The Sweetest Summer(79)
Most important, she had agreed to put her name on the ballot.
“What the fuuuh . . . ?” Polly Estherhausen caught herself, slapping a hand over her mouth.
At least she was trying. Mona recently received a formal complaint about Polly’s language penned by Izzy McCracken and signed by eight other members. They claimed curse words had no place in the spiritual domain of the mermaid. They said Polly’s fondness for the “F” word, in particular, tainted their rituals and diminished the sacred nature of true love itself, although her frequent use of the “sh” word and the “a-hole” word weren’t so great either.
Abigail jumped to her fins. “Shit just got real up in here, people!”
“For crying out loud!” Izzy threw her hands around in exasperation. “I give up. Maybe this group should abandon all pretense of decorum. I know—let’s forgo the costumes and run around in obscene T-shirts. Something like . . . YEAH, WE GOT A FUCKIN’ MERMAID.”
After a moment of stunned silence, Layla O’Brien raised her hand. “If you order twenty or more you can get a discount.”
Darinda glanced at Mona with a wide-eyed and worried expression.
“You’ll do just fine,” Mona whispered to her, patting Darinda’s hand. “But it does look a little different from this angle, doesn’t it?”
Darinda nodded.
“Hold up.” Polly stiff-armed the room as a whole. “Let’s get back to the point. Mona—what’s going on?”
Mona took a deep breath and turned to address her dearest friends in the world. “Ladies, I think the time has come for a transition. Darinda is thirty years my junior, full of energy and wonderful ideas, and she has excellent organizational skills. She’ll be on the ticket come our October election. I am going to hang up my shells.”
It took a while for the general shouting, jumping, and hugging to stop so that Mona could continue. “We’ve talked about this many times, ’maids. The leadership role has become too much for me, and God knows Rowan has no interest in continuing the tradition and taking over as president. She doesn’t even want to be among our general membership.”
Abby laughed. “Am I the only one who finds that ironic? Rowan is with her heart-mate because of the Great Mermaid’s intervention. As a matter of fact, so is her best friend, Annie! We authenticated both cases, did we not? And yet they both still refuse to believe!”
Sadly, Abigail was right. Despite benefiting directly from the mermaid’s good works, the young women had no desire to join the Society. While it was disappointing that Annie Parker wasn’t interested, it was a tragedy that Rowan felt that way.
As the only Flynn woman of her generation, Rowan should have been the next Mermaid Society president. It was a tradition that stretched back to the 1890s, when the eldest daughter of Rutherford and Serena Flynn created the society in her mother’s honor. Since neither of Mona’s sons were anywhere near married, Rowan was the only one who could continue the unbroken line of Flynns to serve the mermaid.
There was no convincing these young women that their good fortune was the handiwork of the sea goddess. Rowan and Annie believed that garden-variety coincidence and good luck were behind their love stories. How flat it must be for them to go through everyday life without the spark of the Great Mermaid’s magic. How dull it must feel.
All that said, Mona had finally accepted that there was no reaching them. There was no forcing it. The decision to open oneself to the mermaid had to come from the heart, like all life’s most worthwhile choices.
Izzy raised a finger. “I do have one small question.”
“Me, too,” Polly said. “Is this meeting going to go on indefinitely? Because I gotta pee like a pregnant racehorse.”