Page 55 of The Cottage on Blueberry Bay

Meredith deep cleaned the two spare rooms. They decided to leave Jacob’s room for Ginny who knew him best.

Meredith first pulled all the bedding off and dragged it to the basement and started a load of laundry in the thirty-year old washer and dryer. In one room, she named the yellow room for its yellow wallpaper. She opened the closet and found boxes of sewing materials, a sewing machine, and lots of different fabrics. If she had to guess, it must have been someone’s sewing room at one point. She noticed how there were no paintings, except for one, in the whole room. Not even on the walls or stuffed somewhere. The painting had been of a field of yellow and white daffodils.

Going through the dresser drawers, she found more material—folded yards of calicos and cotton knit and velvet were all inside. She took everything out and set it on top of the dresser. In the corner of the room sat an antique sewing table with a wooden cover.

“Don’t even tell me…” Meredith pulled off the cover. Inside, to her amazement, sat a Singer sewing machine. Her fingers went straight to the machine. She tried to pick it up, but the heavy machine’s metal body wouldn’t budge from the table. She looked down and noticed the drawer on the side and opened it. There was a piece of paper folded and stuffed in the back. She slowly opened it up, feeling strange doing so. Was she snooping by going through these things? Reading notes written by a man she’d never met?

The writing looked like a child’s penmanship, and the date was from twenty years ago.

Meredith Miller O’Neill died peacefully with her son on Sunday, November twenty-seventh. She is survived by her son, Jacob.

The letters were crooked and big. The lines were hard and scratchy.

She thought to where she had been twenty years ago. She had the three kids underfoot.

A pang of sadness plucked at her heart. Jacob lost his mother, and he was all alone. How lucky was she that she had Gordon and Remy and Phillip at the time when she lost her mother. She had her kids who had been a great support as well. She had never thought of herself as lucky, but as she held Jacob’s obituary for his mother, she could feel his loneliness.

She thought about how Ginny told her to look up the accident. Grabbing her phone, she started typing in Jacob’s name and the wordstorm,and tons of phrases popped up.

Fifty Years Since The Storm Of The Century That Claimed Nine—Only One Survivedwas the title that appeared first, but as she scrolled through, there were dozens more stories of fisherman deaths. News outlets from all over Maine and the surrounding states had covered different stories. She clicked on a link to a news channel memorializing the news.

“There was only one survivor,” the male news anchor said into the camera with a grave face. “Nine men died that fateful day.”

Meredith thought about her pregnant mother going through such a tragedy.

She grabbed Jacob’s paper and brought it downstairs, going into the kitchen.

“I’m almost done with the fridge,” Remy said as soon as Meredith walked in. “I was thinking I’d go to the grocery store and grab us some essentials and something for dinner.”

“Look what I found.” Meredith handed Remy the paper. “I think Jacob wrote it.”

Remy took it and read the two sentences that said so much. “You were named after your grandmother?”

Meredith nodded, thinking that Remy would’ve known that.

“I looked up the boating accident,” Meredith said. Remy didn’t flinch like Meredith at the idea of looking Jacob’s accident up.

“He got really hurt,” Remy said. “Mentally and physically.”

Meredith nodded. “I guess so.”

“Mom said he had a lot of guilt about being the only survivor,” Remy said.

Meredith glanced at one of his paintings of a dark sea.

She kept rereading the obituary. It was strange how just two lines told her so much about her life. Meredith Miller O’Neill was her grandmother. And Jacob had been more unwell than she’d had any idea.

“Why don’t we get containers to keep things like this?” Remy said, about the note. “Then you can go through everything later with it all together and decide whether it’s junk or not.”

Meredith looked around the kitchen. The space was already starting to look better. “Okay, that sounds like a good idea.”

Remy left after that to go to the store, and Meredith stayed downstairs, cleaning out the bathroom on the first floor. She would tackle the upstairs bathroom later. She washed down every surface from floor to ceiling, wiped down the drawer and shelf and every nook and cranny.

By the time Remy returned, the kitchen looked pretty good. The pine floors from the kitchen continued throughout the house, even in the bathroom. The white tile backsplash was worn and used but looked clean and attractive against the wooden butcher block countertops. She could envision the cabinets looking darling with a clean coat of a creamy white paint. The more they decluttered, the bigger the space felt. Meredith had to admit, it really was very quaint with the woodstove in the corner.

“I know we just had lobster last night, but I found this fantastic little farmer’s market and the guy gave me free steamers and clams and adorable little potatoes.”

Meredith laughed. “That’s crazy. Why would he do that?”

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