When We Believed in Mermaids(33)

I used to miss that coast, my coast, but New Zealand has cured me. It wasn’t part of the plan—there wasn’t really much of a plan—but it sometimes feels like a hand of fate brought me here, to the green mountains and the endless coastline of an island, where I would meet a man who was unlike any other I’d ever known, and fall in love with him, and marry him, and have his children. With that man, my Simon, who bought this house because I love it, I will sleep in this room with the French doors flung open, listening to the sea.

A slight, faint aftershock rumbles through the earth, moving my body in an almost infinitesimal sway. My hands grip the railing, hard, and I wonder if the house has any protection from earthquakes.

A flashback overtakes me, a sound memory—the beeping of alarms and water rushing where it shouldn’t and people making a song, soprano screaming and tenor moans of fear and deep, bass cries of pain. I smell smoke and leaking gas.

It fades relatively quickly, just a flash and gone. All these years, you’d think I’d finally get over the PTSD. But it doesn’t seem to work like that. My therapist says I spent so much time drinking and drugging away my trauma that it’s just going to take a long time to work through it all.

And even she knows only the tip of the iceberg. I was on a sad and terrible errand that day, awash in scalding shame mixed with grief, emotions too large for the child I was, though I thought myself so adult.

A lot had already been lost by the day of the earthquake, but the way it completed the wreckage of our lives—Kit’s, my mother’s, and mine—marked us all irretrievably. Sometimes I miss them most when I want to touch that reality, that day standing on the bluff, looking down at the collapsed heap of timber and concrete on the beach, all of us clustered together, howling.

Enough.

In the bedroom, I get to work. The bed is covered with a silk spread that is too fine to be original. I take a photo of it and then the bed, pulling back the spread to look at the mattress, ancient and unimaginably dusty.

From my kit, I take a notebook and scribble information as I shoot photos. The closets are a dream, enormous, as would be needed by a movie star and all her dresses. Where have they gone? I make a note on another page to look up the history of Veronica’s death and the disposal of her things. Maybe the sister donated all of them or something.

In the bathroom, I make note of the light fixtures, light bulbs, colors of tile work, but there’s not much that will need doing here. It’s untouched, practically brand-new. Someone has cleaned it regularly, so there’s no dust built up anywhere. A pair of long, multipaned windows opens toward the sea, and I crank them open, letting in the breeze.

A sharp scent of seaweed and salt triggers a visceral memory—sitting on a blanket with Kit, eating tuna sandwiches and Little Debbies our mother had packed into a basket for us the night before. We carried it down to the beach after a breakfast of cereal and milk at home, as we often did. She didn’t like mornings, our mom.

The morning was cloudy, smelling of sea and rain, and chilly enough we wore hoodies and jeans. Cinder sat with us, chewing on a piece of driftwood between his paws. Kit said, “Is this Monday?”

I plucked a leaf from my sandwich. “You know it is.” The restaurant was closed on Mondays. Our parents were sleeping late, and we’d learned well enough not to disturb them.

“Aren’t we supposed to go to school on Mondays?”

“You don’t have to go every day. Especially not in kindergarten.” I was in second grade and, aside from lunch and the rows of books we were allowed to check out, didn’t care a lot about it. I had taught myself to read before I even started school, and who needed all the rest of it? The other girls were snotty, and they liked dolls and dresses and all kinds of dumb stuff. I liked only books, Cinder, Kit, and the ocean.

Kit’s hair was braided into one long plait, but then she’d slept on it for a couple of days, and now curls sprang up all around her face and the top of her head like she’d stuck her finger in a light socket. Freckles covered her nose and cheeks, darker with the sun all summer, and her skin was almost as dark as the wooden walls of the restaurant, deep reddish brown that made people say we couldn’t even be sisters.

But she just took after my dad. His pale olive skin, his dark hair, his big, wide mouth. She was tall like him too, as tall as me, even though I was older.

Now she said, “But I like to go to school. We learn good stuff there.”

“Ew. Like what?”

“We have a plant experiment in the window.”

“Doing what?”

She took a bite of her sandwich and chewed it thoughtfully. “We planted five different seeds to see which ones grow faster.”

“That’s dumb.”

“I like it. They have different baby leaves. Some are round, and some are pointed. It’s interesting.”

“Huh.” I didn’t want to say BOR-ing, but I thought it.

“School is something to do.”

“We have plenty to do!”

She shrugged.

“You could tell Mom you want to be there every day.”

Her lids dropped. “She’ll yell at me.”

I poked her foot. “I’ll tell her, then. I don’t care if she yells at me.”

“You would?”

“I guess.” I flung hair out of my face. “If you want.”