Miracle Beach

Table of Contents

 

 

“Miracle Beach
gives the reader a vivid sense of the Pacific Northwest and the world of show jumping, but most important, it shows how characters shattered by grief can put the pieces back together in an entirely new way. Erin Celello writes of loss and resilience with a sure, honest hand.”

—Heidi Jon Schmidt, author of
The House on Oyster Creek

 

“Miracle Beach
ripples with surprising twists and turns. Erin Celello has a knack for writing characters that jolt the reader with the risks they take while also creating a satisfying sense of rightness. Love is here, grief, the beauty of place, suspense, and an ending that fits just right. Erin Celello has given us a fulfilling novel in
Miracle Beach.”

—Tina Welling, author of
Cowboys Never Cry
and
Fairy Tale Blues

 

“Miracle Beach
is a lyrical, surprising novel, set in a landscape as wild as memory. Erin Celello understands that the past is always present, and she takes that age-old truth and spins it into a story of secrets, sorrow, and second chances. A marvelous debut.”

—Dean Bakopoulos, author of
My American Unhappiness

NAL ACCENT
Published by New American Library,
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First published by NAL Accent, an imprint of New American Library,
a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

 

First Printing, August 2011

Copyright © Erin Celello, 2011

Conversation Guide copyright © Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2011
All rights reserved

 

 

REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

 

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:

Celello, Erin.
Miracle Beach /Erin Celello.
p. cm.

ISBN : 978-1-101-51736-9

1. Loss (Psychology)—Fiction. 2. Family secrets—Fiction.
3. Vancouver Island (B.C.)—Fiction. 4. Domestic fiction. I. Title.
PS3603.E4M57 2011
813’.6—dc22 2011005354

 

 

 

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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THE MARE’S BREATH HAD STOPPED RATTLING IN THE STALL BEHIND her. Nash lay slumped on the other side of the aisle. And all Macy could see was that damned ugly baby.

That baby, with its pimples and purple blotchy face and slightly coned head. That baby, whose mother thrust it toward Macy every time she and Nash ran into her and her doting husband, usually at Tim Hortons on Saturday mornings, as if it were a perfectly natural thing to want to hold someone else’s child. As if that were what the baby would have wanted. As if Macy were even fit for such a thing.

“Go on,” Nash would say. “He’s not going to bite.” Then he’d chuckle and shake his head, as if Macy herself were an unruly child acting out in public.

Usually she would hem and haw long enough so that Nash would hold it. But every once in a while, the baby’s mother would be extra persistent and lunge at Macy. “Here,” she would say. “It’s easy. Easy does it.”

Macy would barely get her arms out before the mother dumped the baby into them, and then she’d hold it stiffly—far out from her body, the way one would a pot of boiling water—before making an excuse as to why she and Nash had to get going.

“I’m dropping him the next time she does that,” Macy told Nash once.

“It’s not that baby’s fault that the parents passed on the worst of both of them,” Nash said. “If only he would’ve gotten her nose and his chin instead of the other way around.” He slung an arm around Macy’s shoulders and started in on how they should spend their day, but Macy didn’t hear him. The words
passed on the worst of both of them
rang too loudly in her ears.

Macy didn’t often give much thought to the ugly baby, save for those occasional Saturday run-ins. But here it was, its face floating in front of her, superimposed over everything: the dying mare, the folded body of her husband, the blood, the deafening quiet. And the ugly baby shook its head scornfully and clucked its teeth (this newborn had teeth) as if to say, “Look at what you’ve done. Look at the mess you’ve gone and made.”

 

Macy thought of the bed, still unmade. Days-old glasses of Coke sitting on the kitchen table. The Pyrex pan last used to cook burritos soaking in the sink. Nash’s watch placed neatly inside his Brewers cap on the dresser, just like always.

She hobbled slowly up the steps, dragging one leg up and then the other as if the signal from her brain to her limbs were working at half speed, like a newborn foal figuring out the mechanics of its body for the first time.

She missed the screen door handle on first reach, fumbling for the keys in her pocket with the other hand and then dropping them. How many times had she gone through this same routine? For how many years? It was an action she performed mindlessly before. But she was having to think her way through each step now, through each twitch of every muscle, coercing them to move so she wouldn’t collapse. Her hands shook. She used one to try to steady the other.

Macy knew she had to go in eventually. But she didn’t have to do it right this minute.

She dropped the keys back into her pocket and headed back down the front steps. She followed a cobblestone walkway around the back of the house through the struggling vegetable garden and out the back gate, where the bricks beneath her feet gave way to fine gravel. Light drizzle lacquered strands of hair against her face. She could smell the mix of fresh sawdust and manure that always hung heavy and sweet in the spring air. Tall grass, long overdue for mowing, licked her feet and ankles as she neared the barn. Its big old door slid aside with ease.