When We Believed in Mermaids(59)

I sat down beside him. Touched the bracelet. My heart in my chest was exploding, a scream I couldn’t allow into the world. Once I told them that he was here, I would lose him forever.

So on the beach where we’d spent so much time, I sat beside him and wondered if his ghost was still around. If he could hear me. “I wish you hadn’t done this,” I said, and took a bite of Pop-Tart. “But I guess you just couldn’t stand it anymore. I guess I knew you would eventually.” Tears welled up in my eyes, and I let them fall down my face. “I just want you to know that you made my life better. Like, so much better, dude.”

Some of my tears fell on my upper chest. I took another bite and chewed it, in no hurry. “Number one, you helped me get to school every day, and you know how much I liked that.”

The fog eddied and moved, and between tufts I thought I saw Cinder, sitting with somebody. “Number two, you taught me to surf, which you know I love as much as you do.” Meditatively, I took another bite and a sip of the milk. “I sorta thought surfing might save you, really. Like maybe it could have if—I don’t know, maybe if people hadn’t been so mean to you when you were little.

“Number three.” My voice broke. His hands were flung out beside him, and I thought of those hands on books, reading to us. I thought of them on knives, flying through a zucchini. I thought of them in my hair, braiding it every day so I didn’t look like a crazy girl.

“I’m so sad. I’m as sad as I’ve ever been in my whole life, and I really don’t want to get up and go tell them that you’re dead because then it will be real and I will never, ever see you again.”

I bent over and tried to breathe against the pure, searing pain that washed through me, as violent as a riptide sucking me under. I didn’t know how I could live with a pain like that, which made me think of how many things he’d lived through, and I sat up. Swallowed.

The fog was beginning to thin. I ate the last of my pastry, then reached over and untied the leather bracelet on his arm. It was old, and it took me a long time to get the knot undone. It bothered me that his skin was so cold, but I knew dead things couldn’t feel. He wouldn’t care.

When I got it free, I tucked it into my pocket. Over by the cave where I’d found the pirate booty that morning ages ago, I saw them, Dylan and Cinder.

I lifted a hand and waved.

They disappeared.





Chapter Thirty-Three

Mari

I’m in Helen’s room that evening, going through the stacks of magazines she’s kept, looking for clues or maybe a stashed diary. Something. It’s still raining, and to keep the ghostly sounds from bugging me too much, I’m playing music on my phone. The sound is tinny, but honestly, I’ll take what I can get.

The tedious work is good for me. I have to engage my brain just enough that I’m not fretting incessantly about everything, but somewhere the information is being processed in the background. This goes there, and that goes here, and eventually it will all make sense. My mother. Simon.

Kit.

God, the hatred on her face when she left me! Maybe I shouldn’t have confessed everything. Maybe she didn’t need to know right now. But honestly, if we’re going to have a relationship at all, there can’t be any more lies. I’ve had enough lies to last me a millennium.

Because of the phone music, I don’t hear Simon until he’s standing in the doorway. At the sight of him, my heart stops momentarily. I really do love him like a being created just for me. His eyes are shadowed, his shoulders slightly bowed like Atlas’s, carrying the world. “Is this a good time to talk?”

I can’t read his tone, but I leap to my feet. “Of course. Shall we go down and have a cup of tea?”

“Sure.” He doesn’t come in the room to kiss me, and he’s careful not to touch me as we head downstairs.

“Are the kids okay?”

“Fine. They think you just went to be with your friend. Did you surf?”

“Yes. Piha Beach. It was great.”

The conversation feels as stiff as corsets. I busy myself with the kettle and cups, while Simon sits down heavily at the small table. “This is a strange room, isn’t it?”

“I know. Why did Helen do it over like this? When she had the money to do whatever she wanted. Why this grim green room?” He shakes his head, and I see the weariness in it. “Are you all right?”

“No, Mari, I’m not. I’m gutted.”

I bow my head. “I’m so sorry. It was stupid, but I really thought it would never come up.”

