He jabbed the spoon into the ice cream, which was already melting, and then lifted his cup in a little salute as she waved good-bye. When he turned around, he was greeted by the dizzying flash of the cameras at the window, and for a brief moment, he closed his eyes. But the lights refused to go away, and all he could see were stars.

From: EONeill22@hotmail.com

Sent: Sunday, June 9 2013 11:11 AM

To: GDL824@yahoo.com

Subject: Re: what happy looks like

The change of seasons.

It seemed to Ellie that walking into the Happy Thoughts Gift Shop was a little bit like stepping inside her mother’s brain. There was no sense of organization whatsoever, nor was there an obvious theme to the store’s contents. Eight years ago, when Mom first bought the shop, it had been known for selling mostly furniture and home decor, and was filled with elegant displays of candles and napkin rings and vases of all kinds. The previous owner was now happily retired in Florida, having long since given up on the Maine winters, but Ellie was pretty sure that if she were ever to see what had become of the place, she’d be horrified.

There was simply no rhyme or reason to it now. The whole store was no bigger than a large classroom, but it was so crammed with stuff that it tended to feel even smaller. They still sold place mats and pepper grinders, lamps and pillows and other assorted furnishings, but now there were also books and vintage toys and bins full of saltwater taffy. There were greeting cards and postcards, T-shirts and swimsuits, beach toys and board games.

And, of course, there were lobsters. Not real ones—though Ellie wouldn’t have been terribly shocked to stumble upon a fish tank in all the confusion—but lobster teacups and kettles, key chains and bookmarks and wind chimes. There was even a giant plush lobster that had been sitting in the back of the shop for years now. It was the size of a large ape, and with its black marble eyes and oversize antennae, it had, on more than one occasion, startled an unsuspecting kid who came wheeling around the corner a bit too fast.

Quinn was always itchy to organize the place, but Ellie loved its chaos. She’d basically grown up in this shop, and it felt almost like an extension of the house, a messy closet or treasure-filled basement. Mom had been hoping to expand for years now, lingering each morning at the dusty window of the adjacent storefront, a former real estate office that had been empty for ages. But there was never the money for it. At this point, there was hardly even enough to keep their house from falling to pieces all around them. And so the clutter in the shop only continued to grow. But the customers didn’t seem to mind, and neither did Ellie.

She’d spent countless afternoons here, doing her homework with lobster-shaped pencils, balancing on the old antique sea captain’s trunk while waiting for Mom to close up, sitting at the window and listening to the waves crash into the rocks just down the street. But her favorite part of the shop was the collection of picture frames lining the shelves in the far back corner. They came in all shapes and colors and sizes, some of them silver and some of them wood, while others were made of sea glass or had delicate designs along the edges. And in each and every frame, instead of a glossy photograph, there was a poem.

Years ago, on a winter day when the snow drifted high against the window and the shop was empty and quiet, Mom had left Ellie alone to trek down the street for some hot chocolate. While she was gone, Ellie found herself studying the framed photographs, black-and-white images of happy families smiling their toothy grins. There were couples gazing into each other’s eyes, parents holding the hands of their kids, families on picnics and boat rides and walks in the woods. As her eyes skipped over the display, Ellie realized there were exactly four pictures of fathers with their daughters perched on their shoulders, and exactly zero pictures of mothers and daughters.

She was eight that winter, old enough to understand that they weren’t ever going back to D.C., but too young to keep a firm grip on the memory of her father’s face, which slid in and out of her mind like a slippery fish. And so when she’d looked at all those happy faces tiling the wall of the shop, something inside of her split clean open.

By the time Mom returned, a steaming cup of cocoa in each hand, Ellie had systematically removed every single one of the photos, sliding them from their frames and ripping each one neatly before throwing it into the garbage. Mom stood in the doorway, her cheeks pink from the cold, a look of confusion in her eyes, and then she set down the cups and unwound her scarf. Without a word, she crossed the shop and grabbed a new pack of crayons from one of the hooks in the toy section, handing them over to Ellie.

“I have a feeling you can do better anyway,” she said.

For years after that, the frames housed Ellie’s construction-paper drawings, brightly colored sketches of trees and boats and lobsters. And when she was older, she switched to poetry, filling them with her favorite stanzas, each one scrawled in her tiny handwriting. Customers began to linger in that corner, perusing the shelves, lost in the words, and they became as much a draw as anything else in the shop. The ones with poems about Maine were scooped up by the tourists almost as soon as they were set out, and once, when Ellie went to a party hosted by one of her classmates, she saw that the frame his mom had bought months ago was still empty of a family photo. But it was there in the foyer anyway, featuring a poem by W. H. Auden, Ellie’s favorite.

As she walked into the shop this afternoon, Mom was opening a brand-new carton of frames, and when Ellie was close enough to get a look, she began to laugh.

“Those aren’t—”

“I know,” Mom said with a groan. “They sent us the wrong ones.”

“Maybe some gift shop in Maryland can use them.”

“Who’d want a picture frame with a crab on it?”

Ellie rolled her eyes. “Who’d want one with a lobster?”

“Hey,” Mom said with a grin. “Don’t knock the lobsters. They’re our bread and butter. So to speak.” She began to pack up the frames again, wrapping them in tissue paper. “How come you’re late? Were you busy gawking at movie stars like everyone else in this town?”

Ellie hesitated, then shook her head. “Quinn had a little milkshake mishap just as I was leaving, so I helped her clean up.”

“See,” Mom said, sweeping aside the box. “That’s why you should only be working here. We’re nothing if not tidy.”

Ellie raised her eyebrows pointedly at the mess of inventory, the random items strewn about so that the whole shop felt like a maze, and they both laughed. But it was clear she was only partially joking about the second job. When Ellie had started taking shifts at Sprinkles a few months earlier, Mom wasn’t thrilled about it.

For as long as Ellie could remember, money had been an issue. When she was younger, it had never seemed to matter. They had everything they needed, the two of them. But this fall, she’d be starting her last year of high school, which meant that college—and the staggering cost of tuition—was looming ever closer. Ellie didn’t want to go to a state school; she had her heart set on the Ivy League, and so they’d already started talking about loans, the paperwork piling up on Mom’s desk, columns of numbers and percentages, line after line of fine print. This, alone, was enough to make Ellie feel guilty, enough to set her heart beating fast with worry whenever the subject came up.