Free The Deep Blue Sea for Beginners by Luanne Rice Page A

knew how it went: you give the listing to an agent, and your family lawyer gets in touch with an auction house, to dispose of the contents of your family home. Because Lucy and I were so young, all this was handled by my grandmother’s lawyers. My father’s parents were dead, so even though he wasn’t Edith Nicholson’s kid, she saw to it for our sake, mine and Lucy’s. Suddenly I felt kind of terrible.
    “Are you okay?” she asked.
    “Yes,” I said. Another lie. I wasn’t okay. My stomach was churning, head spinning, with a general sense of despair rising up.
    Lucy and I shared this feeling quite often; I called it the sirocco, the hot, vicious wind that blows off the Sahara. Ironically, it was also the name of our grandmother’s yacht; I thought if I gave Lucy a name for the terrible feelings inside, it could help her. But it kind of backfired. She told me it reminded her that people and things we loved have been swept off this earth.
    “Well, I want to show you around the island, but maybe you should take it easy today,” she said. “Jet lag and all. We don’t have to be at Max’s till seven-thirty tonight.”
    “Will Rafe be there?” I asked.
    The color literally drained from her face. “How do you know about Rafaele?”
    “I met him on the rocks,” I said. “When I went for a walk before.”
    “Pell,” she said. “He’s very troubled. I know I can’t tell you what to do, but I think you should stay away from him.”
    “What do you mean, ‘troubled’?” I asked. If only she knew my friends back home: Travis and his sisters were good examples. Their family had been ripped apart; his older sister had had a baby at sixteen. She’d seen her father drown. Their younger sister, Beck, Lucy’s best friend, stole things. People who were lost and wounded found their ways to one another.
    “Rafaele’s had a lot of problems, including with the law,” she said.
    “He seemed nice,” I said. “He was rescuing starfish.”
    She narrowed her eyes. “Believe me, he’s not a rescuer.” Whatever the truth about Rafe, I could see that she believed what she was saying. It didn’t really matter; I was here for a specific reason, not to make new friends.
    “I think I’ll go read in my room,” I said, standing up.
    “Have a good rest,” she said.
    Pausing, I looked through the telescope. I loosened the knob, swung the scope to watch clouds move across the white face of Monte Solaro. A raptor circled a crevasse. Angling down, I saw the yellow boat heading out from the dock, into the bay. Max was at the wheel, Rafe in the bow, a third man in the stern with piles of fishing nets. I watched for a few moments, wondering what Rafe had done.
    Without the telescope, the boat looked tiny—a yellow speck with a white wake. Sunlight bounced off the endless blue ocean, ripples of silver, broken glass, spread out from Capri as far as I could see.
    The sight of water always soothed me, no matter how upset I felt. Maybe that’s why I wanted so much of it on the map of Dorset, the country my mother and I had invented. I could almost picture it, the carefully colored green countryside, the rivers, tributaries, coves, bays, and all of it, the green contours of Dorset, surrounded by an ocean. I could see it so perfectly because my other lie, the first one of the conversation, was that I’d thrown out the map. Of course I hadn’t.
    I never could.

    Lyra pulled out her sketchpad, incorporating two memories into her design, a garden for Amanda and Renata, two friends who lived near Sirens’ Rock. She drew white flowers that would glow under the light of a full moon. The summer after college, Lyra had seen a jardin de la lune in Paris, a moon garden full of white flowers. Later, on their honeymoon, she and Taylor had seen a moon gate.
    Honeymoon.
    The memory made Lyra close her eyes. Bermuda, Martin Cottages Resort, private pink-sand beach, white cottages with blue shutters. She and Taylor had spent two weeks in