“Christ.”

“Are you ready to hear the story?” I hope it will go better with him than it did with Kit.

“I reckon I am.”

So I tell him. Everything, starting with Eden and Kit and Dylan on the beach. I tell him about the neglect and about the molestation. I tell him how wild I was and how early I became an alcoholic. I tell him about the abortion, and Dylan, and the strange relationship we shared, part lovers, part siblings, part mentor and mentee, entirely, completely screwed up.

And yet.

“We both loved him so much, me and Kit. He just fell into our lives and then fell out again.”

“Why didn’t you tell me? At some point, somewhere?”

I can’t look at him. “I don’t know. I guess . . . I thought if you knew everything, you wouldn’t love me.”

He shakes his head. “Why? What about me made you think I would love you less if you told that story?”

I’m struggling to keep myself from crying. “Nothing about you, Simon. It was all my own shame. Dylan killed himself because of me. I ripped off my sister. I faked my own death.” I pause, my hands tight on my thighs. “The person I left behind was not someone I was proud of.”

“Oh, Mari. How shallow you think I am.” He still looks bowed. He sips his tea, then pushes it away. “I’m sorry that all happened to you, Mari. I am. No one should live like that.”

I lean back in my chair, waiting.

“But I can’t forgive you for lying to me for so long. You had so many opportunities to tell me the truth, and you didn’t take any of them.”

My heart sinks.

“I’ll have my lawyer draw up an agreement. We’ll split custody and figure out the best way to do that. I’ll keep the Devonport house, and you can have this one.”

For a long, long moment, I stare at him. “You’ve got to be kidding me, Simon.”

“I assure you that I’m not.”

“More fool you, then.” I stand up, round the table, and push him upright. When there’s space, I slide into his lap, face-to-face, and put my arms around him. “What we have is great.”

“Was great.” He looks surly and sad, but he’s not shoving me away, and that’s a good sign.

My hands are on his shoulders. I move them to his face. “I’ve paid for everything I did, Simon, and then some. When life gave me a chance, I figured out a way to turn it all around. And look at us, Simon! What kind of idiot takes such a hard stand on the moral road that he throws away his wife and his entire family?”

“I’m not throwing you away.”

“Uh, yeah, you are. If you stay with this hard-ass stand, all of us suffer. All of us—you, me, the kids. That would be stupid.”

He pulls my hands off his face. “Trust is everything, Mari. If everything you’ve told me is a lie, how can I believe anything you say going forward?”

I sigh, fear starting to dig its claws into my heart. But I have also become someone who can fight for the good in her life. A woman who doesn’t run from things. “I didn’t lie about anything in our lives from the time we met, only about the past.”

He starts to shake his head again, shift me off his lap.

“No.” I tighten my grip, hands and legs. “We’re not going to wreck our family over this. We will not do that.” My hands are in the hair over his ears, in fists. “This is not some depressing Victorian novel where a woman who makes bad choices inevitably dies a terrible death. I’m not Veronica Parker, paying for the sin of having the life she wanted. This is me and you. We fell in love the minute we met, and it’s been good ever since.”

Tears are gathering in his eyes again. “I’m so angry with you.”

“I know. And you have every right to be. Be mad. We can work through that.”

He only holds me close, and I know he’s crying, trying to be manly about it. “You can come home, but this is not over.”

“Okay. I’m okay with that.”

“I don’t know how to do this,” he says raggedly.

“Me neither.” I allow for the reality of everything that has happened. “Maybe, in the end, you won’t be able to forgive me.”

“I’m afraid that may be true.”

I close my eyes. “I love you so much, Simon. More than I’ve ever loved anyone until our children were born. You are the sun in my world, the most normal thing that ever happened to me.”

He closes his eyes, and the tears spill out below his lids. “I just love you so much,” he whispers. “And it was all so perfect.”

“If this is the worst thing that happens to our family, we will be lucky people indeed.”