Page 11 of Beautiful Place By the Sea

I nod quickly. “Okay, I can do that.”

“Excellent,” he says. “Give my best to your cousin.”

My eyes narrow. “What’s your best, exactly?”

He bursts out laughing, so loudly that a couple of customers by the children’s books turn around to stare.

“Friday’s going to be fun,” he drawls, grinning again.

My life is over. “I’ll let you get back to your pretentious man drivel.” I gesture to his notebook. “Good night, Oliver.”

I can still hear him laughing when the door jingles shut behind me.

On my way back to the rental, I grab a pizza from Ruggerio’s and hug it to my chest as I walk. I take the scenic route along the water, away from the throngs of sunburned tourists spiffed up in crisp white linen pants and nautical striped shirts after a full day of beach time.

One of the things I love most about Ogunquit is how everyone in town seems to have gotten the memo about maintaining lush gardens. Everywhere you look, stunning blue hydrangeas are fighting the jaw-droppingly gorgeous pink ones for your attention. Paths up to the bed-and-breakfasts are embellished with velvety roses in every color of the rainbow, and tall wildflowers act like homing beacons to fuzzy bumblebees and lacy butterflies along white picket fences. Annual beds filled with pansies, morning glories, and marigolds line the streets, split off from the sidewalks by flat gray stone walls. Even the grass itself is fluffy and verdant.

I hang a left and traipse across what might be the most magical footbridge on earth. It’s flanked on one side by flowers so beautiful I think they must have been planted by fairies, and on the other by the Ogunquit River, with the Atlantic sparkling beyond it over the swell of the beach itself. The beach separates the river and the ocean, changing from a thin strip of sand at high tide to a tremendous swath of paradise when the waves retreat.

Laurel and I spent our childhoods getting to the beach at low tide and setting up for the day, skipping back and forth between sand castles and wave hopping as the sun shifted unnoticed in the sky. When the tide encroached on our home base, we would shriek with glee, furiously digging a moat around our sand toys. We’d watch with feigned terror as wave after wave increasingly threatened our defenses, until finally, one bigger than all the rest whooshed in and drenched our towels in seawater.

Only then did we begrudgingly drag our buckets and shovels back 20 feet or so closer to the shore. We continued in this vein all day, every day, until the beach was but a shadow of its former self, shrinking into the coastline like it was shivering and needed to share the warmth of the land.

Sometimes, when the tide was high, we’d gather up our things and follow our parents around the curve of the sand to the side facing the river. By then, the water would’ve filled the valley, and families on tubes would float eagerly under the Beach Road bridge to the sheltered area behind the heights of the beach.

Some days we would hit up the river side at low tide first, to look for tiny crabs in and amongst the moist rocks. Laurel liked to chase me with the crustaceans she found. When she caught me, I preferred to grab the crabs and set them free.

Even though we only spent two weeks here every summer, that time adds up. At a fortnight for each of the first 28 years of my life, that makes more than an entire year spent watching these waves crash against the shore. Laurel, three years my junior, has had just a bit less. But I know this place lives in her soul just as much as it does mine.

I take a deep breath. It’s hard to be here without the rest of our family.

Because as much as this town means to me, I know it means even more to my dad. He and my uncle Gregory, Laurel’s father, are twins who grew up coming to the beach every year with my grandparents. I know losing Grandpa Charlie, and then Grandma Eleanor just a few short years later, has been horrific for my dad. And then the conflict with my mom took so much out of him, it seems like he’s a shell of his former self. But I just don’t understand why he stayed away this summer.

The waves call to me. I know they must call to him, too.

A warm breeze whispers across the end of my nose, and I pause for a moment in the middle of the bridge, hefting the pizza box onto my right hip while I take it all in.

At low tide, this view is very different. The Ogunquit River all but disappears, rushing back out to join the waves on the front-facing side of the beach. But now, when the ocean has nestled against the shore, the river swirls around the jut of land that is the beach itself.

I can see my family there, laughing on borrowed floats, desperately trying to control the direction of our drifting. Laurel and I having a splash battle in the shallows, our grandmother’s eyes filled with joy as she watches us over the top of her embroidery. Me, running up and down the water’s edge, arms outstretched like a tiny plane. Dashing straight into the arms of an elderly man who turns out not to be my grandfather, and being so embarrassed that I sprint away up the beach, refusing to leave our blanket for the rest of the day.

Snacking on soggy peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and blueberries, watching my grandmother’s eyes water when she talks about how her parents could never afford them, so they foraged wild ones whenever they took her and her sister, Janie, here to Maine for a getaway. They’d stay with a friend in town to save money, but it sounds like they had the time of their lives here, all those years ago.

So much history. So many memories.

The smell of pepperoni brings me back to the present, and I realize I should get back to the house before the pizza gets cold. Laurel was so excited to eat it—I feel like she would be exceptionally disappointed if her first non-ramen meal in months turned out to be room temperature.

With a sigh, I push off the fence with my left hand and re-hoist the pizza box to my hip. “Sayonara,” I whisper to the waves as I walk away.

When I get back to Beach Haven, Laurel is chopping vegetables in the kitchen, making a salad to what seems like an Alien Ant Farm playlist.

“Wow, that album takes me back,” I say, sliding the pizza box onto the counter.

She flashes a bright grin. “I thought nostalgia was what this summer was all about.”

My grandmother’s face flashes before my eyes. “I guess it is,” I agree.

“Lot of tourists clogging the sidewalks?” Laurel flips her hair over her shoulder as she turns to me.