Moonglass

peeked into a tiny bathroom. A dry toilet stood in the center, surrounded by pieces of broken tiles and rusty pipe. As I turned to go on, the thick threads of a cobweb stretched across my face, and I swatted frantically at them, dropping my flashlight in the process.
    It thudded onto the wood floor, rolling loudly before coming to a stop against the wall. There, in the narrow shaft of light, I saw the bottom step of a staircase that angled up almost vertical y. Up until that moment it hadn’t felt much different from the other cottages in their broken-down state. I stared at the dust particles orbiting one another in the light, and I knew. If there was any space in the house that had been hers, that could possibly have some remnant of my mother in it, it would be up the stairs.
    The first step sagged under my weight, so I crept up slowly, keeping my feet to the edges of the steps, testing them first before putting my weight fully on them. I was concentrating on this pattern of placing my feet, and then lifting my weight, when I reached the top step and finally looked up.
    It was visibly lighter in this room. Not only because the walls were all painted white, but because of the large window that looked out directly onto the rocky tide pools that drew so many people, including myself. Just beyond them, a boat, probably out for lobster, sat beyond the breaking waves. Its blue-white light waved and bobbed gently over the shiny black surface and splashed a bright pool around the hull.
    The image it created looked like a painting. I stepped back and realized why. The frame around the window was wide with detailed corners, a frame around the perfect canvas. I imagined how the picture in the center must continually change in color and texture, through seasons and weather.
    Your mother was a brilliant artist .
    I stepped closer, keeping the light as low as I could. To the side of the window a small door opened out to the balcony I had been so intrigued by. My hand reached for the crystal knob, then stopped short as a dark shape on the window frame caught my eye. Cautiously I raised my light up to it and brushed away a layer of dirt to reveal what lay beneath.
    It was a tail.
    A curved tail that tapered and ended in two curling tips. My eyes followed the graceful lines upward and found the woman’s body and waving hair that I knew would be there. I stood on my tiptoes and reached my hand up to the top corner of the window frame, then ran it down the length of it, squatting when I reached the bottom. Dirt and salty film coated my fingertips, but I didn’t wipe them off.
    I continued with my hand, along the bottom of the window frame, wiping away the dust, then up the other side. Faded mermaids, beautiful in their curves and waves, swam among rocks and coral in an underwater garden. When I got to the top, I had to move on raised toes, wiping the grime away with each step. No swimming figures bordered the top of the window. Instead there were three words, scrawled in faded paint. I stepped back and shined my light on them.
    BEAUTY, GRACE, STRENGTH.
    I stared at them, afraid to breathe, then repeated them in my head. Beauty. Grace. Strength . No recognition or memory came to me, no special significance behind them. She had placed her brush on that window frame, and with delicate strokes had left something of herself, something meaningful to her that I didn’t understand. That I might never understand.
    Were those the things she valued most? The things she wished she’d had? Things she wanted to pass on?
    I stood rooted to the sagging wood floor and switched off the flashlight. Then I sat down and cried.
    She was all around me, everywhere I turned, from the moment we had arrived. And still … she wasn’t. I had fooled myself into thinking I felt some connection to this place. There it was, right in front of me. Her art. Three words. And nothing else.
    I wiped my eyes, hard, wishing I hadn’t let myself think there had even been a possibility of anything else. She had left me alone in the dark long ago, and this time was no different. I put my head down on my knees, and my red moonglass slipped out of the edge of my shirt and swung back and forth on its chain before coming to a stop, dangling in the dark, inches from my face.
    I closed my hand around it and felt the same smooth contours that I had for the last nine years, since the night she died. A piece of sea glass. That’s what she left me. I knew now that she had