Read Online The Deep Blue Sea for Beginners by Luanne Rice - Free Book Online

soon.”
    “Okay” he said.
    They said goodbye, and Rafe watched her walk slowly along the shore. He turned to continue his quest. He didn’t want to see her head up the stairs; he liked having her on the beach.
    As he walked along, he found himself moving faster. He threw the starfish farther, and had more hope that they wouldn’t strand again, that they wouldn’t meet up with a predator, that they’d live awhile longer. He also noticed he didn’t feel like using anymore. The desire to get high had left him.
    He glanced back, feeling a strange impulse to thank Pell, but she had already disappeared up the stairs.

    Lucy Davis lay in bed, thinking, watching the clock, wishing the time would pass faster. Her heart was skittering with excitement and anxiety. She hadn’t spoken to her mother in a long time. Years had added up.
    People—Lucy’s grandmother—criticized her mother unmercifully. Said she was selfish, uncaring, asked what kind of woman could leave her children. Those comments hurt Lucy. She always wanted to defend her mother—sometimes felt a physical desire to strike whoever talked against her—because no one understood her. No one except Lucy and Pell. Lucy didn’t know what had made her mother leave, but she was sure of one thing—her mother had had a good reason.
    Lucy knew love. Pell and she had it in their bones for each other, for their father. And for their mother. And Lucy was sure their mother had it for them too. Love that powerful was the only explanation for their mother’s long silence. For as completely as love could bond and heal, so could it tear people apart. Lucy was sure her mother hadn’t gone to that mental hospital for the fun of it. No, she’d been in some kind of terrible trouble. And it had driven her away.
    Pell was hoping to convince their mother to come home. Lucy was sure of it. Even though Pell hadn’t spelled it out, this had all started last winter, after Beck and Travis’s sister, Carrie, returned to the family, with her baby daughter. Split families were familiar to the Davis girls. They knew it was hard for some people to stay, for reasons all their own.
    A squawk sounded from down the hall—Carrie’s daughter Gracie having a dream. Lucy pushed back the covers, tiptoed through the Shaws’ house—a newer, larger faculty house than the small cottage they’d first moved in to when Mrs. Shaw began teaching at Newport Academy. Lucy felt glad for the distraction, ready to lean over Gracie’s crib rail and whisper to her.
    She met Carrie in the hallway, rubbing sleep from her eyes as she left her daughter’s room.
    “Hi, Lucy,” Carrie said. “Everything okay?”
    “Just thought I’d check on Gracie,” Lucy said.
    “That’s sweet of you,” Carrie said, trying to hide a yawn. “She’s fine. I think she knows it’s going to be a beach day tomorrow, and she was dreaming of playing in the sand.”
    “Did she tell you?” Lucy asked.
    Carrie just smiled. Gracie didn’t really talk yet. But Lucy stood there, wanting the young mother’s secret to understanding and communication with her child. How had Carrie understood what Gracie was dreaming? Had Lucy’s mother known Lucy’s dreams?
    “Did she tell you?” Lucy asked again.
    “She can’t talk yet,” Carrie said, touching her shoulder. “I was just imagining.”
    Lucy nodded, checked her watch. Still not time to call.
    “Want some milk?” Carrie asked. “I was just going to fix Gracie a bottle.”
    “That’s okay,” Lucy said. She had to hug herself. A bottle; her mother used to heat up warm milk for her. Lucy knew her mother had often looked in on her and Pell and tried to soothe them back to sleep. Had she ever imagined their dreams, like Carrie did with Gracie?
    Of course she had.
    “Carrie?” Lucy whispered, stopping suddenly.
    “Yes?”
    Lucy stared down the dimly lit hall. What would it take for Carrie to leave Gracie? Lucy saw them together all the time; it was hard for Carrie to go