Chapter 10 - Two Stars Above the Sea
“Mommy?”
Rebecca turned.
Nora and Sophie stood in the doorway of the terrace. They had changed out of their rigid, private-school uniforms into oversized flannel shirts and jeans. Around Nora’s neck hung the fully restored silver star, glinting brightly in the morning sun. Around Sophie’s neck hung the crescent moon, its three sapphires reflecting the blue of the clearing sky.
Between them, they carried a plate of warm toast and two mugs of tea that Mrs. Higgins, the longtime estate cook who had spent the morning weeping with joy in the kitchen, had prepared for them.
“Come here,” Rebecca whispered, kneeling on the stone tiles of the terrace.
The girls walked out into the crisp, clean autumn air. They set the plate on a wrought-iron table and sat on either side of Rebecca, their bodies pressing close against her warmth.
“Are we going to stay here?” Sophie asked, looking out over the sprawling lawn and the iron gates that were now guarded by state troopers protecting them, not imprisoning them.
“No,” Rebecca said gently, wrapping her arms around both of them. “We’re selling this house. We’re going to Vermont. To your grandmother’s farmhouse by the lake. The one with the big apple orchard and the porch with the creaky swing.”
“The one from the stories?” Nora asked, her eyes lighting up with the first genuine spark of childhood wonder she had displayed in years.
“The one from the stories,” Rebecca confirmed. “No gates. No guards. Just trees, the water, and us.”
Sophie leaned her head against Rebecca’s shoulder, closing her eyes as the morning sun warmed her face. “Mommy?”
“Yes, my love?”
“Can you finish the song? The one from the living room?”
Rebecca closed her eyes.
For eight years, she had sung that melody into the darkness of cheap motel rooms, into the roar of the factory machines where she had worked under a fake identity, into the biting wind of cold New England nights when she thought her heart would simply give out from grief.
She took a deep, steady breath, her voice clear, rich, and full of an indestructible, triumphant light.
*“Two little stars above the sea,*
*Guiding my babies back to me.*
*Though the night is long and the cold wind cries,*
*Love never breaks and love never dies.*
*Sleep now, my darlings, the morning is near,*
*The water has cleared, and your mother is here.”*
Nora joined in on the last line, her small voice harmonizing with Rebecca’s. Then Sophie hummed the final note, her fingers resting lightly over the silver moon at her collarbone.
May you like
Behind them, the dark sedans at the gate turned their engines off. The reporters packed their cameras. The mansion stood behind them—grand, empty, and powerless.
Ahead of them, the sun rose higher over the open sea, golden and infinite, washing away the shadows of the past, leaving only the three of them, unbroken and finally home.
