My Kids and I Went to the Beach House

Becky anticipates comfort rather than mayhem when she brings her kids to the seaside property she inherited. Her memory is destroyed and her strength is put to the test by what they discover inside. Becky has to choose how far she will go to keep her house and her calm as family tensions increase and hidden allegiances come to light. The fragrance of betrayal filled the house.

The moment the door gave way and the key turned in the lock, I knew. It had nothing to do with wood or salt or nostalgia. It tasted sour, like beer that has been left out in the heat for too long. And there was vile cigarette smoke beneath it. And beneath that was the stench of something foul and completely out of place.

Daniel and Rosie, my children, paused on the porch behind me. They had been chatting nonstop throughout the morning, inquiring about the beach house’s proximity, the softness of the sand, and whether bunk beds were available for them to sleep on. For months, I had promised them this trip. It was meant to be our first action for ourselves in a long time. Rather, I entered a wreck.

Grandma Roslyn had died in the spring, and I had inherited the house. The kitchen was just large enough for one person to stand sideways at the stove, and there were only two bedrooms and a sagging porch, but it was mine. The sea was close enough to smell your clothes and hair as it sat directly on the dunes. I remembered everything so well, even though I hadn’t been back since I was a teenager.

Like the way Grandma’s old radio hummed in the kitchen, the way the light streamed through the lace curtains in the mornings, and the way she rocked slowly back and forth on the porch at night. I’d survived the worst of it in that house. I thought about this place and how it would feel to open the windows wide and allow the ocean air in whenever I was exhausted from work, when the bills were piling up, or when the kids were fighting in the heat for too long. Tucked away between bills and work shifts, it was the image of hope I kept hidden, a reminder that beauty was still out there, waiting for us.

I imagined how Daniel would burrow trenches in the sand so deep he would lose all sense of reality, and how Rosie’s laughter would reverberate down the beach house hallway. I eventually turned it into a dream. However, the dream vanished before we entered. My shoes squelched on the carpet. It was wet and sticky. My skin crawled at the sound alone. 

I looked around the room, trying to make sense of it, but the mess defied logic. My grandmother’s coffee table was splintered in the corner, as if someone had deliberately jumped on it. One leg was totally broken, and the carved edge she rested her cup on was now fractured. Crushed pizza boxes were strewn among crumpled plastic cups and cigarette butts pressed into the floor, while empty alcohol bottles adorned the kitchen counter like trophies. Gran’s rocking chair was sideways tilted at the furthest corner of the room, close to the window. One leg broke in two. It appeared to have given up on standing.

Rosie’s hand crept into mine behind me. She had a warm, slightly sweaty palm. She said, hardly raising her voice above a whisper, “Mommy?” “What happened here?” I was broken by her voice. Such inquiries, which leave a mother feeling helpless in her own home, shouldn’t accompany childhood. I took a while to respond. I had a stiff throat. Her gaze was fixed on me, waiting for a logical response, but I was at a loss for words. That someone wrecked our house after using it? That all of my childhood memories had been trampled underfoot as if they were worthless? Softly, “I don’t know, baby,” I said. “I really don’t know what happened.”

Daniel entered the house with the inquisitiveness of a nine-year-old and said, “Is this… really it? This is the house you’ve been telling us about?” The eager tone he had used in the automobile was quite different from his voice now. I turned to face him, but I was unable to make eye contact. “Yes,” I said. “But it wasn’t like this before. Go outside and play in the sand. Both of you. I’ll tidy it up, okay?” The screen door creaked as he and Rosie stepped back and went outside.

The injury grew deeper, room. Drawers hung open in the kitchen. On a single hinge, one hung. In the sink was a frying pan coated with something crimson. The cold breeze from the ocean came in through a broken window. Then, from the main bedroom, I heard a low, startling snoring. It didn’t belong, yet it wasn’t noisy. Its rhythm made my skin crawl for some reason. It seemed as though someone had taken this property as their own because it was too relaxed and cozy. I went cold. My entire body stiffened, anticipating something I couldn’t identify.

I walked slowly and methodically passed the shattered lamp with its shade knocked sideways and the ripped rug in the corridor. As I arrived to the bedroom door, my heart was racing. For a moment, my fingers paused on the knob. I mean, I didn’t know who I would discover in that room. It might have been a violent individual, a homeless person, or a reckless adolescent. I still owned this house, though. I inhaled deeply before pushing the door open.

