When We Believed in Mermaids(66)

“Hi, baby!” I coo.

He lets go of a pitiful, squeaky meow. “Oh no. I don’t know if it’s good that he hears me.”

“Blink at him,” Suzanne orders. “That’s cat language for ‘I love you.’”

“I know that, but how did you know it?”

“I looked it up.”

“You did?” Pierced, I realize that she’s taking this very seriously. Her devotion to the task slides beneath my defenses, reveals how much my mother has changed. She carries the tablet closer to the bed, and Hobo stays where he is, making that same pitiful little meep.

“Hey, Hobo,” I say, and give him a slow blink. “You’re safe, and I love you, okay?”

He stares at the screen as if suspecting a trick, then skitters backward, hiding behind the drop of the bedspread. Suzanne’s face comes back on camera. “He’s okay, honey, just scared.”

This is the only creature who’s ever depended on me, and I’m letting him down. “Is he eating?”

“Not as much as I’d like. He must come out when I’m gone, because he’s using the litter box, but he doesn’t come out when I’m here. I put his food by the bed, and he eats it when I’m out, so I’ve been filling a plate in the morning and then going for a walk.”

Poor Hobo. “Oh my God, I feel terrible!”

“Don’t,” my mother says firmly. “I’m taking good care of him. He’s healthy and safe.”

“You promise he’s eating?”

“I swear, Kit.” She raises a long-fingered hand in an oath.

I swallow, feeling a strange welling of gratitude and softness. “Thank you, Mom.”

She waves a hand. “Now, tell me what’s happening with you. Any leads?”

“No, but I do have some ideas.”

“Good. I have to say, sweetheart, that it’s doing you some good to get away. You have color in your cheeks.”

I try very hard not to allow more color to seep into my face, forcing an offhand smile. “I went surfing yesterday, and it made me wonder why I haven’t done more travel like that, you know? I mean, why not?”

“You should! I could get you rooms at any of the NorHall hotels anywhere in the world.” She works as a concierge at the one in Santa Cruz.

“Maybe you should do some of that yourself.”

Her slim shoulders twitch. “I think I feel safer with my routines.” She twirls the most recent of her AA chips between her fingers, over and over.

“Mom, you’ve been sober a long time. But you know, I bet they even have sober tours these days.”

“Yeah, we’ll see,” she says, but I know it’s a dismissal. “Do you like it there?”

“It’s amazing.” I carry my tablet over to the window. “We had the edge of a cyclone go through last night, and everything is pretty quiet, but look at that view!”

“It seems like the kind of place your sister would love, don’t you think?”

Something about that comment irks me, and I turn the camera back to my face. “I guess.”

“What are you planning for today?”

“I’m going to call surf shops,” I say. “I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before. No way she’d give up surfing.”

“If she was still herself, I agree. But what if she had amnesia or something?”

I frown. “I guess it’s possible. Not that likely.”

“You see it in books and TV all the time. And why else would she leave us to grieve her like that?”

“Because she was selfish? Because she was an alcoholic and an addict?”

Thousands of miles away in my own little house, my mother sits at my table and gazes calmly, steadily through the camera at me. This is what Josie will look like in twenty-five years, the graying blonde hair, the high cheekbones, the full lips that have thinned only a little with time. “Or maybe,” she offers, “she was lost. Broken.”

“Poor Josie,” I say with sharpness. “You know, I was thinking about the way she drank when she was only eleven or twelve, stealing sips from everyone, getting smashed. Why didn’t you stop her?”

Suzanne has the grace to look away. Her rich voice rasps a bit as she says, “Honestly, Kitten, I never even noticed. By then, I was pretty much drunk all the time myself.”

The frankness pokes a needle through the balloon of my self-righteousness. “I know. I’m sorry. I just keep going over things, wondering why she got so bad so young.” With a visceral sense of loss, I remember how it felt as she slipped away from me, as if she had really become a mermaid and lived most of the time beneath the waves. It was the start of my great loneliness, and the memory is so painful even now that I have to shove it away. “She was so lost.”

“Yes,” my mother says. It’s the way she listens now, acknowledging without embroidery, but it irks me a little anyway. “It was a terrible environment.”

“Obviously,” I snap. “But we also had Dylan. He looked out for us.”

“Yeah,” she says in a droll voice. “A kid himself. And an addict.” Her eyes suddenly fill with a terrible sorrow. “He was always a lost boy, our Dylan. I did him no favors.”