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My strategy noas to return to the post office and tell the wo at the Riverside Resort But before I’d walked roups of people standing along the road, looking at the sky, as if they aiting for so s at once

I’d never seen an eclipse, except once, on television at the McGarritts’ house Now I stood close to one of the groups and listened to a teacher talk about the eclipse path, about theinto the earth’s umbra She warned the children to use their cardboard pinhole ca effect"

When the teacher stopped talking, I asked her if she had an extra camera She looked at et to turn your back to the sun," she said "Are you fro," I said But I heard her think, She looks like Sara

"Do you know an to darken, and the air was colder now We all turned away fros I held the squares apart, so that the one with the pinhole filtered light onto the other The sun appeared -- a white dot

As noisy as they’d been before, the people around h the earth’s shadow, the sun on my cardboard became a crescent -- and for a eht around a dark center It was, to use Kathleen’s words, totally aweso ahead ofback her hair and laughing -- a girl full of life, not yet a victi in the near-darkness, I wished she could have seen the eclipse, and I hoped that she was at peace

How ed? We stood silently asdown at the cardboard long after I needed to I hoped that no one saw ht me back I wiped ain, straight into the eyes of roup of children, watching me Except for her clothes -- faded jeans, a t-shirt -- she looked like the wo hair that curled back from her forehead, eyes blue as lapis lazuli

"Well," she said "We wondered when you ht drop in"

She held her arms out, and I ran into them This time I didn’t care if anyone saw me cry

And this is the hardest part of all, wouldn’t you agree? How to describe the first experience of yourcard?

Perhaps I needn’t try A phrase fro"

Three

The Blue Beyond

Chapter Thirteen

The road to my mother’s house was narrow, made of dirt, and bumpy Her white pickup truck skirted the deepest ruts, but it stillride She drove fast, and when I looked into the side mirror I saw clouds of dust behind us

She left that road and turned right onto an even narrower one Shts ate, connected to a high aluminuly, isn’t it?" she said "But necessary, at tiate, drove us past it, then locked it again

I couldn’t take my eyes off her When she returned to the truck, I said, "Please? Tell me what I should call you"

She suese for mother, and a nicer sound than mother, don’t you think?"

"Mãe" I extended the two syllables: MY-yeh

She nodded "And I’ll call you Ariella A name I’ve always loved"

Tall treesSpanish roves

"The river is off to the west," Mãe said "And to the east, we border a nature preserve We have forty acres"

"We?"

"Dashay, and the animals, and me," she said "And now, you"

I was about to ask who Dashay was, but we turned another curve and I saw the house I’d never seen anything like it The central structure was rectangular, but a dozen or hts and round ere set at angles and positioned high or low in the walls The house was ray-blue stone; later I found out that the additions were stucco, painted to hter than usual, it seemed; did it see low

We left the truck Mãe carried my backpack I paused to touch the wall near the front door; close up, I could see the stone’s veins of silver, slate gray, and ht blue "It’s beautiful," I said

"Limestone," Mãe said "Built in the 1850s This part is all that’s left of the original house; the rest was destroyed by Union soldiers"

Beside the front door stood a stone statue of a wo a horse, next to an urn full of roses "Who is she?" I asked

"You don’t know her?" Mãe seeood stable has a shrine for her" She opened the heavy wooden door, and beckoned me in "Welcome home, Ariella"

The smell of home: wood polished with the oil of Meyer le soeranium, and a hint of horses Mãe reht of my socks, one of which had a hole in its heel She noticed but didn’t say anything

My first visual is: each wall (painted varying shades of blue) had a s, or a bookcase, or an alcove holding statues, flowers, and herbs The furniture was simple, low and modern, most upholstered in white Carpets and cushions were scattered everywhere She led me down a corridor, into a room with periwinkle walls, a vast white bed, and an ivory chaise next to a floor lamp with a mother-of-pearl shade

It was so different fros of my father’s house I’d always assumed that ht brought me back to the one that kept me from happiness: why had she left us?