Page 6 of The Cottage on Blueberry Bay

Pictures of different men littered the screen.

She typed in Blueberry Bay.

A photograph of a bronze mermaid statue came up next to another photograph of a man with gray hair and a beard—Jacob O’Neill, her father.

She stared at his image. She had seen photographs in her mother’s jewelry box. Her mother hadn’t hid them, but she never encouraged her to look at them either. Meredith rarely did, feeling too many emotions, like she felt looking at his older image right now.

A sadness floated inside her as she stared at the picture—a sadness only an abandoned child could ever explain. No matter how much love the other people in Meredith’s life gave her, and she’d had an exceptional childhood filled with tons of love from Jacqueline and Gordon, it never filled that empty feeling, a feeling of being tossed aside. Like something had to have been wrong with her for her real father to walk away like he did.

She clicked on the article about the mermaid.

Local Fisherman Sculptor.

She leaned closer to the laptop’s screen and looked at the mermaid’s face. The blur made her doubt herself at first. She grabbed her readers, and when the face focused, she let out a gasp.

It was her mother.

CHAPTER3

“That’s totally mom!” Remy said as she grabbed Meredith’s phone from her hand. She looked closer, then sipped her coffee while studying the picture.

“It is.” There was no doubt. The mermaid, from head to waist, was their mother.

Meredith hadn’t slept a wink all night thinking about her mother’s image.

“He didn’t leave much to the imagination.” Remy closed the screen.

“Yes, but he was very generous with her proportions.” Meredith had noticed how voluptuous Jacqueline had been in the sculpture.

“It’s kind of romantic,” Remy said, returning her phone. “Now call the attorney.”

Driving all the way from the city that morning, Remy had shown up with two coffees and homemade scones from a bakery on Commonwealth Avenue. Her baby sister was the epitome of Boston high society. Even in her loungewear, she looked pressed and ready for a yacht outing.

Meredith looked like she had slept in her clothes. She looked down at her leggings, which shehadslept in.

Meredith took a deep breath. “Alright, I’ll call.”

She took the card, dialed the ten-digit number with a Maine area code, and waited.

“Is this the address?” Remy asked, pointing to the documents on the table.

Meredith nodded as the line began to ring.

“Hello. Quinn Michaud,” a deep man’s voice answered.

“Hi, my name is Meredith Johnson. I’m calling regarding my…” Meredith stopped. “Jacob O’Neill.”

“Hi, yes, Ms. Johnson,” the man said. “I’m sorry to have been the one who informed your family about Jacob’s passing. I’m very sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you,” she said, but she didn’t know what else to say.

An awkward silence hung on the line before he said, “It looks like he might’ve had a stroke and died in his sleep.”

“My father gave me Jacob’s papers, but I’m afraid I haven’t had the time to really go through them.” She felt silly now. She should have just read the papers. But something made her not want to know what her real father had when he died. What kind of life did he live without her and her mother? And what if he just left her a little nothing trinket?

Meredith hardly remembered the seaside village in Maine except for one memory as a little girl. Her mother had taken her on a long day’s drive up the coast to a cottage on the edge of the sea. She was five or six, but too young to comprehend what all that meant at the time until that exact moment. An image of a man flashed through her head. A younger brown-haired man with a tattoo of a mermaid on the inside of his wrist.

“Yes,” the attorney said. “I’m sorry I went to your father’s house, but I had no current information for you. I could meet with you in Maine as soon as possible, but I’m afraid I can’t make it to Massachusetts until later in the week.”

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