There she was. Susan! My mom-in-law. My grandmother’s bed had her stretched out as if it were her own. A half-empty bottle of wine lay on the nightstand, one leg was flung across the blankets, and her boots were still on. I looked at her, trying to figure out what was going on. I murmured, “What the actual heck?” to myself.

Susan opened her eyes a little. After giving me two blinks, she grinned as if I had just interrupted a massage. “Oh,” she said, stretching. “Surprise, Becky-Boo.” I was unable to talk. Though my brain hadn’t yet processed the words, they were there. Susan groaned as if she were the one bothered by my unexpected arrival and slowly sat up. It felt like a far worse robbery than shattered furniture to see her there. A once-holy area had lost its respect because of her.

When she said, “Now, don’t get all wound up, Becky,” “The students only left a few hours ago. I was going to clean everything up before you got here. Obviously.” “What students?” I inquired at last. My voice sounded aloof, even aloof. “My friend’s niece. You’ve met Janice, right? Her niece, Tara, is an art school kid. So, I let them have their summer bash here for the weekend. They paid cash, if that makes it better. And they brought their own drinks.” She gave a yawn.

I said, “How did you even get in, Susan?” “I saw the key hanging by your front door last week when I was watching the kids. You weren’t using it. I figured… why not?” she added with a palm raised. I gazed at her. Like heat, the anger crept up my throat. With a venomous tone, I remarked, “Well, you figured wrong, Susan.”

“Oh, for goodness’ sake, Becky. Don’t be so dramatic,” she responded. “It’s just a little mess. Kids being kids and all that. Don’t you remember your early 20s?”

“Get up,” I said. “Now.” She frowned as she said, “Excuse me? Who do you think you’re talking to?” I said sternly, “Get up. Start cleaning!”…

As if I were crazy, Susan stood slowly, wiping crumbs from her pants. In her own words, “I was doing you a favor,” “I made some extra money, too.”

“You destroyed the last item I owned of my grandmother!” I exclaimed, gritting my teeth.

“It’s just a house,” Susan curtly said.

However, it wasn’t. As a child, it was every Sunday morning spent with my grandmother, every bedtime story that was whispered, and every thread of belonging that was woven into me.

“No,” I replied. “It’s not.”

With my heart racing, I took out my phone and left. Steven had scheduled our meeting for the following morning. He promised to arrive at sunrise with the kids’ favorite sprinkled donuts and fresh pastries from the bakery close to the hospital, even though he was working a late shift. After the chaos of summer, he had hoped it would feel like a gentle weekend getaway for all of us. Rather, he would be entering a combat zone.

I hardly managed to get the words out when he responded. As I explained, I could hear him sit up and his breathing shift. No charges were made. No inquiries. All he said was, “I’m on my way, sweetheart,”

The gravel beneath his tires shattered twenty minutes later. He didn’t have a box of hot pastries in his hands as he got out of the automobile. He had a large bottle of cleaning solution, garbage bags, gloves, and enough rage to light a building on fire.

Despite having a tense face and eyes from work, my hubby remained silent. Before entering the beach home, he drew me into a strong embrace and gave the kids hugs and kisses. I felt rooted for the first time in the day. His silence was strength, the kind that keeps you steady when all else falters, not avoidance.

Then, without a word, he simply glanced around once and began gathering bottles. Wrapped in towels, the children remained on the beach. I handed them the sandwiches I had prepared and said that after the cleaning was finished, we would play Uno. Daniel inquired as to whether the rocking chair could be fixed; Rosie appeared anxious. The three of us cleaned quietly inside.

Every time she leaned down, Susan said, “You’re overreacting,” “It’s not like anything’s stolen. You always make everything bigger than it is.” I paid her no attention. Steven did, too.

The house was habitable once again by dusk. Nothing seemed quite right again, and everything wasn’t entirely clean, but it wasn’t as terrible as it had been.

“You’re paying for all of it,” I said. “The couch. The rocking chair. The carpet… all of it. That’s a $1,000 minimum. And that’s me being kind, Susan.”

She snorted and replied, “Becky, you’re crazy.” “I don’t have that kind of money.”

“Then you shouldn’t have rented out something that wasn’t yours. It’s not that difficult to understand,” I replied.

