Return to Me Read Online Free PDF Page B

low to the sand, Mom sifted through the wet stones, rejecting one after another. Usually she was so mindful of the water, especially since my near drowning. But now, her back to the waves, she used both hands to shove aside a large, bulbous rock.
    “Mom, geez, you’re going to cut yourself,” I said, alarmed at her frenetic searching, and held out the stone she had given me. “Here, take this one.”
    “No,” she said almost angrily, “that’s yours.”
    “Okay…” I said, shoving my wishing stone into the pocket of my denim jacket.
    I wanted to leave but couldn’t.
Stay.
Mom shoved aside another enormous rock. Both of us screamed when a sea snake, no longer than a foot, with a dangerous yellow stripe down its back, slithered out. Mom recoiled so abruptly, she lost her balance and fell atop the sharp rocks as a wave swept the snake away.
    “Mom, you okay?”
    The water crept to the shore, lapping at our feet, mine safe in my sneakers, Mom’s exposed in her flip-flops. As the water drew back, I spotted the perfect wishing rock for her, egg-shaped and striated gray-green. Most importantly, a thin white line ran around the top third. That rare circlet, according to Grandma Stesha, was a good luck sign: a halo. I plunged my hand into the icy water to snag it for my mother.
    Suddenly, against the soothing backdrop of the surf, I could hear the sobs again. The sound of inconsolable heartbreak. My heart raced in frantic beats. The premonition that something would go horribly wrong if we left here was almost unbearable. For the first time, I felt compelled to tell Mom about one of my feelings. Confess about the weeping I kept hearing. Ask for her interpretation because surely I was wrong.
    Fiercely, Mom shook her head, a sharp, cutting movement, the same as the one at the hospital so many years ago:
Don’t dream.
I could have been seven again, swamped with panic from my vision, needing to confide in someone. Only this time it was Mom who was leaving because of what I had seen, not Dad.
    “Okay, let’s go,” she said sharply, turning her back on me, my premonition, and the beach.
    “Mom, wait,” I said, holding the wishing rock out to her.
    “We’ve got a ton to do,” she said, not seeing the stone offering, “and regardless of what your dad thinks, I can’t do it all on my own.”
    I retracted my hand. “He would have stayed if you had just said something!”
    Mom’s lips pursed as if she were swallowing a mouthful of sour doubt. She marched to the bench, grabbed the blanket off the lawn, and swept up a clipboard I hadn’t noticed. A paper lined with a long list of things yet to be done fluttered in the breeze, a white flag of defeat. “The movers are coming in fifteen minutes to pack your treehouse and bedroom. You need to make sure everything’s ready for them. Pronto.”
    As Mom charged up the path with a last bark—“Come on, Reb! I mean it. You’ve got to pack!”—I drew back my arm and threw the egg stone I had found for her and wished her life would be as upended as mine was now.
    With an unsettling feeling, I watched the wishing rock arc in the sky and trace an invisible rainbow. As it landed with an impotent thud back on the beach, guilt and worry engulfed me. Now I wanted to stay down where it was safe at the beach. Now I wanted to retract my wish. Now I wanted to insist that Mom backtrack, too, but she was lunging toward the endless tasks that would usher us to the future. It was too late to do anything but follow.

    Hours of sweeping and mopping to prepare our house for rental did nothing to stop me from berating myself for thatmean-spirited wish. Distracted, I ran the vacuum cleaner into the wall and smudged the meticulous beige with a dark mark. With an impatient sigh, I switched off the vacuum and was about to inspect the damage when, in the abrupt silence, I heard Jackson outside. When had he arrived?
    I rushed to my bedroom window and leaned out, ready to call to him. Instead,