Miracle Beach by Erin Celello

that Macy had never deciphered—leaving them or picking her own up—and if Regan deemed something urgent she would press “redial” until the person on the receiving end relented. It was a metaphor for how Regan ran the rest of her life. Macy pressed the green telephone icon to take the call.
    “Hi,” Macy answered.
    A din of noise greeted her on the other end. Garbled snippets of talk radio competed with shrieks of kids. Regan was always either trying to simultaneously conduct her three kids in an art project and make dinner, or she was rushing one of them to or from a lesson, game, or playdate. Regan was essentially a single mother, with a workaholic ghost of a husband. Except Craig worked for Goldman Sachs. He was an incredibly rich ghost.
    “Jacquie, sit down now! Sorry, Mace. I’m up to my eyeballs in sugar-crazed kids.” Before Macy could tell her not to worry about it, Regan continued on, talking right over Macy as she had been doing their whole lives. “Anyway, the girls are starting riding lessons—aren’t you proud? They need helmets, and there are just so many choices that I don’t know which one to get for them. I figured I’d check with you to see which ones would be best.”
    “I don’t know,” Macy said. “I’d—”
    “I mean, do I go for the most expensive one? Does a pricey helmet really offer that much more protection than a cheap one?”
    “I’d have to check,” Macy said. Regan had lived in Manhattan for six years and New Jersey for another thirteen. The region’s fast pace and brash directness that Macy found so charming in others, her brother-in-law included, took on a judgmental air in Regan.
    “How can you not know? Seriously, Kevin—get that out of your nose!”
    Macy liked to think that this—the parallel conversation Regan constantly had with her kids and anyone on the other end of her phone call—was the reason they didn’t talk often. In reality, when Regan gave birth to Kevin, nine years ago, it had simply become a convenient excuse for them both not to have to try so hard anymore.
    “I mean, isn’t this what you do for a living?”
    Macy explained that she hadn’t bought a new helmet in a few years, and pointed out that it had been much longer than that since she’d been in the market for a kid’s helmet.
    “I’ll check and get back to you,” Macy said. She didn’t want to start an argument with Regan. Not today.
    “Okay, but their first lesson is a week from Monday, and I’ll need some lead time to order them or pick some up, though I don’t know where you get riding helmets in New Jersey.”
    “You can order them from—”
    Macy fell quiet, sure that the squabbling of her two nieces and nephew in the background and Regan’s yelling at them to stop had drowned her out. Macy compared the chaos of Regan’s house with the relative silence of her own. If only she had been as brave as her sister. Macy found herself stifling a sob that had risen out of nowhere, hot and thick at the back of her throat.
    “Something wrong, Mace?” Regan asked.
    She doesn’t remember , Macy thought. It was inconceivable to her how this day that had loomed so large and threatening on her own horizon could be just another twenty-four hours to everyone else. This day that Macy had feared and steeled herself against and planned down to the minute was, for her sister, another in a long string of days in which dinner and e-mail and refereeing kids and researching riding helmets took top billing.
    “No,” Macy said. She took a sip of wine. A tiny bug had landed in the red liquid, fluttering hopelessly. Macy dipped a finger in and lifted it out, though it was probably already a goner. “Can I say hi to them?”
    Macy had met her nieces and nephew only a handful of times, and long ago, when they were much younger. She sent birthday presents and holiday cards. She tried to call them regularly. But those gestures were a cheap substitute for actual visits. Regan wouldn’t take