Maine - J. Courtney Sullivan [143]
As she crossed the Piscataqua River Bridge, which connected New Hampshire and Maine, she thought of Pat’s favorite road trip game: whoever spotted the bridge first would get a quarter. When her kids were small, you’d think that quarter was a hundred-dollar bill, the way they hooted and hollered and fought and accused one another of cheating. (There’s no way you saw the bridge yet—we’re still in Boston!)
When Pat tried the game on the grandchildren the previous summer, Foster said, “What do we win if we see it?”
“A quarter!” Pat had said excitedly.
Ann Marie glanced into the rearview mirror, to see her six-year-old grandson reaching down to the floor. “But I just found two quarters right here under the mat,” he said. Then he and Maisy started playing their handheld video games and didn’t say a word until they reached Cape Neddick. Ann Marie knew she should be thankful for the peace and quiet, but she almost wanted to grab their faces and tilt them upward, holding them in place. Were kids these days too busy to look out a car window and daydream?
She turned off the highway and onto Route 1, where you still saw gas stations and the big Shop ’n Save and traffic lights every quarter of a mile. But after five minutes, she was in Ogunquit, where the streets were lined with gift shops and cafés. She followed the road to Cape Neddick, and within a couple of minutes she passed all the familiar houses and the big dilapidated barn at the end of Whipple Road. She looked out over the water, at the sailboats glistening white in the sun, under a cloudless blue sky. She had never loved a place as much.
When she arrived at Briarwood Road, she pressed harder on the gas. It was nearly ten. Alice would just be arriving at church. That gave Ann Marie a couple of hours to get settled in at the cottage and make them some lunch, and maybe she’d have a bit of extra time to get to work on her dollhouse curtains.
Her car zipped down the sandy street, pine trees blocking out the daylight. And then she had arrived, the sight of the cottage like seeing an old friend. Beside it stood the big house, and down below was their beach, empty, ready for her. She felt a giddy rush as she got out of the Mercedes.
Ann Marie opened the trunk and gathered her dollhouse gear first. She held the sewing machine in one hand, and hooked the heavy beach bag full of fabric over her free arm. Then she sort of scooped up her ribbons and paint and nudged them to the top of the pile. She was going only twenty feet, so she might as well take as much as she possibly could.
She pushed the cottage door open with her hip. It was never locked. She crossed the screen porch and then stepped into the front hall, inhaling the familiar scent of ocean mixed with the old, musty smell of the house itself.
She moved toward the living room, thinking that it was actually nice to be alone, and that’s when she saw her niece sitting at the dining table in her underpants and a Kenyon Lacrosse T-shirt, typing away at her laptop. She looked chunkier than usual.
“Maggie.” Ann Marie said it softly, so as not to startle her, but the girl gasped and clutched her stomach anyway.
“Oh my God, you scared me!” Maggie said. She climbed to her feet, smiling sheepishly. She reached for a pair of shorts that lay on the floor and pulled them on.
“I wasn’t expecting anyone. Can I help you with that stuff?” Maggie asked. She looked it over. “What is that stuff?”
Ann Marie dropped everything in her arms onto the table, which was already strewn with papers and books.
“What are you doing here, dear? I thought you were going back to New York on the fourteenth.”
“I decided to stay a while longer,” Maggie said. “Didn’t Grandma tell you?”
“No. No, she didn’t.”
“Are you just dropping this off?” Maggie said, gesturing at her dollhouse supplies.
Ann Marie took in a deep breath. It wasn’t Maggie she was angry with;