Page 53 of When We Believed in Mermaids

He nods, and a yawn overtakes him. I smile and kiss his forehead. “Watch your movie. I’m going to have a bath.”

“How was Nan?”

“Good.” I think of the strange spill of confession I’d allowed to fall, and I feel a vague sense of worry at the back of my neck. What if she mentions it in front of Simon? Or—

The only way I can live the way I do is by compartmentalizing everything. “We had tapas.”

“We’re taking the kids over to the house in the morning, right?”

“I’ll take them. You sleep late.” I stroke his forehead, his temples. “You’ve been working hard all week.”

“Thank you,” he says as he takes my hand and plants a kiss on the palm, “but I want to be there when they see it.”

“Your call. Don’t stay up too late.”

As I run my bath and strip down, rain is pouring outside. When I first moved to Auckland to live with Simon, we had a villa with a tin roof in another neighborhood, and the sound of the rain was sometimes deafening. This is hypnotic.

But three hours later, I’m still not asleep, and I finally slip out of bed and head downstairs to make a cup of tea. As the chamomile steeps, I open my computer and allow myself to stalk my sister. She doesn’t spend much time on Facebook, but I can sometimes see photos on my mother’s timeline, which is not private or closed or anything else.

She looks good, my mom. Her hair is still long. Her face is heavily lined, and I bet she still smokes. I know she doesn’t drink anymore by the millions of references she makes to being sober and to AA.

But no matter how sober she is or how good she looks, I still resent her. Raising my children has given me an understanding of just how terrible my own parents were.

A girl without a mother who protects her is a girl at the mercy of the world. How could she have been so blind to the alcohol I consumed at nine years old? Twelve? Fourteen? How could she have missed seeing the abuse that occurred right under her nose? Sarah isn’t allowed to walk on the beach alone, much less spend the night there alone.

At times I soften, thinking of how difficult her life was then too. My father was a hard man, born in Sicily during the war, and although he loved my mother jealously and protectively, he also took other women on a whim. He thought we were all spoiled and privileged, my mother and his daughters.

And God, how the two of them drank and partied!

The Christmas morning after Kit’s tenth birthday, we tumbled down the stairs to find not the gifts “Santa” ordinarily left but a scene of devastation. The Christmas tree blinked in mute witness to overturned furniture, broken glasses, debris scattered all over the rug. Kit stood silently beside me, her big eyes taking in the disaster.

Dylan came up behind us. “Wow.”

We stood there for long minutes, completely silent. My heart sank, falling from somewhere in the middle of my chest all the way through my gut and into the floor. I felt tears welling in my eyes. “Why did they do this?” I whispered. “Why did they have to do it on Christmas?”

Kit did not make a sound.

Dylan touched her shoulder, then mine. “I have an idea. Go get dressed. Both of you. Something nice.”

We only looked at him. Not even Dylan could save this.

“Go on!” he said, and shoved us a little. “Get dressed, brush your teeth, brush your hair. Meet me outside in ten minutes.”

Kit and I exchanged a glance. She shrugged.

We raced through our ablutions and ran downstairs and out the front door. Dylan had changed too, into a nice pair of jeans and a long-sleeve shirt with three buttons at the neck. His hair was clean and shiny, combed neatly and pulled back into a ponytail. He was waiting by my mother’s Chevy and opened the door. “Kit in the front seat on the way there, Josie on the way back.”

Kit’s grin flashed for the barest moment as she claimed the prized spot. “Where are we going?”

“You’ll see.” He rubbed my head as he went by, and mollified over losing the front seat, I buckled myself in.

“Did Mom tell you that you could borrow her car?” Kit asked.

He started the car and headed north on the highway. “What do you think, Kitten?”

She shook her head.

“Right. Let’s not talk about that anymore.”