When We Believed in Mermaids(97)

We leaned into each other. I wondered how we’d even get home.

It was hours before anyone could clean and stitch up my still-bleeding cut. By then I was incoherent with pain and terror, and to this day, I don’t remember getting to Eden. A stranger in a Jeep helped us, our Good Samaritan.

There were no lights as we drove up, only blackness and emptiness where the buildings had once stood. After the long trauma of the day, I couldn’t comprehend what I was seeing.

And then I did. My heart shattered a thousand times, over and over and over. I jumped out of the car and screamed, “Kit!”

She ran into the light of the headlights, her face a mess of tears and dirt. I hugged her so hard it made my head ache.

“Where’s your father?” my mother asked.

Kit shook her head. Pointed.

On the beach of the cove were the remains of our house and the restaurant, a wreck of lumber that looked as incoherent as my mother became in seconds. She screamed and then screamed again, falling to her knees on the rocky ground.





Chapter Thirty

Kit

Mari picks me up right on the dot of six. She looks exhausted. “Hey. I brought you coffee.”

“Oh my God, it smells so good.”

“I didn’t know how you took it, so I figured milk, and you can add sugar if you like.” She points to a thick stack of sugar packets in one of the cup holders.

I laugh. “I’m not eight anymore, you know.”

“Once an addict, always an addict.”

“Takes one to know one.” I realize too late that it sounds mean. “Sugar addict, I mean.”

She glances at me, moving into traffic smoothly. “I get it. And I am the worst. Taste this.”

I take a sip, and she’s right—it’s like a milkshake. “Too much for me.”

We ride along in the quiet until I gather my nerve and ask, “How did it go after we left?”

She shakes her head. Sips her coffee. “Simon is a proud man, and he’s cut of old-school cloth—men are meant to be men, manly and strong.” She sighs. “I have no idea what will happen.”

For the first time, I reach for her, squeeze her arm. “I’m so sorry for my part in this, Josie.”

“It’s not your fault. None of it.”

“Still. I’m sorry.”

She nods, changes lanes. “I was going to take you down to Raglan, but the surf forecast for Piha is awesome, and it’s not so far.”

“Crazy how you always know now, isn’t it?”

“Right? Just call up the reports, and Bob’s your uncle.”

I laugh. “What did you just say?”

“Bob’s your uncle, mate.” She laughs. “Best slang in the world, right here.”

“I get why you love it here. It’s amazing.”

“It is. I’m never leaving.”

It’s an overcast morning, and the traffic is heavy as she makes her way through town. The radio plays a local pop station, modern top-forty stuff. “When did you start liking pop?” I ask. She was always into the heavy-metal bands of the ’80s and ’90s, Guns N’ Roses, Pearl Jam, Nirvana and the doomed Kurt Cobain.

She shrugs, easy in herself in a way she never was back then. “Heavy metal makes too much noise in my head,” she says simply. “I start disappearing, and then I make bad choices.”

I nod.

“What do you like?”

“The same things I always have, really. Easy things to listen to.”

Her sideways smile is sly. “Like flamenco?”

The word gives me a flash of Javier playing last night, his body and the guitar becoming one thing, lighting every nerve center in my body. “I never knew I liked flamenco before, but yeah.”

“How long have you been dating Javier?”

I laugh slightly. “‘Dating’ is overstating it a bit. I just met him.”

“What?”

“Yeah, he sat down next to me the first night I got here, at this little Italian place in an alleyway by my apartment, and we struck up a conversation.”

She’s quiet for a minute. “It doesn’t look like a new relationship.”

“Again, ‘relationship’ is overstating it.”

“He looks at you like you created the earth and heavens all by yourself.”

It jolts me. “What are you talking about?”

“Are you kidding me? You don’t see it?”

“No.” I sip the coffee. “We’ve had a great time, but it’s just a holiday romance. He lives in Madrid.”

“So you’re not that interested?”

I shrug. “I don’t really get involved.”

“That’s a nonanswer.”

Something in me snaps. Irritably, I say, “It’s none of your business, actually.”

“You’re right. Sorry.”

The exchange reminds me of the reality here. We can’t just pick up our relationship as if nothing has ever happened. I feel myself lifting my shell, protecting myself against her long knowledge of me, her insight into things I work hard never to reveal.

Except with Javier. I frown.

We head off the highway to a smaller road. At a red light, she looks at me. “Have you had a serious relationship, Kit?”