When We Believed in Mermaids(59)

I drank the daiquiri and started dancing. I can’t remember where Kit was. I can’t remember a lot about it, honestly, even when I try. For years, I thought I made parts of it up.

Where did we go? Somewhere outside of the main restaurant. Someplace dark. And then he wasn’t as nice anymore. I remember being horrified that he had his penis in his hand, and then his hand was over my mouth, and he said, “If you tell anyone, I’ll cut Cinder’s throat.”

So I did what he told me to. Let him do what he wanted, things I couldn’t stand to think about afterward. Sometimes I could hear my mother laughing not far away or a conversation that was perfectly ordinary. The music was always playing, covering the sounds he made. Mine were muffled.

I never told a soul. For a whole summer, I held my breath.

And by the time it was over, it was too late to tell anyone, even Dylan. I think he might have guessed, but by then I was dirty, as dirty as a person could get. I was so ashamed and filthy that I couldn’t bear to even think about it, much less confess it to anyone. Even Kit.

When I think of it now, I want to go back in time and give that child tools. I want to shake my oblivious parents, take a hammer to the man’s head.

And I want that little girl to tell her sister, to confess to Kit the awful thing that had happened. Kit would have killed him. Killed him.

He’s still on television sometimes, and you’d think he’d look dissipated, disgusting, but he was a beautiful young star then, and he’s matured into an objectively good-looking man. Sometimes I wonder how many other girls he—

If I had stayed Josie, stayed in the US, I would accuse Billy. Take my place in the #metoo movement.

Or not.

I’ve never been particularly brave. Or good. Or wise.

Or forgiving.

The knot where Billy lives in my chest is cold and hard, but the surrounding tissue burns with hatred for my mother. I thought I’d overcome it, but as Sarah grows, I see so clearly how unprotected and vulnerable my mother allowed us to be, and I think, How could she have let that happen to me? What did she think would happen if two little girls were left to wander through the forest of adults always filling the patio of Eden? Adults who were drunk, at the bare minimum, or stoned, or coked up. My dad too, but he was in the kitchen all the time. My mother was always out, mingling.

What did she think would happen?

Near morning, the rain begins to taper off, turning into a gentle, soothing background. Simon snores softly, his big hand on my hip, anchoring me. Down the hall, my children are tucked safely into their beds. This is the family I wanted so desperately when I was a child, and I created it for myself. I’ve also transformed myself from a lost, drunken wanderer into a woman with purpose, a successful businessperson.

I escaped. Escaped the woman I became after Billy. I took myself back, made myself over, became a woman I am proud of.

And I would do it again. A thousand times, I would do it again.





Chapter Seventeen

Kit

As the storm swirls, I make do with a bunch of apartment-size tools to make brownies. The act of stirring them, making the specific brownies I love so much, with an ancient recipe taken from the Hershey site, eases the anxious tension in my spine. Being so far from everyone and everything I’ve known, I feel unmoored, as if the storm could send me flying out into the atmosphere like Dorothy.

Oh, Josie, I think, where the hell are you? I feel anxious now that I surfed instead of looking for her, that I avoided the journey. I feel exactly torn in half—I want to find her, but that’s going to mean facing a lot that I’ve buried for a long time.

Do I even want to find her, really? Maybe it would be better to let sleeping dogs lie.

Except that I have to admit my life is pretty sterile. Maybe finding Josie will help me make peace with everything, give me some space to—

What?

I don’t know. Change things.



My brownies are ready, and I take them out of the oven, bending my head to inhale the chocolaty, sweet scent as I settle them on the counter to cool. Outside, the storm is working itself up into a fine frenzy, and inside my head, the frenzy is in my thoughts.

When a knock sounds at my door, I practically fly across the room. It’s Javier, standing there with a bottle of wine and a box of food. “I was worried about you,” he says. “Can I come in?”

“Yes please.” I take the bottle and the box, set them on the counter, and throw my arms around his waist. Leaning into his solid body. For a moment, I can tell he’s startled, and I wonder if I should pull away, but I’ve been feeling so lost and tortured and . . . young, that he feels like a life raft.

After the slightest hesitation, his arms circle me. “Are you frightened?”

“No,” I say. “Not of the storm.” I lift my head. “I didn’t want to be alone in it.”

“Nor did I,” he murmurs, and kisses me, and then walks me backward toward my bed near the window. We fall down together and make love while the storm rages, the air smelling of chocolate and ozone.

This time it’s different. I find myself slowing down, tasting him, breathing in the scent of his skin, looking at him more carefully. His stomach is slightly soft and very sensitive, and I spend time there, kissing and tasting. His thighs are sturdy, covered with the hair I tried not to look at when he wore slightly more.