Page 108 of When We Believed in Mermaids

For remembering later.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Mari

I drive to Sapphire House, which draws me like a siren. I’ve never been there at night yet, and the view is astonishing, even more magical than I imagined. Standing on the bluff, looking over the glittering spread of the city, I think of the day Simon brought me here for the first time.

My husband, back when he adored me and bought me a legendary house. A hole tears in my heart as I think of it.

I let myself into the dark, empty rooms. I turn on lights as I go, trying to bring in warmth, but it’s just so very empty. I’m never alone at night. My family is always with me.

Is this how it will be, going forward? The possibility is agonizing. I had no idea how much I needed and wanted a family or how good I would be at it.

In the kitchen, I set the kettle to boil and lean against the counter, waiting. The light in here is green and unpleasant, and one of the things I want to install is better, warmer lighting. Did Helen not mind it? I think of her here with Paris and Toby, alone in the giant house for decades and decades and decades. Why did she stay? Why not sell the house and find some more appealing bungalow somewhere? There’d have been plenty of money. It’s the first time I’ve thought about it, and now I wonder why it hadn’t occurred to me sooner. Was she hiding something? Doing penance?

Carrying my mug of tea to the lounge, I let myself out the French doors and sit on the deck. The sound and smell of the sea ease the tension in my neck.

What a disaster. Had I really believed that I’d get away with it forever?

Yes. I mean, why not?

And yet now that it’s all out in the open, I’m relieved. Everything in my life is turned upside down, but I can finally tell my real story. The people I love can know me—on both sides of the line. The people who knew Josie, and by that I guess I mean Kit, and the people who love Mari. Sipping my tea, watching the half moon skim the surface of the water, I try to imagine how Nan will take it. Gweneth.

Mom.

I’ve carried a torch of hatred for my mother for so long now that it’s hard to even see beyond the straw woman I’ve made of her. With moonlight and sea wrapping me in the same light as childhood, I remember another side of her, the one who so tenderly took Dylan in, who gave that lost boy a home. It’s startling to realize that she was younger than I am now when all that was happening. I was born when she was only twenty-one, so she wasn’t even thirty when Dylan washed into our world. The sexy young trophy wife of a much older man.

Leaning back against the wall, I wonder what that must have been like. My father was almost fifteen years older than her, and at first totally obsessed with her.

When had he started taking lovers? When did she find out?

It makes me sad.

Out of nowhere comes a memory of when I was only four or five. My mother and I sat together on the vast patio of the restaurant and watched the ocean. She sang to me, a ballad about a mermaid who warned sailors of a shipwreck. A knot in my chest aches as the vision unspools—the waves crashing, the quiet moon, her voice and her arms around me.

Mama.

The day of the earthquake, we were in downtown Santa Cruz. She bought me ice cream, not because I liked it but because she did. I was stunned and sad, my uterus cramping after the violent cleansing it had just undergone, and she was uncharacteristically silent. “Are you okay?” she asked at last.

I shook my head, fighting tears. “I’m so sad.”

She reached over and took my hand. “I know, sweetie. I am too. One day, when the time is right, you’ll have babies, and I’ll be a grandmother who spoils them rotten.”

The pounding ache in my chest spread through my body, pulsing hard in my throat with an almost unbearable pressure. “But this one—”

“I know, sweetheart. But you’re barely fifteen.”

And that was when the earthquake started. It wasn’t like we’d never experienced one before, but you could hear this one coming, rumbling beneath the surface of the ground, coming toward us. The first wave hit the building with a slamming bang, knocking cutlery and glassware and baked goods from the counter onto the floor. Almost at the same second, the plate glass window next to us shattered, and my mother grabbed my arm and yanked me violently out of my chair to haul me toward the door. Before we got there, the ceiling started falling down, crashing around us, and a big chunk smashed into my head, knocking me down. My mom’s hand was ripped out of mine, and I screamed for her, feeling like I would faint, like my heart would stop beating.

She bent down and hauled my arm around her neck. “Hold on!” She dragged me to my feet, and we staggered outside, but even there, it was loud, and people were screaming, and things were breaking, falling, groaning all around us.

Blood spilled into my eye, and I pressed a hand to the throbbing spot on my head. It was a big cut, and blood was soon leaking down my arm. My mom was holding on to me, hard, as the world shook itself apart around us. It was violent and loud, and I was trying not to pass out. It seemed like it went on and on and on, though later they said it was only fifteen seconds.

When it finally slowed to a stop, my mom let go of holding me so tightly as she looked around.

She said, “Jesus wept,” and I had to see too.

The air was filled with dust and debris, making it dark, and it looked like a bomb had hit, with the front of buildings crumbled into individual bricks on the sidewalk. One building looked like it had imploded. People were crying, and somebody howled, and I saw a man who was so dusty, he looked like he’d walked into an exploding bag of flour. Alarms were going off. I smelled gas.