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

bathing suits and bare feet. They had made it through the huge wedding; her mother had tried to get them to go to her friend’s palazzo in Portofino, but Taylor had stood up to her.
    He’d found the cottages in a guidebook, the way normal people traveled, the antithesis of Alexander Baker, and Lyra had felt so grateful. But their first night in Bermuda, in bed, Lyra had an allergic reaction. She was itchy and embarrassed; she couldn’t stop scratching. She was sensitive to certain products, so the next day Taylor asked the manager if the laundry could try something else. Second night, new detergent, same rash. It was mostly terrible, but slightly hilarious—she was spending their honeymoon in hives.
    Taylor rinsed the sheets himself, in cool, clear well water, hanging them over the fence to dry. That night Lyra was fine. They’d held each other, making love over and over. She loved his mind, and his kindness, and his athletic body. He’d played football, then worked out all through law school. But that day she was moved by the sight of her big, strong husband sloshing sheets around the tub, wringing them out just for her. She couldn’t even start to imagine her parents doing that for each other, even in the early days.
    A white fence lined the property; the private beach entrance was through a moon gate, a perfect half-circle made of stone, arching over the path. Everyone said that when a newly married couple held hands and walked through, they would have eternal love and happiness. Lyra and Taylor hit the moon gate many times each day. Each time, Lyra touched stone.
    In Newport, back when she and Taylor were apart, her mother had arranged an appointment to the board of the Bellevue Garden Society. The position was unpaid, but prestigious enough for the daughter of Edith Nicholson. Lyra had toured the historical mansion grounds with landscape designers, world-famous gardeners.
    Lyra had had to vet the designers’ credentials and references, oversee their designs. As they walked through rose bowers, topiary mazes, English country gardens, formal French jardins , Lyra longed to drop her notebook and pick up a shovel, dig and plant, get her hands dirty. She felt thwarted in her own desires. They started eating her up inside, like cancer. Some days she couldn’t get up, and she called in sick.
    As soon as Lyra and Taylor returned from their honeymoon, she started right at home: clearing land, planting flower and vegetable beds. Finding a place for Hermes. Then she got pregnant.
    One of every ten women suffers major depression during pregnancy; Lyra was that one. She read a checklist of symptoms some women had part of the time. She had all of them all of the time—sadness, constant sleeping, despair.
    She’d tried to blame the feelings on pregnancy, but the truth was, she’d had them for years. In Newport, with Alexander, she’d imagined that life with Taylor would change her. Before that, in Europe, she’d felt oppressed and bleak, overwhelmed by the meaningless of everything—until Capri.
    This place had opened her mind, given her a strange, magical hope. She’d been able to imagine herself living here, on the rocky shore, free of everyone else’s expectations for her. But pregnancy sent her crashing. Medication was risky for the baby, so she didn’t take it. And things got worse.
    Sketching now, Lyra drew the moon gate. Symbols were so important to a garden. She’d seen Pell’s mood change when they talked about Dorset, their pretend country. Her clear blue eyes, so bright when she’d looked at the telescope, had filled with darkness, sorrow.
    What was coming back to Pell? Did she remember all of it, or just the last part, after Lyra had finally gone to the hospital? Dorset was part of all that. It had come to be the week Lyra came home from McLean. She had planted the made-up place in Pell’s mind, so her daughter would have a place to go to, a place where she could always find Lyra, no matter what