I spent some time down at our little beach before heading up to see about dinner. When I walked in, my mother wasn't at the table. The mess from earlier had grown, spreading out from the table with several notepads now resting on the floor.

"Mom?" I yelled down the empty hall.

After a minute my mother appeared. She was hopping on one foot and trying to get her shoe on the other. Her perfume came before her, floating on the air. It smelled like our garden back home and for a minute I was so homesick I almost started to cry.

"Oh good Gilly, you're here," she said, finally able to stand on both feet.

I looked her up and down. She was wearing a dress in a colorful flower print; it was sleeveless and kind of tight. Her shoes were bright pink high heels. She had put her hair up and had on dangling earrings.

Where are you going?" I asked in shock.

"I'm meeting a friend for a drink. I won't be too long."

"What friend?" I asked. She hadn't been anywhere to meet anyone.

"The owner of the wine shop," she said defensively.

The wine shop? I was confused. "You mean the liquor store?" I said wrinkling up my nose.

"I'll be home after a while," she said, kissing my cheek. "I bought some groceries, so fix yourself dinner and keep the door locked."

With that, she strolled out and was gone. I stood between the kitchen and the living room in a daze. What just happened?

I made a grilled cheese sandwich for my supper and tried to watch TV. 'Everybody Loves Raymond' was hidden behind a blizzard of static. I washed up in the sink and got my PJ's on. While I was brushing my teeth I heard the front door open.

"Gilly," my mother called.

I stepped out of the bathroom with a mouthful of toothpaste and looked at her. She seemed the same as when she left - beautiful.

"I'm home now. Is everything okay? Did you eat something?"

She seemed different but I couldn't put my finger on it.

"Yeah, everything's good," I managed to reply with a mouthful of suds.

I finished up in the bathroom and came out to find she had taken her place back at the table, fiddling with some papers and holding a glass of wine. Her reading glasses were sitting almost at the end of her nose as she read over whatever she had written.

She looked up and smiled at me when I entered the kitchen, then turned back to the paper she was holding. I was curious about what happened and what she had been doing, but I could tell she wasn't going to share.

"I'm going to bed," I announced.

"Good night," she said, not even looking away from her work.

I tried to listen to some music on my clock radio, but I wasn't able to get any good stations. I wrote in my journal about my adventures that day and was surprised that I had so much to say. The beach bullies took up a lot of what I had written. Then the stranger and his dog, along with the trail to his house and the warnings I had received.

I questioned what my dad would think of my adventure. He was always protective of us. I wondered what he would feel about my mother. I didn't think he'd like her drinking so much or going out looking so sexy. I started feeling bad. I wanted my old life back with my whole family. I had lost my mother too. Even if she was still here – she wasn't.

*

The morning came and went as usual... gray fog hugging everything, a bowl of cereal for breakfast and watching the dark tide come in and go out from the living room window. I also studied, as I did every day, the changing parade of people who stayed here. There weren't very many kids, mostly scruffy adults. My mother insisted that I stay away from them. She made me promise, then went back to her blurry-eyed existence and never checked on me again. I wondered if we were going to spend all of this summer apart. She sure wasn't showing any signs of wanting to be with me. I knew I was going to have to make my own vacation. I could sit around the cottage, or look for adventure. Adventure, most definitely!

Today I had my own plans. I was going farther up the path to the stranger's house. On my way out, I saw some money on the kitchen counter with a note from my mother. Gilly, here's money to get yourself some lunch at the diner in town. I thought you might enjoy a hamburger. Love, Mom. I pocketed the money and set off down to the hillside where I had first found the path and began my journey.