“THIS IS A LITTLE MELODRAMATIC, don’t you think?” Nora held up the bottle of champagne and needled Quinn with an exasperated look. But it was halfhearted and insincere, the smile tugging at the corners of her mouth, betraying how she really felt. Which was serene. Anyone could see that. It was in the casual jut of her hip, the way Ethan’s arm wrapped around her waist as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
“Walker is nothing if not melodramatic.” Quinn sighed.
“What’s melodramatic?” Everlee slipped her hand into Quinn’s and swung their arms together, pulling her in the direction of the boathouse door, where Walker had strung a black sheet across the worn boards.
“It means he likes to make a big deal out of things.”
“It means he likes to exaggerate,” Liz added.
“You like to exaggerate!” Everlee pointed at Liz, her eyes sparkling with the magic of a private joke.
“I do not.”
“Do too!”
“Do not,” Liz huffed.
“You said that my math flashcards were so boring you could die.”
Liz flapped her hands at Everlee in an attempt to hush the child.
“That bad?” Nora laughed. “I didn’t realize second grade was so strenuous.”
“It’s every night,” Liz told them. “We have to go through the stack. Every. Single. Night. And then there’s spelling words and reading—”
“Don’t forget Handwriting Without Tears!” Everlee enthused.
“How could I forget?” But even as Liz complained, she shot Everlee a playful wink.
“Good thing she’s so smart.” Quinn turned Everlee’s hand so the girl had no choice but to twirl. She pirouetted awkwardly at first, her corduroy dress and striped leggings swishing and catching as she tried to spin. But then she got the hang of it and whirled faster and faster beneath Quinn’s careful hand, a rainbow blur of giggles until she collapsed onto the bed of leaves beneath her feet. Ethan kicked more on her, burying her beneath a sort of autumn confetti. Everlee didn’t mind. She only laughed harder.
The late October sun was slanting across the water, glinting off the cold blue surface and casting diamonds across their shoulders. It was unseasonably gorgeous, the air crisp and tart, scented with wood smoke and earth. Quinn had forgotten how much she loved fall, the brisk, hopeful mornings and the long twilights that made the world seem golden. Key Lake felt like a well-worn picture book after a hot, frantic summer. It was comforting to lose herself in the quiet pages, soft from use and just a little tattered. But familiar, lovely. Home.
“Remind me what we’re waiting for, Q?” Nora dangled the bottle of champagne in front of Quinn.
“The right light.”
“The right light? Are you serious?”
“Yes.” Quinn grinned at her sister. “Sounds crazy, I know, but Walker’s a genius.”
“That’s debatable. Have you seen it?”
Quinn’s eyes flashed proud and eager. “Not yet.”
Nora sniffed. “You two are nauseating.”
“Adorable,” Ethan corrected. Deliberately changing the subject, he asked: “How’s the Pumpkin Patch these days?”
“Great.” Quinn couldn’t help the way her smile widened. The preschool director had called her a week before classes began and offered her a job. Not as a teacher’s assistant or paraprofessional, but as one of the four-year-old preschool full-time teachers. It wasn’t her degree, but she had been an education major and they were desperate. So was Quinn. What started as a temporary position and a place to hang her heart for a season had become a passion she didn’t expect. “I think I’m really getting the hang of it. Speaking of school . . .” She trailed off and arched one eyebrow at Nora.
“It’s not school. Well, not technically.” Nora sounded exasperated, but there was a spark of something fierce in her eyes. Something confident.
“It is too,” Ethan cut in. “Online courses are totally legitimate. Nora’s going to get a few core classes out of the way, transfer to a four-year college, ace the LSAT . . .”
“Please, I’m way too old for that.” She rolled her eyes, but it was all for show.
Quinn couldn’t have possibly been more pleased.
Nora and Ethan had traveled to Key Lake for the weekend partly to witness Walker’s grand unveiling, but mostly to spend time with Everlee. The child was coming around slowly, learning to trust and feel safe. She saw a counselor twice a week and attended school part-time. The rest of her days were filled with Liz’s—often harebrained—schemes. They took calligraphy classes in the basement of the library and swimming lessons at the indoor pool. Once they attended a French cooking seminar and made ratatouille for a small dinner party that consisted of Walker and Quinn. Liz even let Everlee have free rein with her oil paints and watercolors, and more than one fabric now bore the tiny swirling E that signified an original Everlee design.
Nora and Quinn were astounded to discover that their mother was the perfect place for Everlee to land—if not forever, for a season. A sweet, sunny season that could only be classified as fumbling toward happy. There were still many late-night phone calls and texts, desperate pleas for help as Liz all but sobbed into the phone. But Liz and Everlee were healing together—more than that, they seemed to be healing each other.
It was a group effort. After Donovan’s accident and Tiffany’s disappearance, Nora took a leave of absence from the Grind. She and Everlee moved in with Liz to begin the difficult process of learning to live in a new normal. It was supposed to be temporary, but something clicked between the six-year-old and her would-be stepmother. The arrangement was as miraculous as it was mysterious, and when Nora went back to Rochester, it was a relatively easy transition. But she and Ethan made the trip to Key Lake often.
