Page 115 of When We Believed in Mermaids

She looks stricken and happy, and she wipes her face. “Thank you. I can’t wait to hear about your journey too. Are you okay?”

I pause, thinking of the search and Javier and now the terrible recognition that my mother’s neglect allowed my sister to be raped at the age of nine. “Yeah,” I say, but it’s clear that I’m not sure. “I will be, anyway.”

“Okay.”

“Let me talk to her again,” Mari says, and I hand her the phone.

“Mom, there are two things I need to tell you today, and then we have to go because there’s a storm on the way. I’m married and have two kids, so you’re a grandmother.”

My mother makes a noise, and I can see her in my imagination, covering her mouth.

“Their names are Leo and Sarah, and Sarah is like a mini Kit, all the way down to those webbed toes. You will love her, and you have to come see her.”

“I will, sweetheart. I promise.”

“Things are kind of crazy right now, though I hope they’re going to work out, but no matter what, I want to see you. And, Mom, thank you for the day of the earthquake. I never said thank you.”

Now I can hear a slight sob in Mom’s voice, and it gives me a weird anxiety. “You’re welcome.”

“We have to go, Mom,” I say when Mari gives me the phone back. “Kiss my kitty, and I’ll let you know when I get tickets back. Very soon.”

“Take your time, honey. I’m happy, and you see Hobo is fine.”

I hang up the phone and hold it in my hand, aware of a faint, low trembling of reaction running beneath my skin. Josie leans her head against the window, tears running down her face, looking at something far in the distance.

Chapter Thirty-One

Mari

On the way back to the high-rise, we’re quiet, Kit and I. My heart feels shredded into ten thousand pieces, and I still haven’t told her the last thing. My thoughts are skittering forward to Simon, and back to the look on my mother’s face when she saw me, and the way Kit sobered when I confessed the truth about Billy Zondervan.

“You should turn him in,” she says as we get close to the high-rise. “He’s probably still doing it.”

I nod. “Obviously I couldn’t do it before, but I’m thinking about it now. I just worry that it might make people feel sorry for me. It might make my kids think differently about me.”

“The first thing—no. No one will feel sorry for you if you get a pedophile off the streets. On the second—maybe they don’t have to know.” She shakes her head. “Yeah, right. I mean, I get that part. Only you know what they can handle.”

“Thanks.” I pull into the small drive in front of the high-rise.

“I’m probably going home in a day or two,” she says. “Get back to work.”

My gut twists. “No! Not yet!”

“I know. It’s fast, but we can keep in touch.”

As if we are just old friends who bumped into each other. But I have to give her space. “Thanks for coming out. Thanks for talking to me. Thanks for all of it, Kit. I mean it.”

She softens and leans forward to hug me. I smell her hair, feel her muscles. “We’ll stay in touch.”

“Javier is in love with you, Kit. I think you might want to give that relationship a chance.”

“Mm,” she says, and sits back in her seat. “I hope things work out with Simon.”

“Yeah.” I run a thumb along the seam of the leather on the steering wheel. “Are we just leaving it like this? That’s it?”

“I don’t know. What are we supposed to do? I’ll call you when I get home.”

“Okay. Sarah will love writing to you.”