The Cottage at Glass Beach by Heather Barbieri Page A

pan coated with singed spaghetti sauce. She’d been having trouble keeping her mind on things lately. She felt at home at the cottage, but uneasy too. The place hadn’t proven to be quite the refuge she expected. It raised questions, the little girl she once was falling into step alongside her, in double exposure.
    â€œI’m right,” Ella said. “You just don’t want to admit it.”
    â€œYou’re like a dark cloud that rains on everything.”
    â€œRain’s good. It’s cleansing. It makes things grow,” Ella replied.
    â€œNot the hard kind. The kind that makes mud and floods. The kind that beats things down and drowns people.”
    â€œWhat are you quarreling about?” Nora sensed it was time to intervene, before the conflict escalated any further.
    â€œRain, sort of,” said Ella.
    â€œLeave it to you two to find an argument concerning something as innocuous as rain. Sometimes I think we should rechristen the cottage the Bickerage, with the squabbling that’s been going on around here lately.”
    The girls fell silent, thinking perhaps of their father, who when they argued in his presence at home might stage a mock mediation, wearing a funny hat or blowing a horn left over from a New Year’s Eve party, assuming the persona of a comical judge, Hermunculus A. Budge (“That’s Judge Budge to you”), dissolving their conflicts into laughter.
    â€œYour move,” Ella said.
    â€œThere’s no move I can make.”
    â€œIt’s your turn. You have to—unless you want to forfeit.”
    â€œCunninghams never give up.”
    Their father’s words again. He was everywhere, in everything. Nora couldn’t pretend he wasn’t. She scrubbed and scrubbed until her shoulder ached, her fingertips pruned. He persisted in her thoughts, in her dreams, her feelings for him enduring, in fragments, along with the anger, the hurt, almost against her will.
    After much deliberation, Annie removed a wooden piece from the game. The tower teetered one way, then the other. She flapped her hands in the air around the structure in a panic. “No!”
    â€œDon’t touch the other pieces. You can’t touch them, only the one you’re taking out.”
    â€œI know!”
    The tower tumbled onto the table with a clatter. “I hate this game.” Annie kicked a rectangular block across the room.
    â€œThat’s because you always lose,” Ella said. “You have to have a strategy.”
    â€œYour strategy is going first. You always go first.”
    â€œThe privilege of the firstborn.”
    â€œIt’s not fair.”
    Ella leaned forward, her jaw thrust out. “Life isn’t fair.”
    â€œEl, that’s enough. And Annie, don’t kick the game pieces,” Nora said.
    The lights flickered.
    â€œIs the power going out?” Annie asked.
    â€œIt might,” Nora said.
    â€œBrilliant,” Ella grumbled. “Now I get to freeze to death and stub my toe in the dark.”
    â€œIt’s not that cold. You can’t even see your breath.”
    â€œWe have enough firewood for tonight,” Nora said, though they’d need to restock. She’d have to bring more driftwood up to dry. “And candles if it does. Aunt Maire has a generator. We could always head over there.”
    â€œI don’t want to go out in that storm, thank you very much,” Ella said. “I’d be soaked in a second.” Raindrops streaked the windowpanes, illustrating her point. It had been blustery all evening. “Why couldn’t we have gone someplace warm, like the Caribbean?”
    Where they’d been planning a family vacation that winter, until the trouble started, redirecting their itinerary, on and off the map.
    â€œThe storm should blow through soon,” Nora said. “The moon is already putting in an appearance.” Indeed it swept across the roaring surf at