The Cottage at Glass Beach by Heather Barbieri Read Free Book Online Page A

she’d been erased.”
    â€œOh,” Maire said, startled. “Well, then. I guess that gives us a place to start.” She pulled a photo album from the built-in bookcase and sat next to Nora on the couch. The album had a scarlet cover, worn down at the corners, the images within black and white. “Here are your grandparents with your mother and me on the beach, when we were girls.” The family resemblance was remarkable. Her mother faced the camera, a hand on her hip. “Bold as brass, as your grandmother used to say. Maeve wanted to be a pirate queen when we were little, until she realized it wasn’t as romantic a profession as it seemed, even if it had been possible for her to take up arms and sail away.”
    Maire flipped the page, the tissued inner leaves crinkling. “This one was taken when she was eighteen.” Maeve stood up to her thighs in the water, seemingly heedless of the waves lapping her dress. Her clothes clung to her curves. “She’d gone swimming in her skivvies that day. She couldn’t always be compelled to change into a bathing suit. She jumped in whenever she felt like it, heedless of the temperature, clothes and all. She wasn’t bothered by the cold like the rest of us.” In the photograph, Maeve’s eyes were dark, her brows too, skin radiant as pearl. Maire peeked from the edge of the scene, as if hoping to be noticed.
    â€œWas it difficult for you, being her younger sister?” Nora asked. “You were close in age.”
    Maire paused. “I loved her more than anyone in the world. But yes, I suppose it was hard, sometimes, being in her shadow. She didn’t mean to cast it. There it was, all the same, and I probably stood in it too much, when I should have moved and found my own light. That was my own fault, not hers. I was so quiet and hesitant in those years. I didn’t have her fire. She made things happen. I waited for them to happen.” And yet there were similarities too, as there are with sisters—the same gestures (they both tended to talk with their hands), the same musical laugh (though Maeve’s was heartier), the same brown eyes, courtesy of their father.
    She turned the page. “Here’s a picture of your mother and father, shortly after he came to the island.”
    â€œHow did they meet? He wouldn’t tell me anything.”
    â€œYour father arrived by accident,” Maire said. “His boat had been crippled in a storm. He sailed into port for repairs. We didn’t get many schooners passing through in those days. He was lucky to be alive. Men died that night. I imagine he thought Maeve was an angel, for he never took his eyes off her from the moment he set eyes on her, though there were other women who sought his attention.”
    â€œLike Maggie Scanlon?”
    â€œPerhaps.”
    â€œAnd my mother fell in love with him?”
    â€œI believe so. Caused a scandal, her falling for an off-islander. People rarely married anyone from away in those days, now either.”
    â€œWere they happy?”
    There were no simple answers, not when it came to Maeve. “Maeve was always something of a restless soul, but she settled down with your father, made a home in the cottage you’re staying in now, the cottage that is, by rights, yours.”
    â€œMine?”
    â€œYou’re the last surviving McGann, after me.” She hesitated a moment before continuing. “I’ve never seen Maeve as content as she was then. She was delighted when she learned she was pregnant with you.”
    â€œI was born here?”
    â€œOn the beach. Maeve had some odd notions as she got close to term. She insisted on giving birth in the ocean. Very nearly did, but we found her just in time.” She’d been pacing in the shallows, talking to herself. Maire hadn’t thought much of it at the time—it was a week before the due date, after all—until she heard Maeve cry