Page 89 of When We Believed in Mermaids

“So what do you do instead?”

“Surf.” I pause, trying to think of anything else. “Surf and work and hang out with Hobo.”

It sounds pathetic, so I’m doubly irritated when she says, “Not married, then?”

“Nope.” A gurgling heat bubbles in my gut, the lava going liquid as I think of my empty house and the little girl—my niece—who stood on the promenade and told me she has experiments. “How long have you been married?”

Her hands, slim and tanned, show white at the knuckles where she’s holding on. The ring on her finger is discreet but a beautiful stone—some kind of pale green. “Eleven years. We’ve been together thirteen. I met him surfing at Raglan.”

“Wait. Raglan—theRaglan?” It was one of the litany of places we all recited to each other, me and Josie and Dylan.

“The very one,” she answers, smiling. “It’s gorgeous. Not very far away. We could drive down there and surf another day if you want to.”

“Maybe.” The entire conversation is surreal. But normal. I mean, what do you say to someone you haven’t seen in so many years? Where do you begin? Surfing is one of our languages.

On cue, she asks, “Have you surfed since you’ve been here?”

“I went to Piha. Which is actually what made me think of calling surf shops, which is how I actually figured out where you were.”

“Smart.”

Silence settles, only the soft radio playing between us. She asks, “How did you know to look in Auckland?”

“I saw you on the news, when the nightclub fire killed those kids.”

She sighs. “I figured.” A pause. “Yeah, that was a terrible night. I was having dinner with a friend at the Britomart when it happened.”

“At the Italian place?”

She looks at me. “Yeah. How’d you know?”

“I went there. They said that you came in, but they didn’t know your name.”

“Good girls.”

A ripple of rage burns beneath the skin of my face at this brazen reinforcement of her long lie. “Mom saw you on the news too. She was the one who wanted me to come find you.”

“Hmm.” Her tone is unreadable.

“She’s different, Josie.”

“Mari.”

“Right. Because if things are not convenient, you can just leave them behind.”

She glances at me. “It wasn’t like that.”

I look out the window, wondering why I even bothered to come. Maybe I would have been happier never knowing she was alive. Again, tears—when I never, ever cry—threaten to well over. I mentally count backward from one hundred.

We turn off the main drag and start driving uphill under a thick canopy of local forest. Tree ferns with extravagant leaves and some kind of flowering shrub line the road, which is rutted and uneven. It ends in front of the house that was on the New Zealand television show.

“I saw this on the news. Why did you bring me here?”

She turns off the car and looks at me. “Because I need you to see the life I’ve built here.”

Stubbornly, I stay where I am. “Are you going to tell me the truth about what happened? Or are there just going to be more lies?”

“I swear, on all that I hold holy, that I will never tell you another lie as long as I live.”