It's cold here, in the wind. Night fog. We can leave if you like. Moral landscapes, coming down
as usual to a foreground all agony, pursuant
joy, more agony, a lesson insisting hypnotically,
grass-like, wave-like, ever on itself— Sea Glass, a poem by Carl Phillips

Cold should be clarifying, Carolyn thought.

Why live in Maine if you can't embrace subfreezing temperatures, perpetual fog, snow, and rain, even - and especially - the inescapable roar of the ocean? She loved everything about her new life in Gull Cottage. This morning, though, the walls closed in all around her as she stuffed an article into a waiting manila envelope.

I should feel clarified, but everything's running together and I can't escape, she thought later, sitting in the brand new station wagon her parents had purchased.

Martha and her two cents everywhere she turned. A yipping little terrier that followed her from room to room. An inconvenient bathroom without a lock. Squeaky wooden floors. Doors that never closed properly. Money problems stalking her dreams.

The continuous, potentially invisible presence of Capt. Daniel Gregg. He claimed to be honorable of course, but who really knew? "He is the house, and the house is him," Claymore had warned. Did he snoop all the time, even watch her as she slept?

A car door slammed loudly. Candy kicked Jonathan and he grabbed her math book. "She's got a note in here from her boyfriend," he announced shrilly, elbowing his sister in the back seat. Carolyn startled, returning unwillingly from daydreams of claustrophobia to the real-time bickering of small children She maneuvered the new Ford out of the car pool line in front of Schooner Bay Elementary. "I do not, I don't pass notes in class. Mother, tell him to shut up. I don't have a boyfriend." Candy's freckles winked at her from the rear-view mirror.

I could have scripted that response, her mother-the-writer thought. "Jonathan, leave Candy alone. Candy, if you're passing notes in school, stop it."

I'm even talking in clichés.

"Mom, one of the kids at school said our house looks just like the one Barnabas Collins lives in," Jonathan opined. Carolyn was annoyed. He knows we're haunted, but he can't say it in front of Candy. "Does not," Candy announced as if on cue. "It's sort of like the Brady Bunch once you get to my bedroom."

They tumbled out of the car, into Martha's waiting apron. "Cookies and milk in the kitchen then upstairs for homework."

Carolyn rested her head on the steering wheel to allay the sudden prickling behind her eyes. Where was the Captain, now that I need him, she thought suddenly, irrationally.

"Madame, we can leave if you like." Like that, he materialized in the front seat. "There's no sense in arguing like querulous adults in the confines of Gull Cottage when the sweeping freedom of the beach beckons."