to think she knew what death was: a bird fallen from the nest. A possum at the side of the road, buzzing with flies. She had grandparents who had died, but since she’d never met them, that didn’t count. They were from a place in Italy called Calabria, which her parents called the Old Country.
One time, she asked Pop why he never went to Italy to see his parents while they were alive. You can’t go back, he’d said dismissively. It’s too much bother.
Rosa didn’t really care. She didn’t want to go to Italy. She liked it right here.
“What school do you go to?” asked Alex.
“St. Mary’s.” She wrinkled her nose. “I think classes are boring, and the cafeteria food makes me gag.” When they had to say the blessing right after Second Bell, she used to give extra thanks for her mother’s sack lunches—chicken salad with capers or provolone with olive loaf, sometimes a slice of cake and a bunch of grapes. There was always a funny little message on the napkin: “Smile!” Or “Only 12 more days to summer!”
“I like sports,” she told Alex, not wanting him to think she was a total loser. “I can run really fast and I like to win. My big brothers taught me everything they know, which is a lot. I play soccer in the fall, swimming in the winter, softball in the spring. Do you play sports?”
“Not allowed,” he said, trailing his hand in the crystal clear water. “Makes me wheeze.” Then he was quiet for several minutes. Rosa watched the way the breeze tossed his shiny white-blond hair. He looked like a picture in a book of fairy tales, maybe Hansel, lost in the woods.
He turned those ocean-blue eyes on her. “Your mom died, didn’t she?”
Rosa felt a quick hitch in her chest. She couldn’t speak, but she nodded her head.
“Mrs. Carmichael told me this morning.”
Rosa drew her knees up to her chest, and as she watched the waves exploding on the rocks, she felt something break apart inside her. “I miss her so much.”
“I was scared to say anything, but…it’s okay if you want to talk about it.”
She started to shake her head, to find a way to change the subject, but this time the subject refused to be changed. Alex had brought it up and now it was like the incoming tide; it wouldn’t go away. And to her surprise, she kind of felt like talking. “Well,” she said. “Well, it’s a long story.”
“The days are long in the summer,” he reminded her. “The sun sets at 8:14 tonight.”
She rested her chin on her knees and gazed out at the blue distance. Usually she tried not to bring up the subject of her mother’s death. It made her brothers all awkward, and Pop sometimes cried, which was scary to Rosa. Now she could feel Alex staring right at her, and it didn’t scare her at all.
“When Mamma first got sick,” she said, “I didn’t worry because she didn’t really act sick. She went for her treatments, and came back and took naps. But after a while, it got hard for her to act like she was okay.” Rosa thought about the day her mother came home from the hospital for the last time. When she took off her bright blue kerchief, she looked as gray and bald as a newborn baby bird. That was when Rosa finally felt afraid. “The nuns came—”
“Like Catholic nuns?” Alex asked.
“I don’t think there’s any other kind.”
“Are you Catholic, then?” he asked.
“Yep. Are you?”
“No. I don’t think I’m anything. I want to hear about the nuns.”
“They used to sit and pray in the bedroom with my mother. My father got really quiet, and his temper was short.” Rosa wasn’t going to say any more about that. Not today, anyway. “My brothers had no idea what to do. Rob went to Mamma’s garden, which she didn’t plant last year because she was too sick, and he mowed down a whole field of brambles using only a machete.” Rosa pictured her brother, sweat mingling with the tears on his face even though it was the middle of winter. “Sal lit so many candles at St. Mary’s that Father Dominic had to tell him to put some of them out to avoid starting a fire.”
None of it helped, of course. Nothing helped.
“Mamma said it was a lucky thing, to be able to say goodbye, but it didn’t feel…lucky.” Rosa pressed the heel of her hand into the rock hard enough to hurt. Her mother had been too weak to prop up a book, so Rosa got on the bed and lay down beside her and read Grandfather Twilight, and it felt strange to be the one reading it.
“She died on Valentine’s Day,” Rosa told Alex. “A week after my ninth birthday. All kinds of people came, and the neighbors brought food, but mostly it just spoiled in the refrigerator and then we threw it out because nobody was hungry. Some of the women got right to work on my father. They wanted him to marry again immediately.” She shuddered.
“Mrs. Carmichael thinks he looks like Syvester Stallone. I heard her talking to somebody about it on the phone.”
Rosa made a face. “He just looks like Pop.”
The chill water sluiced in, breaking over Rosa’s feet and Alex’s checkered Vans sneakers.
“Tide’s coming in. We’d better go back,” he said.
“All right.” She stood up and offered her hand.
“I can make it,” he said.
As they headed back along the public beach, she glanced at the sky. It wasn’t that late yet. “Do you think we should hurry?”
“No, but my mother doesn’t like me to be late for dinner. At least when we’re at the shore, we don’t have to dress for dinner like we do in the city.”
“You mean you eat naked?” Rosa fell down laughing, landing in the sun-warmed sand.
“Ha-ha, very funny,” he said, trying to act serious. But he fell down next to her, clearly not in a hurry anymore. They watched Windsurfers skimming along, and families having picnics and feeding the seagulls. Alex found a piece of driftwood and dug a deep moat while Rosa formed the mound into a castle. It wasn’t a very good one, so they weren’t sorry when a wave sneaked up and swamped it. Rosa jumped up in time to avoid getting wet, but Alex got soaked to the skin.
“Yikes, that’s cold,” he said, but he was grinning. When he stood up, he had something in his hand. He bent and washed it in the surf. “A nautilus shell. I’ve never found one before.”
It was a nice big one, a rare find, not too damaged by the battering waves. Alex couldn’t know it, but it was Mamma’s favorite kind of shell. The nautilus is a symbol of harmony and peace, she used to say.
“You can have it if you want,” he said, holding the shell out to her.
“No. You found it.” Rosa kept her hands at her sides even though she wanted it desperately.
“I’m not good at keeping things.” He wound up as if to throw it back into the surf.
“Don’t! If you’re not going to keep it, I will,” Rosa said, grabbing it from him.
“I wasn’t really going to throw it away,” he said. “I just wanted you to have it.”
When they got back to Alex’s yard and Rosa saw what awaited them, she closed her hand around the seashell. “I hope this thing brings me good luck. I’m going to be needing it,” she said.
Mrs. Montgomery and Pop stood waiting for them, both their faces taut with worry and anger. Before either of them spoke, Rosa could already hear them. Where have you been? Do you know how worried we’ve been?
“Where on earth have you been?” demanded Mrs. Montgomery. Rosa was speechless at the sight of her. She had flame-red hair and wore a straight white summer dress and white sandals. Her long, thin fingers held a long, thin cigarette. Mrs. Montgomery