Between the Lighthouse and You by Michelle Lee

Author:Michelle Lee
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)

Alice

Making Peace Is Not like Making Your Bed

The sun is blistering when Dad and I take the golf cart over to the Mercurys’ for the deliveries. Our little roof gives some shade, but the light is slanting through the palm trees and hitting our shoulders. I feel burnt and raw. I’m glad Dad’s talking. Listening to him is so much easier than thinking about what I couldn’t write to Mom.

“I can’t get over this place,” Dad remarks as we bump down the brick-paved main street. The ride makes his voice jittery and more lighthearted.

“Without cars, it could be sixty years ago,” he continues, pointing toward a brick building, one side a faded advertisement for ELIXIR, the red paint barely proclaiming, MENTAL SUNSHINE! “People on Aviles do business with a handshake and a bit of advice. They keep everything. Maintain everything. Reminds me of my grandparents. They always made things last. Why throw perfectly good things away when you can fix them? In fact, I can remember this drawer they kept full of neatly folded recycled baggies. My nana would wash them out, dry them, and reuse them.”

“Like lunch baggies? Ew.” I’m temporarily moved out of my mood to comment. Having PB&J in the same baggie where tuna or turkey once lived, rinsed out or not, is definitely gross.

“Well, maybe the baggie example isn’t the greatest.” Dad laughs. “But they really do extend the shelf life of things around here. Like it’s their duty. Responsibility.”

I murmur agreement as we pass the grocery store. HENRY WINKS scrolls across the front sign in curly red letters, like the writing on a soda bottle when Nana was a kid. No, Aviles Island is not a hot spot paradise for tourists, but it’s sort of reassuring the way things haven’t changed. Not like home in the suburbs, where you can’t keep track of all the new shops and neighborhoods and restaurants cramming every corner. Where we have so much going on, we stop paying attention. Here, riding around slowly in a borrowed golf cart, we can see so much up close. And as we drive out of the town, nothing comes between us and fresh air, tiny pink wildflowers, and the ocean. When I catch a glimpse of the water just right, it sparkles like solid happiness. Where magic lives.

Might live.

Might not live.

The golf cart bumps over a small stick, and I jostle against Dad’s arm. A question tumbles out of me before I can stop it. “If you wrote a message to Mom, what would you say?”

“That’s a tough one.” Dad gives me an awkward, even pained smile. “From the details people here have shared with me, their messages are so normal, like an ongoing conversation. Like no one is really gone from their world. But your mother … she’s been gone from our world a long time now. I guess I’d try to catch her up on everything you girls have been doing, how you’ve grown. What she’s missed.” His expression becomes a little reluctant, cautious.

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