“You think you’re better than everyone just because you lucked into this house?” Susan shouted, her face flushed with anger, as she walked toward me. “You’re a nurse, my girl. You’re a broke nurse. You could have sold this place and used the money for your kids. Or you could have rented it out.”

“I’m not charging strangers to destroy something I love,” I said.

Steven did not recoil. “She’s right, Mom. You crossed a line here, and I can’t even look at you the same,” he replied.

Susan snapped her head at him and exclaimed, “You’re taking her side?!”…

“I saw the damage for myself. I’ve heard the way you talk to my wife. In what world would I be on your side?” Steven responded with anger.

On the floor, my mother-in-law spat. In the center of the entrance, exactly. She then departed, slamming the screen door so forcefully that the window’s crack trembled in its frame.

She wasn’t pursued by us. She left a light quiet in her wake. It was sanitized. As if the air had finally been cleared of something poisonous.

I turned toward the porch after standing in the entrance for a while, watching the last of the sunshine flicker through the broken glass she had banged. Peace can sometimes be found in the absence of cruelty, in the stillness that allows you to breathe again, rather than in large gestures.

Rosie had gone to the neighborhood fish and chip shop with Steven. There was nothing safe to eat in the pantry, and the kitchen still smelled of rot and old grease. I had placed a bottle of cocoa concentrate in the van before we left the house as a precaution, and it served as our little solace as we waited for Steven and Rosie.

I opened all the windows and lighted a stubby lavender candle I had discovered in the pantry. Daniel and I relaxed on the porch with hot beverages after wrapping ourselves in antique quilts. The air was salty and cold. For the first time in the day, everything seemed to be at a standstill as the distant murmur of the ocean was heard.

My youngster leaned against me and asked, “Do you think Dad will want cocoa when he gets back?” I nodded and remarked, “He’ll definitely need two cups,” “He did a lot of cleaning inside.”

Although we were both aware that cocoa wouldn’t solve every problem, it was evidence that we still had warmth to offer one another at that precise moment. He yawned after grinning.

The trip wasn’t what I had anticipated. Not even close. However, it seemed genuine. nor borrowed, nor coerced.

A hoot jolted me out of my reverie a few moments later. As he assisted Rosie in getting out of the car, Steven remarked, “Ready to eat?” “We’ve got a lot of fish and chips!”

I went into town the following morning to get new locks. Steven remained with the children, using sanded wood from the shed to reinforce the frame and fix the glass. By midday, the house appeared more like something we could still grow into and less like a memory someone had damaged.

My phone then rang. Susan was the one. “There’s been a flood in my home — a burst pipe,” she stated. “I don’t know what to do. My home… is destroyed. Let me stay at your place. Please, Becky. I’ll sleep on the couch or even the floor!”

“You should have enough for a hotel,” I said. “After all, you made money renting out my property for a party…”

Susan’s gasping was the last sound I heard.

The scent of lemon cleanser and sea salt filled the air that night. The porch railing shook in the wind, but there was no movement within.

The following day, we surrendered to the sea. Rosie and Daniel sped on, their footprints buried deep in the sand. The three of them laughed when the tide took their sculptures, and I watched as Steven assisted them in carving towers and moats. I felt my chest relax for the first time in months as the sun warmed my shoulders.

Steven lit a fire in the backyard on our final night. Through the open windows came the fragrance of toasted buns and burnt burgers. As Daniel prepared the table and began making plans for the next time we made s’mores, Rosie ran around with her toy rabbit under one arm.

The children later murmured to us, buried under covers, that they wanted their rooms decorated when we got back. Rosie desired drapes that were pink. Daniel demanded enough pillows and blankets to construct the largest fort in the state.

I smiled as I listened, allowing myself to reminisce about my childhood. As I made shapes in the sand, I recalled Grandma whistling on the porch. I recalled her telling me that if you waited long enough, the sea would always return what it had taken.

Steven was drinking tea from a broken mug while he sat next to me on the couch. A “You okay?” he inquired.

I answered, “I will be,” and nodded.

“It’s all coming together, Becks,” he replied. “And we’ll keep making it a home, I promise you that.”

I understood that home wasn’t found in furnishings or walls. It was in myself or in those who persisted in trying.

I didn’t respond. I simply grinned.

The waves crashed outside. Peace settled inside. And I didn’t dream of anything breaking for the first time since Susan’s antics. Sleep was rest, not escape, for once. And I had the impression that was the first real inheritance Grandma had intended for me.