Page 33 of When We Believed in Mermaids

I look up at him, recognizing the truth. “It is.”

A sign alerts me to the shopping area I’d been hoping to find. “I think this is it. How much time do we have?”

“As long as you need. There is no hurry.”

“I just want to duck inside here and ask around.”

“Of course.”

In a bar of shade, I pause to pull out my phone and then find a still I lifted from the video of the nightclub fire. I show it to Javier.

“This is your sister?”

“Yep.” I look down at it, feeling butterflies flutter around in my gut.

“You’re very different.”

I snort slightly, a very unladylike sound I wish I could take back. “Understatement of the year.”

He cocks his head, and a swath of light undulates over the waves in his hair. “How so?”

“She was tiny. I’m tall. She loved—loves—metaphor, and I love facts.” I look up at the various shops. Boutiques with seven dresses hanging in rows. It’s hard to imagine Josie ever shopping for clothing like that. “She was a complete hippie. I’m a doctor.” An upscale florist. Several restaurants. “She was outgoing, and I was introverted.” I don’t say,She was beautiful. I am not,but that might have been one of the more obvious things. Josie and Dylan and my mother were beautiful. I was the sturdy, sensible one.

Not that I minded, honestly, except for that small, heady stretch of time when I fell in love with James in high school. Otherwise I was relieved to be free of the demands of beauty. It didn’t seem to serve any of them particularly well, after all.

A cluster of professional women passes, wearing stockings and pencil skirts. The stockings surprise me, especially on such a warm day, and I stare after them, trying to remember the last time I wore a pair of stockings for any reason. Do people even do that anymore in the US?

Again I scan the storefronts. Javier waits.

For a second, I feel anxious and resistant and overwhelmed. Why am I on this ridiculous errand? And what am I going to do if I find her? The thought makes me feel queasy.

“Do you wish to show her photo around?”

I take a breath. “I guess I do.”

He takes out his phone and shoots a photo of my screen. “I will try the shops across the way, yes?”

“Sure.”

He heads across the way, and I weave in and out of the boutiques and shops on my side. At the end of the row, he joins me, and together we approach the Italian restaurant I spied earlier on Google Maps. I pause, faintly nervous, to glance at the menu attached to an elegant stand, and my mouth waters a little. “Ooh, they have Sicilian-style cannoli.”

“What makes them Sicilian?”

“Ricotta instead of cream inside. So good.”

A tall, tidy woman with a shiny fall of copper hair stands at the open-air hostess stand, getting things ready for the day. As I approach, she gives me a bright smile. “We’re not quite ready to serve, but I’d be happy to take your name.”

“No, thank you. I’m looking for someone.”

“Oh?” Her hands still on the napkins she’s folding.

I hold up the phone with my sister’s face. “Have you seen this woman?”

Her face smooths. “Yes. She’s a regular, but I don’t think I’ve seen her for a while.”

A bolt of shock runs through my body, like lightning.She’s alive.“Do you happen to know her name?” She cocks her head, and I realize too late that it’s odd that I have her picture but don’t know her name. “I know her as Josie, but I think her real name is something else.”

“Hmm.” Her face shutters slightly, and if she does know the name, she’s not saying it. “I’m afraid I don’t know.”