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4
A cool breezedrifts off the water, gentling the summer heat. My car windows are open, letting in the rich loamy air and leafy sunshine smells of the countryside. I wind down the narrow road that edges the lake, the rippling blue water on one side and the cool, shaded forest on the other. I skate the middle, staying out of both.
A grey heron sails past, veering toward the lake. Her choice is easy. She’s a water bird—she’ll go to the water. Human choices aren’t so easily made.
Wouldn’t it be nice if we had the instinct of a heron? Then when we made a choice, for someone or against someone, for something or against something, we’d never have to doubt it.
We’d always know what we were meant to do.
I turn on the radio—classical—to tune out the piping bird calls and the roll of the waves. Then I let the sun stroke my face as the light feathers through the leaves, falling across the road.
Daniel and I made a deal. A bet. An agreement.
We’ll both open up. We’ll open ourselves to the possibility of finding someone. We’ll stop being so busy and so consumed by Abry and we’ll be open to finding a partner. Maybe even love.
I think he only agreed to do this because he’s worried about me. But I only agreed to it because I’m worried about him.
That’s the way with family though. Worry is the ticking second hand while love is the watch case holding everything together.
Anyway, whoever finds love first wins, and whoever doesn’t will have to do something they hate. For Daniel, that’s posing shirtless for an Abry billboard ad. For me, it’s taking a two-week no internet, no phone vacation at the beach.
I take a long sip of coffee—my third cup of the day. It tastes like cherries and roasted almonds and richly roasted beans. I swallow more from the steaming cup. I’m running on fumes and I have to help Mila with her spelling words for her test tomorrow.
The chateau is ahead, framed in the bright blue daylight. It’s nearly 6 p.m., but today is the summer solstice, which means the sun will stay high above for hours more. Sunlight slants down over the chateau’s dove-gray stone and spills over the two towers with their curved windows and high pointing roofs. Usually, when I round the bend and see the home my family has lived in for generations, I feel a ping of happiness.
But today that ping is popped when I see the cars lining the circular drive.
There’s Daniel’s BMW.
Fine.
Max’s AC Cobra—the red one he brings out on nice days.
Also fine.
And then there’s another car. A 1985 Vauxhall Cavalier. Bluish Gray. Rusted undercarriage. A cracked headlight. A bumper sticker that reads “Powered by Good Vibes.”
Not fine.
My mum’s back for the first time in years.
5
When I openmy front door, the wheezing sound of a kazoo fills the air and a handful of glitter confetti rains over me.
“Happy birthday!”
I blink and stare dumbly at my mum. She’s in a silver birthday-party hat and a yellow tie-dye party dress, and she’s tossing handfuls of multicolored glittery confetti into the air.
“Happy birthday, Moonbeam!”
The chateau smells like a birthday party. There’s the vanilla-and-sugar of chiffon, the tart lemony scent of curd, the mellow sweetness of clotted cream. There’s the sweet scent of chocolate melted into milk, simmering on the stove. And layering over it all, my mum’s favorite birthday surprise; orange-and-almond Victoria sponge.
I remember my fourth birthday, my fifth birthday, and my sixth birthday, and each of them smelled exactly like this.
Because my mum has been trying to find herself since before I was born, she’s never stayed still long enough to have a home. Instead we used to sleep on couches at her friends’ houses, floors of acquaintances’ flats, and makeshift tents in the fields outside Glastonbury Festival.
When I was very small and she said, “Moonbeam, I’m on a journey to find myself,” I believed she had literally lost a part of herself, like an arm or a finger or a toe. I’d scan her worriedly, wondering where her missing part could possibly be and how she could have misplaced it.
