Page 81 of When We Believed in Mermaids

“You know it isn’t always going to be like that, right?”

A vision of his current girlfriend’s bouncing breasts rose up behind my eyes, and I giggled. “Yes. I spy on you.”

“What?” He sat up.

I had a sneaking suspicion that I wouldn’t be pleased with myself later, spilling this secret. “I can see you through a crack in the wall.”

“Having sex?” He didn’t sound mad, just confused. “You watch me having sex? How long?”

“Ooh, long time. Since Rita.”

“Huh.” He fell back down. “You know you shouldn’t.”

“Of course.” I closed my eyes, and to think about it, to see his shoulders, the kissing, the heat moves between my legs. “It makes me feel good.”

He picked up the vodka bottle and took a big swig. “We shouldn’t be doing this either.” He fell back on the sand. “Jesus, I’m so fucked up.”

I laugh. “Me too!”

“You’re only fourteen,” he says sadly.

“Yep.”

“You shouldn’t knowanyof this stuff.”

“But I do,” I sang, and felt like I was rising up from my body. In my imagination I took the place of his girlfriend, and it was me he was kissing and touching, and I was doing it back. “It’s not your fault, though. It’s Billy’s.”

“Billy Zondervan?”

“Who else?”

“That motherfucker. We should tell your parents, Josie. He should go to jail.”

I hauled myself upright. “No! Never.”

“Why? Why don’t you want to punish him?”

“They won’t punish him,” I said fiercely. “It’ll be all about me, and everyone will know, and—” I could just see the way people would look at me at school, and in my drunken state, I burst into tears. “You promised!”

“Oh, baby.” He hugged me. I thought he might be crying. “I’m so sorry. I should have protected you better.”

I buried my face in his shoulder, feeling relief and peace. I was so very, very tired. “It wasn’t your job.”

“Yeah,” he said. “It was.”

We lay down on the beach, and he held me. Just held me, while we looked at the stars.

After so shockingly running into Kit on the promenade in Devonport, I make it through my family’s dinner by focusing on the stories everyone else has to tell. If I let myself feel even the tiniest edge of it, I will lose control, and that is the one thing I absolutely cannot afford. So I’m perfectly Mom and Mari over dinner.

The effort of pretending gives me an enormous headache, however, and when I get back to the house and settle the children, I head for the kitchen to make a pot of tea. “Do you want some chamomile?” I ask Simon.

“No, thanks,” he says, typing something into the computer on his lap. Toby, the little mop dog, is perched on the arm of the chair, and the TV is on, playing the evening news. For a moment, I look at all the disasters happening around the world, and my drama seems ridiculous and small, all of my own doing.

But it’s not about comparison, as my counselor used to say. My pain is my pain.

Paris pads into the room as I fill the kettle and leads me to the back door. I prepare the pot with tea and turn the kettle on, then take her out. It’s a gorgeous night—soft and utterly clear, the stars overhead as bright as strings of patio lighting.

The feeling of Kit’s body in my arms slams back into me. I close my eyes to feel it again. So tall and strong, so incredibly fit that I know she still surfs all the time. She smelled of herself, that undernote that is entirely Kit, grass and ocean and sky. That smell made my heart hurt, physically, as if something were pressing on it very hard.