If I end up with trust issues, this is why.
Anyway, Mom did imply that she’d cool it with all the online hookups if we moved here. It’s not something we directly discussed, because we don’t talk about anything uncomfortable, so it wasn’t a firm promise. But she gave me a silent nod that said: I will not sleep with everyone in our small hometown, where people know us and our family, and gossip is currency. And I gave her a return nod that implied: Okay, cool, but mostly because I’m tired of you lying to me.
I can tell by the way she’s biting a hangnail that I’ve hurt her feelings by bringing this up right now—the forbidden subject of the dates she doesn’t really have. And because I’m always forced to be the adult in the room, I opt to cool things down and switch subjects before we end up in a fight before we even get into town.
“Now you’ve got me all freaked out about vipers and pits and black holes,” I say, trying for lighthearted. “Is it really going to be that bad here?”
“Worse, shutterbug. So much worse. It’s not too late. We can turn back around and go right back to Thrifty Books in Pennsylvania.”
Mom has managed every chain bookstore on the East Coast, along with some amazing indies … and a couple of complete hellholes. The one she just quit in Pennsylvania was in the hellhole category.
“You emailed your district manager that ‘Take This Job and Shove It’ song and walked out on your staff in the middle of your shift,” I remind her.
The corner of her mouth tilts up. “Okay, sure. Pennsylvania may technically be what people call a burned bridge. So we’ll drive straight through town and head down the coast to Connecticut instead. You liked Hartford, remember?”
“Too many murders, too expensive. We lasted five months and got evicted.”
“We could go farther south. Maryland?”
“Or we could just stay here in Rhode Island and do what we planned. Live in Grandma’s apartment rent-free for a year and save up money for Florida. It’s your dream, remember? Palm trees and white, sandy beaches? No digging cars out of snow?”
“Palm trees and white, sandy beaches … ,” she murmurs.
“And you promised I could finish high school here. Henry said—”
“Oh my God, Josie. Seriously? Don’t bring up your father when I’m in the middle of a panic attack.”
“Fine,” I say, protectively crossing my arms over the soft leather of my camera case. One of the few gifts he’s ever given me, the Nikon is my most prized possession … and a point of contention between Mom and me. My parents hooked up in college, when she was enrolled at a prestigious state art school for a couple of semesters. He was a thirty-something photography professor, and she was a rebellious nineteen-year-old student who did some nude modeling for him that turned into a one-thing-led-to-another situation.
I’m not sure how I feel about that, but I try not to think about it too much.
Regardless, they never lived together, much less married. And now Henry Zabka is a famous fashion photographer in Los Angeles. I see him every year or so. I think Mom wishes I would forget he even exists. “Look,” I tell her diplomatically. “There’s no need for panic. This is easy. It’s not a viper’s pit. Besides, even if it is, Evie is counting on us. She’s alone. Support Evie. Save money. Let me finish high school. Then you can head down to Florida, just like you’ve been dreaming.”
“I’m not going alone.”
I let out a nervous laugh and hope she doesn’t notice. “Both of us … Florida … yep. That was implied.” Wow, that was close. Gotta be more careful.
“Okay, you’re right. We can do this,” she says, calming down as gabled buildings and picket fences appear up ahead. “And Beauty is just a town, right?”
“Like any other.”
Only it isn’t. Not even close.
Beauty is a strange place with a long, dramatic history that stretches back to colonial America. It was founded in the late 1600s by a man named Zebadiah Summers, who helped King Charles III of England “purchase” the “goodly” waterfront land here from two warring New England tribes, the Narragansetts and Pequots. A large quarry of high-grade marble at the edge of town made the English settlers stinking rich. And the postcard-blue harbor—which stretches beyond our U-Haul windshield as Mom drives the curving main road around the coast—later attracted other members of New England high society, who built their summer homes here in the 1800s and helped make this one of the most affluent communities in Rhode Island.
Being a harbor town, Beauty has a lot of boating action. A private yacht club. Racing cups. Boating festivals … A public pedestrian path called the Harborwalk circles the water for several miles, and if you like sandy beaches and saltwater taffy, you’ll find that here too.
But it’s the kooky parts of Beauty that I like. Things like that the town nickname since the 1920s has been—no lie—“Clam Town,” because it has more fried clam shacks per capita than any other New England town. (Suck it, Providence!) Or that a slightly famous gothic nineteenth century American poet lived here and is now buried in Eternal Beauty Burial Grounds, a historical cemetery—and here’s the weird part—inside the grave of one of the original female colonists who was found to not be a witch when she drowned in one of those “if she floats, she’s a witch” tests given by Beauty’s early paranoid townspeople.
Graveyards and clam shacks aside, the beating heart of Beauty is its historic harbor district. Hazy childhood memories surface in the setting sun as Mom drives us past a horse-drawn carriage trotting alongside gas streetlamps. I crack my window and breathe in the familiar briny air. Along Goodly Pier, sailboats bob in their winter moors, and tourist shops along the waterfront begin closing up. Glassblowers and candlemakers sit across from a row of gated historical mansions, some of which are occupied by families whose kids go to Ivy League schools.
It’s another world here. A strange mix of money and weird.
We make our way to the southern side of the harbor, down a one-way street still paved with eighteenth-century granite setts. The South Harbor is the working- to middle-class side of town. It’s pretty here. Quiet. A few shops. Waterfront warehouses. But Mom parks the U-Haul in front of the best thing in the South Harbor.
The Saint-Martin family business.
SIREN’S BOOK NOOK
OLDEST INDEPENDENT BOOKSTORE IN THE SMALLEST STATE.
Our street-facing family shop, known to locals as “the Nook,” occupies the ground floor of a white bay-windowed house that’s on the National Register of Historic Places because of its Revolutionary War connection. A private living space is on the second floor—an apartment that’s accessible around back via an exterior flight of rickety wooden stairs above a three-hundred-year-old cobblestone alley. Mom and I lived here with Grandma until I was in sixth grade, but since Grandma Diedre and Mom do a lot of bickering every time they spend quality time together, we stay with Aunt Franny when we come to town, which isn’t often.
Still. The quaint shop looks the same.
Generations of Saint-Martins all lived in this one building.
A large, paned window holds a display of books about ships, and over the recessed doorway, a wrought iron mermaid holding an open book juts horizontally from a pole over the sidewalk.