Miracle Beach by Erin Celello

Author:Erin Celello
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2011-06-21T04:00:00+00:00

Magda pulled her car into the gravel parking lot, which was little more than a widening of the road’s shoulder. The air hung heavy and still, without even a rumor of a breeze, and she had driven down Lost Dauphin Road with all four windows down. The wind in her hair, the fact that it was after ten o’clock at night and she had nowhere to be and no one waiting on her to be there—it all felt scintillatingly good.

She looked in both directions before crossing the road to the shore of the Fox River, even though she would have known without looking that a car was on its way by the swath any headlights might have cut through the dark.

A thin line of young-looking trees stood guard on the river’s bank. Not much privacy, but no matter. Magda unbuttoned her blouse, slipped her capri pants over her hips, and kicked off her sandals. The moon fell on her like soft stage lighting, and made the river’s still surface look like a giant serving tray. She picked her way over gravel and through long licks of grass and weeds. At the river’s edge, she dipped one foot into the water and found the temperature to be nearly warm to the touch. Magda took a few steps in and then dived under. She surfaced, flipped to her back, and looked up at a star-studded sky.

The water was the same temperature as the night air, giving Magda the distinct feeling of floating, almost apart from her body. Freedom, she thought. This was freedom at its most basic level. Primitive, natural, solitary. Suddenly she didn’t feel so far from her teenage self, the “her” defined not by her relationships to other people—friend, wife, mother—but by what she wanted out of life. And what she wanted, at that exact moment, was to pucker up and suck the very marrow right out of it.

There was so much she could do, so much she could explore. So much she could learn. Do. Learn. Explore. Discover. Do. The words lapped at her like gentle waves. She could finally visit Greece. And not just visit, but stay: six days, six months, six years. It no longer mattered. She could pick up tomorrow and see the Eiffel Tower. She could eat pasta carbonara in Rome, paella in Valencia, pad thai in Bangkok. She had always, inwardly, fancied herself a child of the world. But outwardly, she had been tethered. She had been the mother to a child she had loved as if he were the whole world. She had partnered with a man who had been most interested in bringing the whole world to her, in creating their own little life together. Each of those roles had had little to do with what she longed, in her heart, to do. It seemed almost silly when Magda ran through it in her head: trade a good man for a few good international trips? But it was more than that. She and Jack were different people at the core.

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