When We Believed in Mermaids(71)

I halt, sure that I’m imagining her. A woman walking toward me with my sister’s distinctive, un-self-conscious amble. She never walked fast enough for me, and it drove me insane.

She’s wearing a simple blue sundress and no hat even in this awful land of skin cancers, plus jandals like mine on her feet. A million memories tumble through my brain: sleeping on the beach in our little tent, that strange summer when Josie got so weird, the earthquake, the news of her death.

She’s alone, lost in thought, and I think she might have walked right by me, humming under her breath, until I reach out and touch her arm. “Josie.”

Josie turns, cries out, and covers her mouth, and for one long moment, we only stare at each other. Then she grabs me, hard, and hugs me, weeping. “Oh my God,” she whispers, her hand hard against my ear. I don’t realize until I feel her ribs moving against me that I’m hugging her just that tightly in return, tears running down my own face. She’s sobbing, her body shaking from shoulder to hips. I close my eyes and clutch her close, smelling her hair, her skin, the Josie-ness of her. I don’t know how long it goes on, but I can’t let her go, and I can feel her grip on me like a vise.

She’s alive. She’s alive. She’s alive.

“Oh my God, Josie.”

“I fucking missed you so much,” she whispers fiercely. “Like a kidney. Like my soul.”

I finally pull back. “Why did you—”

Josie looks over her shoulder, grabs my hand. “Listen. Call me Mari. My family is following me. They just stopped to buy something, and I wanted to get my steps.” Her grip tightens. “They don’t know anything. Give me a chance to explain to you—”

“Mom!”

The little girl is running down the sidewalk toward us. In wonder, I say, “She looks exactly like me.”

“Yeah. Follow my lead.”

And because I really don’t know what else to do, I turn with my sister, who says, “Sarah! I want you to meet someone!”

The girl doesn’t give me a toothy smile, just turns her face and looks up, waiting as Josie/Mari says, “This is my friend Kit, from my childhood. We were the very best of friends.”

“Like sisters,” I say, offering my hand, which feels like it should be shaking, to go along with the buzz in my ears.

“Hullo,” Sarah says, and I have no idea why it’s such a surprise that she has a Kiwi accent. “It’s nice to meet you.” Her gaze catches on my T-shirt. “Are you a doctor?”

“Yeah.” I touch the words. “I am. Emergency medicine. I think they call it something else here.”

“I’m a scientist. I have all sorts of experiments.”

My heart melts, and I drop to her level. “You do? What do you have?”

“Weather,” she says, counting it on her thumb, “which is mostly a barometer and cloud recordings. And plant experiments, and some crystal things.”

“That’s amazing. I used to do experiments when I was your age too. I thought I was going to be a marine biologist, but I ended up in medicine.”

She inclines her head. “Do you like it?”

“Yes.” I pause, swallowing. She is like me, so very like me. How could Josie have kept her a secret from me all this time? How could she have been so cruel as to hide her babyhood, her toddler years, everything? A howl of fury and pain sounds in the distance, and it takes every scrap of self-control I have to keep my emotions in check. “Yes, most of the time I do.”

The other two are joining us, and I stand up as my sister says, “Kit, this is my husband, Simon.” I can hear the pinch in her voice, her fear that I will break everything, and for one moment I want to do just that. Spill everything, let the consequences fall where they may.

But my little niece, so like me as a child, stops me. “She’s a doctor, Daddy!”

He’s even more good-looking in person, with a genial kindness in his face that isn’t evident in pictures and a charisma field as wide as the entire park we’re standing in. I reach for his hand and meet his eyes, and a ripple of surprise washes over his expression for the most fleeting of moments. “Hello, Simon.”

Mari says, “Simon, this is Kit Bianci. She was my very best friend.” To give the words weight, she leans on me, her hands on my arm, her face against my shoulder. “We just ran into each other. Isn’t it wonderful?”

I give her a brief, shocked glance.

“Is that right?” he says. His grip is firm and warm. “Good to meet you.” He turns to bring his son forward. “This is Leo.”

Leo. Our father’s name. I force myself not to shoot a glance toward Josie. Mari. Whatever her name is. “Hi, Leo. Nice to meet you.”

He’s as polite as his father. “You too.”

“Just like Tofino,” I say to Mari.

She takes my hand. “We were lucky to grow up there.”

“Mm.”

“We’re just going down to have supper,” Simon says. “You must join us.”

For a moment I consider it, consider sitting with my niece and listening to her tell me about her experiments. I think of what my mother will feel, knowing these children are in the world and that she knew nothing about them. I look into Josie’s face, so familiar and yet so unfamiliar, and I can’t sit here tonight and pretend.