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of the sea and sands right into Jason’s cottage designs with color, texture, essence.
    Tomorrow he’ll buy enough of the sandy beige paint to trim the windows, doors and eaves.
    “The barn, too,” he hears. “Start on the barn.”
    He stops at the water’s edge. Seven years have passed since the wreck and he feels stronger now. He stretches his left leg straight and looks at the prosthetic limb attached below his knee. “Okay, Neil. You win.”

    I have light freckles and green eyes.
    Eva scrolls down the screen. Maris just emailed her the detailed itinerary for their Fourth of July reunion barbecue. Leave it to Maris to design the perfect columns of their beach friends’ names, phone numbers and RSVP check-box, then bullet the food menu, the yard games, drinks and even a schedule of tasks for the days before the event.
    Eva saves the email and quickly returns to the other screen she has opened. Her fingers rise to her hair, stroking the auburn strands as she reads along. This is the reason she stopped lightening it. She needs to see its real color, to recognize herself and, okay, maybe her mother in her reflection. All her life she’s wondered and looked for her, being quietly alert and open to possibilities of her true identity. Since she couldn’t find her birth mother anywhere else, maybe she has to look no further than her own face. Women say that spark of recognition jolts them when they recognize their mother in their reflection. Who will she see when her features take their natural form? Whose eyes are hers? She desperately wants to see her mother in the mirror. And on the computer screen, each trait belongs to a different adoptee on the very same search.
    I have light freckles and green eyes or
    Birth Name Baby Girl Deborah or
    My grandparents wear eyeglasses or
    Adopted one month after birth.
    The words look like small stars, lost in a vast sky moving through cyberspace. They have so little, in some cases, only their date of birth.
    She clicks on the link to the Registration Form. Surprisingly, this one is pretty straightforward. Matt says she isn’t fully with him and their daughter Taylor when she starts up with her searching. So she just takes a look, scrolling down and returning to the top. Then, taking a deep breath, she looks more and reads the instructions advising the adoptees to fill in any and all information they have. The words are kind, advising that it is okay if they are missing details.
    Most prompts are easy to answer.
    You are the? Adoptee.
    Searching for? Birthparents.
    Your date of birth? 2-11-1981
    Other prompts she can’t know the answer to. Birthparents’ Names, Hospital. She checks her watch and glances out the window at the night. Will Matt really mind if she tests the waters? She doesn’t have to tell him if she just dips the paddles and sets her search sailing, like a little rowboat moving through time. She won’t let it get to her like before, bringing her down. And what if all her answers come with this one online search? Knowing has to be better than wondering.
    The air is calm outside her window and the distant sound of waves breaking on the beach reaches her, as it often does on still nights like this. She glances at Lauren’s rowboat painting, picturing the old boat bobbing in the gentle waves.
    And quietly, so quietly, she begins to type.

.

    Chapter Five
    E va reaches for the pendant Maris wears. The etched star hangs on a braided gold chain and has a way of catching the light. Maris’ name is inscribed in cursive on the back. “You still have this? I remember you wearing it back in high school.”
    “I’ve never really stopped wearing it. It came in the mail a few years after my mother died,” Maris says, biting into the last of a devilled egg and wiping her hands on a paper napkin. “It’s from her sister in Italy. She actually moved there after studying abroad in college.”
    “Is she still there?”
    “I don’t know. I used to ask my dad, but some bad