Free Anticipation by Sarah Mayberry Page A

shrugged. She and Eddie understood each other.
    Mostly, anyway.
    Lena tossed the magazine she was reading onto the coffee table and stood, moving restlessly to the window. Outside, rain lashed at the windows, and the ocean was pewter-grey and vicious as it hammered against the beach below.
    Blue watched her, noting the signs of tension in her friend’s neck and shoulders. It had taken her a day or two to realize it because Lena was good at covering, but her friend was working through something. Something big if her periodic silences and brooding, staring-at-the-view sessions were anything to go by.
    “You never said why you’re home again so soon,” Blue said.
    Since she’d moved to New York, Lena’s visits home had averaged about twice a year. So far this year, however, she’d made three visits, each only a month or so apart, and this time she was staying for six weeks.
    “I was homesick.”
    Blue wasn’t buying. The troubled look on Lena’s face wasn’t about craving the familiar.
    “How much do you remember from your childhood?” Lena asked suddenly, glancing over her shoulder.
    Blue was surprised by the weird segue, but she figured she’d go with it. At least Lena was talking, and maybe it would lead somewhere her friend needed to go.
    “There are bits I remember very clearly. And there are bits I’m happy to forget,” Blue said.
    Lena looked stricken. “Shit. Sorry, Blue. I wasn’t thinking.”
    “It’s okay.” Blue didn’t talk about her parents a lot, but that was mostly because people didn’t ask. “After my mum and dad died, I made a point of remembering everything I could about them. I used to have this book I kept all my memories in.”
    “That’s a cool idea. Do you still look at it?”
    Blue thought about the woman who’d taken the book from her and burned it in front of Blue and the rest of the children who had been placed in her “care.”
    “I lost it when I was fourteen. But I still remember. I don’t need the book.”
    She’d never bothered writing down her memories again but they were still there, safely tucked away in her mind.
    The softness of her mother’s velour dressing gown against her cheek.
    The wet-wool smell of her father’s coat when he came home from work when it rained.
    The warm strength of his hand around hers.
    The sound of her parents laughing as they cooked together on Friday nights.
    The way her mother used to let Blue rest her head on her lap and would stroke her hair while they watched TV at night.
    For a while, the memory of her parents’ love — for each other, as well as for her — had been the only thing that kept Blue going. After they were gone, there had been so much loneliness and disconnection as she’d been buffeted from group home to foster parents and back again. Blue had watched other kids sink beneath the trials of the foster system. She’d seen them turn to drugs, or evolve into little monsters, aping the people who’d let them down or abused them. She’d seen kids break, losing the power to protect themselves. But she’d been loved once, and she’d held fast to that knowledge, to the truth of that, and it had kept her strong.
    Her memories had saved her, in more ways than one.
    Blue blinked, shaking her head as she realized she’d gotten lost for a moment. “Sorry.”
    “Don’t be. You had the sweetest smile on your face just now,” Lena said wistfully.
    Blue contemplated her friend. “Can you remember much from your childhood?”
    Lena had asked the question, after all, and Blue’s gut told her it hadn’t been a random one.
    “Sure. Big stuff, mostly. And a few silly little things.” She studied the back of her hands. “There was this time when I got lost at Kmart. Mum told me not to run off, but I needed to see if they had the new Barbie doll I wanted. So I snuck off, but I couldn’t find the toy department or my way back to Mum.”
    Blue had gotten lost in a department store when she was a kid, too. She could