Miracle Beach by Erin Celello Page A

them to British Columbia. She said it was too expensive to fly the whole family west, and Macy would bite her tongue as Regan switched subjects to their Hamptons share or Craig’s promotion or how they were thinking of moving back into the city but just couldn’t afford a place with space enough for all of them. The last time Macy had seen the kids, four years ago, she had discovered the real reason. After a late-night talk over strong gin and tonics that Craig had mixed for them before going to bed, Regan looked at Macy and said, “You remind me so much of her.” Then she added, “Too much,” quietly and with her head turned away from Macy. Even at a whisper, those two words were an accusation leveled at Macy like a pair of arrows. The next year, when Martine suggested going east for the Hampton Classic, Macy begged off. “It’s just another horse show,” she told him. “Nothing worth going all that way for.”
    “The kids? Oh, maybe later, okay? I wanted to call quickly, while I was thinking about the helmets, but I’m just getting dinner on the table, and you know how hard it is to get them all to sit down and eat at the same time.”
    Macy didn’t, actually. “Regan, can’t I say hi to them while you’re finishing up? Maybe put them on speakerphone.”
    “It’s really not the best time. When you have kids you’ll understand,” Regan said. It was one of her go-to phrases. Macy had no doubt her sister loved being a mom and that she was good at it. But she couldn’t help suspect that part of what Regan loved about motherhood was pointing out how busy, demanding, and full her life was in comparison to everyone else’s, Macy’s in particular. She had assumed, clearly in error, that her status as a newly minted widow might exempt her from Regan’s barbs for the time being.
    “Fine,” Macy said. She rested an elbow on one knee and her forehead in her hand. She noticed that the bug she had rescued from her wine was still perched on her jeans leg, trying to get its wings working.
    “Macy, don’t sulk. It doesn’t become you. Oh, shit, Claudia just smeared hoisin sauce in Jacquie’s hair; I’ve gotta go. Talk soon!”
    And then she was gone.
    Macy shut her phone and tossed it on the blanket beside her. She watched the bug on her leg flutter and struggle. It did a quick spin, and suddenly lifted up, up, up, until it blended into thin air and she could no longer see it.
    Macy scanned the water, left to right, straining her eyes for the glint of light off a bottle. But the sun hung low in the sky, and it bounced rays off the water so that even if a giant vanity mirror were floating out there, much less an empty champagne split, it would be nearly impossible to tell from her perch.
    She picked up her glass of wine, and then, thinking that her walk might take a while, poured herself a little extra. Macy walked toward the water and stopped where it met the sand, suddenly aware that she was bringing glass into the water and feeling like maybe she shouldn’t. But whole ships went down in these waters, she reasoned with herself; a little broken glass wasn’t going to hurt the ocean any.
    Once Macy located the sandbar she walked out onto it, her direction steady and unhurried.
    You’re a madwoman , she said to herself.
    But what if? she answered.
    Each year, on their walk down to this spot and out into the water, champagne splits in hand, Nash would tell Macy one message-in-a-bottle story. Macy never gave them much thought, instead chalking them up to his encyclopedic memory for totally useless information.
    There was the Swedish sailor who, tired of the unchanging views of water and his shipmates, wrote a note “to someone beautiful and far away,” threw it overboard, and married the daughter of the Sicilian fisherman who found it.
    There was the Japanese sailor who was shipwrecked on an island with forty-three others and no freshwater, and realized, as he watched them each die from starvation and