The Cottage at Glass Beach Read Online Free Page A

later that day, and hopefully, for days to come. It had stood vacant too long.
    Her great-grandparents had been part of the first wave of settlers that had put down roots on Burke’s Island after a stint in the Massachusetts quarries. They’d brought little with them on the coffin ships, except the few possessions they could carry and the stories and myths of that patch of Donegal they were from. The deep knowledge, they called it. The dreaming. They’d constructed the cottage in the style of the crofts back home, of hewn granite, now grayed with age. They knew how to cut and shape the rock. Hard, bloodying work, it was. But the place was theirs. The first property they’d ever owned, free and clear. The cottage sheltered them until they had enough resources to build Cliff House years later, and yet the cottage remained a touchstone. The modest home held its own through storm after storm, its squat frame withstanding the worst gales, a Celtic sea dragon carved into the wood over the door hinting at its inhabitants’ steady fire and endurance.
    The roof was shingle now, rather than turf, the dragon weathered to near invisibility. One had to know it was there. After Maeve and Patrick moved into the cottage, he upgraded the interior, crafting the cabinets and other woodwork by hand, an ever-present level on his belt in those days, which Maire thought appropriate somehow, because he balanced her volatile sister so well, their differences not yet driving them apart. Maire visited regularly, being unattached in those days, a little sister, two years younger, bringing baskets of vegetables and fruit from the Cliff House garden, for even then she had the greenest thumb in the family. She remembered Patrick’s hands, strong, yet sensitive and slender-fingered, working with measured certainty as he sanded and planed, joining edges and corners, polishing the grain until it gleamed.
    No one stirred at the cottage this morning. Nora was still sleeping, she supposed, the curtains closed, only larks awake, flitting through the predawn meadow in search of seeds and grasses. It was nesting season, her niece too, coming home to roost. Maire had seen a picture of her in the papers. (Polly had shown them to her and pledged to keep the contents confidential, ever the good friend, despite her gossipy nature.) The image caught Nora half shielding her face from the cameras. The affair had apparently been going on for months before it came to light. How long had Nora known about it? This thing that should have been a private matter, but became public because of her husband’s position and his status as a rising star in the party. Maire couldn’t imagine what Nora must have gone through—continued to go through. She wondered if Malcolm had come with Nora to repair the damage. And the children. She supposed there were children; she didn’t know for certain. The articles hadn’t mentioned any. They only referred to Nora, Malcolm, and the other woman, a trinity of infidelity and betrayal.
    Maire had intended to get a few hours’ rest that morning after the birth, but the excitement over her guests’ arrival made sleep impossible. She headed home, the tires of her truck churning over the shell road, scattering a hail of broken fragments behind her. First, she’d make a batch of rhubarb muffins. She’d leave them on the porch for her niece, tucked in a basket with a jar of island honey from the hives she tended in the orchard at the eastern edge of the property. The rhubarb plants grew on the south side of the house, against the stone foundation, past the main garden. Maire selected the choice stalks after giving them a firm but gentle tug, taking only those that yielded easily to her touch. She twisted off the leaves with a firm flick of the wrist and tossed them into the compost pile. There. She had what she needed. Some brown sugar, oil, flour, eggs, buttermilk, and baking soda, and voilà. If