Free Seven Tears into the Sea by Terri Farley Page A

sure I fall in love with the man, not the lifestyle.”
    â€œWell, bravo for your sensible mother,” Nana said, and the smile that claimed her face showed me how much she loved us all.
    Mr. Heller gave us a salute as he left.
    Nana stood and smoothed her purple skirt.
    â€œI didn’t fib about Mirage Point’s festival, exactly,” Nana told me as she closed the pocket doors to the parlor. “Our celebration is for local folks, special because it’s—” As Nana searched for the right word, I still heard the waves breaking outside. “—traditional. Not because T-shirts are marked 20 percent off.”
    We both laughed, and I felt a closeness with Nana that I hadn’t felt with anyone for a long time. I couldn’t think how to say it, so I just started back toward the kitchen. Nana touched my arm. “Leave those dishes for Thelma. I have a different chore for you. It’ll only take me a minute to grab my notebook from upstairs.”
    Holding a handful of skirt in one hand, gripping the banister with the other, Nana started upstairs. It would take her more than a minute to return, I thought, looking after her. Before finding what she was looking for, Nana would tweak the duvet straight on a bed in an empty guest room, check the potpourri in a shell on a hall table, and chat with anyone she met.
    The Inn stood quiet around me.
    I had time.
    I slid the parlor doors open, slipped inside, and closed them behind me. I crossed the polished wooden floor, the hand-loomed carpet, and stepped through the casement windows. A white cabbage moth trembled in the twilight as I passed through Nana’s garden.
    I crossed the lawn diagonally. Instead of strolling down to the beach, I turned left, drawn to the path which would take me across the bluff to Mirage Point.
    I wasn’t hypnotized by the sun shimmering in a hot red disk above the ocean. Even though it reminded me of Nana’s scrying mirror, I wasn’t feeling dreamy. I knew exactly where I was going and how long I had to get back.
    I was going to the Point.
    I walked all the way out this time. I held my skirts aside as I’d just seen Nana do, and stepped over the guard fence. The cliff dropped away to the sea, and breakers pounded at its base.
    The setting sun turned the waves wine red, except for one spot where the water lay quiet and petals of foam rocked around it. There, it was deep.
    I knew I could make that dive.
    And then I felt someone watching. My biology teacher said it’s a feeling left over from primitive times. Sometimes it’s like a vibration across your forehead. Other times it’s like a ribbon trailing across the nape of your neck. He said it helped us survive.
    This time it felt like hands on my shoulders. I could have sworn someone stood behind me, so close that breath moved my hair and tickled my ear.
    â€œGwen!” Nana called from the seawall around her garden. Her voice sounded a little concerned, but of course it would, since I’d stepped over the fence.
    I really hadn’t meant for her to see me and couldn’t imagine how she had made it upstairs and down so quickly, until I blinked at the horizon. The setting sun was gone.
    â€œGet a grip,” I told myself, then shook my head and hurried back.

    Nana didn’t scold me or demand an explanation. She just motioned me back into the parlor and walked toward the front of the house.
    â€œThis is a job you’re truly suited for,” she said, handing me something that looked like a cross between a notebook and a photo album. “It’s my garden journal. A seaside garden isn’t the easiest sort to keep. In summer it’s either baked by the sun or shrouded with salty fog. In winter it’s ripped by gales and lashed with sea spray.”
    When Nana paused, I realized I’d never given her garden much thought. It was just a place you passed through on your way to the beach. And yet, while I was