cat-eye glasses. His father looked like a tall gangly kid. “Gosh. How old were they?”
He shrugged. “It was right after high school, I think, so I guess they would have still been teenagers. I’m getting a Popsicle, want one?”
“Sure.” Lucy continued to study the picture. How old are you when you finish high school? Seventeen? Eighteen? She couldn’t imagine picking up and moving so far away from home just a few years from now. There was a bit of silvery writing at the bottom of the photo, but it was partially covered by the frame. She could see the tops of numbers. Bet it’s the date. Placing her hand on the back of the picture, she slid it up slightly. Yup. October 1, 1961. Lucy’s mom was born in 1943, so assuming Esther was about the same age, that would make her only eighteen. That’s young! Lucy set the photo by the door to go back downstairs. But maybe not in those days.
“Here.” Colin stuck an orange Popsicle in her face.
“Thanks.” She broke it in half and pulled one stick out of the paper sleeve. “Your dad’s a chef, right?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s he going to do when he gets here?”
“Not sure. Pictou Lodge is the only sort of fancy place around here. Actually, I think he and Mom want to open their own place.”
“In River John?”
“That’s their big plan.”
“You could work there part-time. That would be awesome.” Lucy was jealous. “All I’ll ever get to do is babysit.”
“I’d rather be sailing.”
Lucy turned her attention back to the pictures on the floor. “This one’s a perfect square,” she said, picking it up. “Maybe it should go in the middle.” She peeled off a stray piece of packing paper. It was a picture of Colin’s family posing on a wharf beside his boat, but there was an extra person in the photo. Lucy kept blinking as if her eyes were playing tricks on her. “Is that…my mom?”
“Yeah. I took her out sailing.” He said it as if it was the most natural thing in the world.
Lucy leaned back against the bed. “What?”
Colin was trying to suck some Popsicle drips off his shirt. “I think she was really keen on learning.”
“You sailed with my mom?”
“Yeah.”
“When?”
“Well…in the summers. First time was in a pram though, so it hardly counts.”
Why don’t I know this? Where was I that—those—summers? “Hold on. You said summers, plural.”
“She hasn’t been for a couple years, but yeah, she visited in the summers.”
“How many summers? Since when?”
“I dunno.” Colin scratched the back of his head. “Since I was a kid?”
“Since you were a kid? Why didn’t you ever tell me this?”
“I did.”
“No, you didn’t!” Lucy said sharply.
“Oh.” He looked at her blankly. “Well, didn’t you know? It’s not like it’s a secret or anything.”
Lucy racked her brain. Her mom did used to travel a bit. She went to writing workshops, retreats, stuff like that. But she never said anything about visits to Esther, or sailing with Colin. How could there be another thing she didn’t know about her mom? Was it possible her mom had said something, and Lucy just hadn’t paid attention? Lucy hoped so.
Colin balled up his Popsicle wrapper. “Are you okay? You look kind of weird.”
“Uh, yeah. She, um, just, I don’t think she ever mentioned it. Visiting you guys.”
“They were best friends,” Colin said, lobbing his wrapper into the garbage can. “Your mom came to visit. No big deal.”
“You’re right.” Lucy swallowed down some orange goo stuck in her throat. “No big deal.”
So why hadn’t Esther ever come to visit them?