When We Believed in Mermaids(79)

“Mari,” she says, and I hear her voice deflating. “My name is Mari now.”

“I don’t—” I want to hit her.

She must see it on my face, because she says, “Look, we can do all of that.” She shifts her glasses to the top of her head, and I see that there are circles under her eyes. “You can yell at me, and I’ll answer any question you ask as honestly as I can. But can we just . . . start . . . in a better place?” Her eyes are as dark as buttons, just like my dad’s. Swimming in their depths, I’m captured.

It softens me. “Okay.” I start. “You look good, Jo—Mari. Really good.”

“Thanks. I’ve been sober fifteen years.”

“Since you died?”

She meets my eyes, her chin up. On this, she is not ashamed. “Yes.”

“Mom too, actually.”

That causes a flicker. “Is that so.”

“Yep.”

She looks at me, really looks at me, my hair and face and body. “You’ve grown into a beauty, Kit.”

“Thanks.”

“I google you all the time. Stalk you on Mom’s Facebook.”

“You do?” It strikes me that she had this freedom, but I did not. While I was grieving her, searching crowds for her face, she was reading about me online. I look away, shaking my head.

She touches my arm, the inner flesh of my left arm, where my tattoo is. Quietly, she says, “You’re a doctor. And you have a cute cat.”

I relent. “His name is Hobo.”

She smiles, and right there, in that easy gesture, I see my lost sister—Josie, who read to me and cooked up schemes with me—and it nearly doubles me over.

“Hey,” she says softly, taking my arm. “Are you okay?”

“Not really. This is hard.”

“I know. It is. It’s hard for me, and I’ve known all along.” She gently turns me toward the parking lot. “I packed snacks. I thought I could take you to a place I like, so we can just talk. It might be awkward in a restaurant or something.”

I think of myself weeping and weeping and weeping on Javier’s shoulder. “That’s a good idea.”

She leads us to her car, a black SUV on the smaller end but luxurious. In the back seat are things that clearly belong to kids. I start to climb in on the right side, and then I see the wheel and round the car to the left. The passenger side.

“Sorry it’s a mess,” she says. “I’m starting a new project and it’s just—I never get everything done.”

“You were never exactly tidy.”

She lets go of a quick, bright burst of laughter. “That’s true. I drove you crazy.”

“You did.”

“Where the hell did that come from? It’s not like Mom was neat.” She starts the engine, and it hums into quiet life. A hybrid, which gives her points in my book. “Our destination is a little bit away but not terrible. Water?”

“Sure.”

She hands me a metal water bottle, very cold. “Sarah outlawed all plastic a while back.” In the words, I hear the hint of a New Zealand accent, the syllables slightly shortened. “Nothing plastic in the house at all.”

I’m quiet as we pull out, my emotions compressed and contained. It’s very hilly. We climb a steep one, go around and down another, up again to a village center that’s just as quaint as the others I’ve seen. “This is Howick,” she says. The streets fall away to the water, houses lined up all the way down.

“Pretty. The whole place is pretty.”

“It is. I love it. I feel like I can breathe here.”

“We can’t sleep unless we can hear the ocean.”

Her breath catches audibly, and she looks at me quickly, then back to the road. “Right.”

I imitate her accent. “‘R-iii-ght,” I sort of drawl. “You don’t sound American anymore.”

“Have I picked up the accent?” she says, exaggerating the pinch of the words.

“You have, a bit. Maybe you sound Australian, though I wouldn’t really know.”

“Have you traveled, Kit?”

“No,” I say, and for the first time I let myself be myself. “I haven’t, but since I got here, I’ve really wondered why.”

“You work a lot, I guess.”

“Yeah, I mean, but I have a ton of vacation time stacked up.” I look out the window to the sea that sparkles on the other side of a hill. “Seriously, look at this place. Why haven’t I ever seen it before?”

“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.”