“Can we go in now?” Everlee dug herself out of the small pile of leaves and stood to brush off her dress.
Quinn bent over and helped her out, plucking leaves from the clingy corduroy and the unruly mop of Everlee’s hair. The red had dulled to a strawberry blond that almost seemed intentional—ombre coloring was all the rage. Still, they were eager for that last physical trace of what had happened to disappear entirely. Everlee’s other scars were indelible. But fading. Growing faint and fine as silver.
“Good question,” Liz piped up. “I think Walker’s changed his mind. I think today might not be ‘the day.’ ”
“Oh, it’s the day, all right.” Walker emerged from behind the black sheet and slipped his arms around his wife’s narrow hips.
Quinn straightened up and swiveled to brush a kiss against his cheek. “We’re a very patient bunch,” she teased.
“Clearly.”
“So,” Liz broke in. “Are you ready? Do we finally get to see it?”
Walker shrugged, feigning nonchalance. “If you want to.” He turned to squint at the angle of the sun. “It should be perfect just about now.”
In spite of their earlier prickliness, a wave of excitement rippled through the entire group. The past three months had been some of the hardest of their lives. Quinn came to grips with the fact that she wasn’t pregnant—and might not ever be. Nora grieved the loss of her best friend and the years she had spent living a lie. Liz began the slow process of forgiving her husband—and learning to be a mother again. But no one had suffered as much as Everlee, and Quinn expected Walker to reach for her hand and lead her through the door of the boathouse first.
He didn’t. Walker stepped away from his wife and stuck out his arm for Liz.
“Me?” She fluttered her fingers to her chest, surprised at being singled out, and was just a little hesitant.
“I want you to be the first to see it.”
“Why me?”
Walker didn’t answer her question; he just stood with his elbow out and waited for his mother-in-law to take it.
“Oh, fine, fine.” Liz tried to come off gruff, but she sounded like she was going to cry, and that made her more than a little flustered. “Everlee, honey, take Walker’s other arm.” And because no one questioned Liz Sanford, Everlee did as she was told.
Quinn hurried ahead of them and pulled back the sheet, swinging it wide so they could enter the boathouse unhindered.
“Thank you,” Walker said.
And then they were inside.
It was blinding white, and Liz blinked against the onslaught of light. She dropped Walker’s arm to shield her eyes, but she couldn’t stop herself from whirling around, from trying to take it all in.
Suspended from a frame high above her, a thousand pieces of glass (thousands?) shimmered in the sun. Dusk poured in through the high windows on the west side of the tall boathouse and illuminated each spinning shard of glass so that it reflected light like water. As Liz tried to absorb what she was seeing, she realized that the glass hung from silver wires so slender they were almost invisible. They were all arranged in progressing layers so that they seemed to swell and heave.
Waves. Wind. Sails.
“Walker,” Nora whispered from somewhere behind her, and Liz was struck with the desire to catch her daughter’s hand and hold it tight. “What have you done?”
“It’s the ship,” Quinn breathed. “The Queen Elizabeth.”
They all looked at Walker as he nodded. “I’ve never seen sea glass in a lake,” he said. “But the little bowl of it in the cabin and the story of the steamboat made me realize there must be tons of it at the bottom of Key Lake. I dove for it all summer.”
“It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen,” Ethan said. “What is it called?”
Walker put one hand behind his neck and rubbed the tender skin beneath his ponytail. He looked sheepish, almost afraid when he said: “Elizabeth Undone.”
It was dazzling, resplendent, the face of the sun. And the depths of the ocean when the world was filled with light. Hope and despair, for how could this have happened, how could it be undone if it had not at first been done? Making and remaking in a constant round, and as Liz spun beneath the twinkling light, the glittering, gleaming, otherworldly bright, she felt something inside of her shatter free.
Elizabeth undone, indeed.
They drank champagne beneath the upside-down ship. It was the world upended, a beautiful disaster. Worthy of a second bottle of champagne and music. Everlee danced abandoned, throwing her hands up and laughing so hard she fell down clutching her sides and howling.
At one point, Liz found herself face-to-face with her daughters, the first, the second, the unlikely third in her arms with her head on Liz’s shoulder. How can this be? Liz thought. But it was, and it would be.
They talked of insignificant things. Funny stories and small-town gossip, a new recipe and plans for Christmas. And then, when Everlee was heavy and quiet in Liz’s arms, drowsy with something that drew very near to joy, Liz told her girls: “I’m going to find her. Someday.”
Neither Nora nor Quinn had to ask her what she meant. They had a scarf, a name, an antique Egyptian box with the remains of a woman who was as much a mother as any of them. Lorelei belonged with Tiffany and in some way Everlee did, too. With all of them, actually.
And the Sanford girls were fierce and determined, tenacious and brave. The sort of women who refused to give up. Who knew that all the loveliest things were broken.
And in all the broken places they were strong.