Sea Change Read Free Page B

into the large foyer. A tingle of eagerness raced through me. Then the toe of my sneaker caught on a loose floorboard and I tripped. Sea legs, I thought. To steady myself, I grabbed hold of a flat cardboard sheet that was propped against a wall, waiting to be turned into a box.
    “It’s a wreck,” Mom warned me, shutting the door. “Everything’s ancient and falling to pieces. There’s no TV, no Internet, and it’s a miracle there’s cell reception.” She tutted as she set my duffel bag on a claw-footed chair. “Some gift!”
    I usually shared Mom’s taste for sleek, modern design—our apartment in Riverdale was all glass and steel gray—but there was something beautiful about the foyer’s dark wood paneling and the frayed lace curtains over the windows. Gilt-framed seascapes hung on one wall, and another wall was covered in peeling blue wallpaper patterned with tiny sea horses. History seemed to breathe in each corner of the house, from the twisting wooden staircase to the cut-glass chandelier.
    I was reminded of how I often felt when I walked into my high school. Over the entrance hung an enormous color mural featuring scientists through the ages: Galileo, Copernicus, Marie Curie. School legend had it that the money used to pay for the mural was supposed to go toward a pool. I would haveloved being able to swim every day, but I loved the mural more: It made me feel like I was part of something bigger, a tradition of inventors who’d inherited the lessons of those who came before them.
    “Welcome to The Mariner, Miranda,” Mom said softly as she flipped a switch to turn on the ceiling fans. Her gaze was on me, and I wondered if she was a little bit amazed to see me standing there—her new life suddenly inserted into her old one.
    As I walked up to a coatrack in the shape of an anchor, I felt a surge of wonder. Was this really the house where Mom had slept and eaten back when she was just Amelia Blue Hawkins, and not my mother? Had an adolescent Mom strolled down this very hall, her sandals skimming over the faded green compass painted onto the floor?
    I shivered. What was I doing, conjuring phantoms? I never let my imagination roam so freely. When Mom set her hand on my back, I started violently, and she laughed.
    “Whoa, there! I was just going to ask you if fresh fish sounds good for dinner. I got grouper at the market and was going to grill it up with corn on the cob.”
    “Sounds great,” I answered truthfully, my stomach growling. I was surprised that Mom was going to cook; at home, we were all about Thai takeout.
    “In the meantime, I’ll prepare some sweet tea to tide us over,” Mom said. “Why don’t you relax on the back porch and I’ll meet you out there?”
    I nodded. “Sweet tea” was what Mom called iced tea with two heaping spoonfuls of sugar; it was one of the few Southernisms that lingered in her speech. Most of the time, Mom sounded like a clipped, crisp Northeasterner; she said that she’d shed her Georgia accent as soon as she walked into her freshman dorm at Yale, which was also where she met Dad.
    Mom pointed me in the direction of the living room, where a pair of French doors faced the ocean, and then she bustled off toward the kitchen, which was past the stairs.
    I padded into the living room, passing antique sofas, the stuffing bleeding out of their backs. I could feel myself starting to unwind from the day. I wandered over to the marble mantelpiece and studied the two framed photographs that were perched there.
    The first one showed a family grouped outside The Mariner: a shapely brunette woman—Isadora; a distinguished-looking bald man—Jeremiah; two girls; and a boy. My heart thrummed when I realized that the littlest girl in a starched pink dress, holding a parasol over her light-brown head and scowling, was none other than Mom. Which meant that theother girl—grinning and frizzy-haired—was Aunt Coral, and the boy—crossing his eyes for the camera—was Uncle