That’s how the secret summer vacation began.
“Want to find out together?”
At its base, a woman sat in a rocking chair, knitting a scarf that was already thirty feet long. She looked up. Her eyes were the color of shallow water.
The map led him past the abandoned drive-in theater, through a tunnel of overgrown wisteria, and down a cliff path that wasn’t on any official trail. At the bottom, where the tide breathed in and out over black rocks, was a boat.
The boat ride back took one hour but felt like a second. Leo beached The Rusty Mermaid just as dawn bled over the drive-in theater’s screen. He walked home, stepped through the back door, and found his mom at the kitchen table, staring at an old photograph.