When We Believed in Mermaids(20)

“That’s dumb.”

“I like it. They have different baby leaves. Some are round, and some are pointed. It’s interesting.”

“Huh.” I didn’t want to say BOR-ing, but I thought it.

“School is something to do.”

“We have plenty to do!”

She shrugged.

“You could tell Mom you want to be there every day.”

Her lids dropped. “She’ll yell at me.”

I poked her foot. “I’ll tell her, then. I don’t care if she yells at me.”

“You would?”

“I guess.” I flung hair out of my face. “If you want.”

She nodded, her big green-gold eyes shining like coins. “I really, really want to go to school.”

In Auckland, decades later, I run a finger along the tiled sill of the window. It wasn’t until Dylan came, another whole year, that she got to school every day. He made sure of it.



After making notes in the bedroom, I begin the second part of my day—scouring the house for papers, letters, diaries, anything that might help me put things together about Veronica’s past. As I’d already discovered, the bedroom had been cleared out and never used again, and the study had proven to be no help at all. In Helen’s suite of rooms, I find stacks of magazines, some dating back to 1960, carefully stored in plastic bins stacked to the ceiling. I mark them TRASH with a Sharpie. In a closet, I discover heaps and heaps of yarn, every color and variety and weight, which I note on my clipboard will go to the charity shops, along with most of the paperback books, mostly a very old-fashioned form of romance, and the kind of thick novels about the upper classes in England that seems to go over well with a certain set here. I’d never seen them in America, though glitz novels probably fill the same need.

I scan the books carefully, one title at a time, but after several tall stacks realize there isn’t going to be anything I need to save. It’s hard to turn my back on such a wealth of reading material, but I learned early in the flipping game that I’d rue carting home a lot of books. My own reading threatens to bury us, so I don’t need to bring any in from somewhere else. On my clipboard, I note “used bookseller,” who often pays me a sum by the yard just for the chance to find anything important.

The rest of the rooms have even less to offer. They contain the last modest possessions of a reclusive old woman. Her television is from the ’90s, and the desktop computer that sits in one corner is a behemoth of yellowed plastic. I turn it on just out of curiosity, and it takes a while, but the screen finally comes up. It doesn’t appear to have an internet connection and boasts very few programs—a word processor I haven’t seen in use for quite some time and a few old-school games. I smile, thinking of Helen in her flowered dresses, playing FreeCell.

I click on the word processor, and while it readies itself for the enormous job of opening, I check a text that has come in on my phone from Nan.

Got your message. Meet for early dinner?



I leap at the distraction from my empty house. Yes! The usual?

5:30?

Yes.

I’ll make a reservation.



Pleased at the social prospect, I tuck my phone into the back pocket of my jeans and scan the list of files on Helen’s computer. It’s tidily arranged, with a file for letters, one for daily tasks that I quickly discover is a list that can be printed, and one for “Other.” I click on that.

Journal entries. I open a handful of them, just to see if there are instructions or anything in there. It makes me feel guilty—journals are very, very private things, and you never know, going in cold like this, what you’ll find.

In this case, however, it’s a simple accounting of her day. She knitted a pair of socks for a neighbor’s child. Ate toast and jam for breakfast. Needed to leave an envelope for the cleaners. I close it up again, but I’m not letting the computer go. I feel protective now of Helen’s privacy.

The rooms are sunny, with good light and views toward the sea. Simon will be very comfortable having his study here. Maybe we can turn one room into a little kitchen.

As is my habit, I stand quietly in the center of the big room and let it speak to me in color and style. Here, as everywhere in the house, the bones are excellent. The windows are the star—rows of squares, each framing the view in a new way. I’ll leave them uncovered but maybe on each end hang some heavy drapes to pull across on rings.

No. Bare, clean. That’s what Simon will like. A masculine shade of green and the carpet taken up. Bookshelves that Rose will want to decide upon. The good wood detailing stripped and restored.

As I’m heading downstairs with my notes, it occurs to me that Helen must have kept journals all along. What did she do before computers? And where did she stash them?

There must be an attic or other storage. I walk along the open upper gallery, peering at the ceiling, and at the end, there’s the loop. Glancing at my watch, I realize I’ve been at it for hours, and if I’m going to make my dinner with Nan, I’ve got to get down to the CBD. If I time it right, I can capture a parking spot from a departing office drone.

Rose is cataloging the items in the pantry. “Find anything interesting?” I ask.

She nods, gesturing with her pen toward the glass-front shelves. “Somebody collected Coalport cups and saucers. They’re amazing.” She takes a cup out, dark blue with gold interior and a pattern of stars or dots on the outside.

“Breathtaking. Are they worth anything?”

“Some, definitely. Some maybe not. Beautiful, though.” She shakes her head as she returns the cup, picks up another with a wide background and elaborate, colorful enamel work in red and pink and yellow.

She loves vintage everything, and I don’t always see the appeal, but these cups are amazing. “They’ll inspire you.”

“Yes. Are you leaving?”

“I’m going to meet Nan in the CBD. Do you want to stay?”

“No.” She makes a face, looking upward. “This one feels a little more alive than I like.”

I nod. “I get it. Nearly scared myself to death the other day.”

She settles the cup in its place and closes the pantry door. “I’ve got heaps of notes I’ll type up later and send over to you, but I got a pretty good start.”

“Tomorrow or the next day, I want to get into the attic. I’m looking for things like papers and anything that might have belonged to Veronica. Clothing, jewelry, notes, scripts. Any of it. Might be a museum that’ll want them.”

“No doubt.”

“Want some feijoas?” I ask, smelling them on the breeze as we walk out. “There’s a ton of them around.”

“Uh, no. My mum has two trees, and I’m already ducking her.”

I laugh. “See you tomorrow.”





Chapter Eleven

Kit

The harbor tour allows us to disembark at any number of stops. Javier and I wander into a little village with thick shade beneath the trees and rows of Victorian-like houses. The air is hot and still, the mood very quiet along the streets. Peaceful. He points at things now and again but seems content to simply take it in. I like that he doesn’t feel the need to fill every silence with words.

A bookstore draws us both in, and I lose him within two minutes when he dips down an aisle of moldering history books. I wander on by myself, looking for light reading to bring back with me, but there isn’t much in that category. I content myself with leafing through a book of botanical drawings, then a history of flowers. I wind down a few more aisles, turning this way and that, until I’m somewhere in the deepest heart of the place, surrounded by the hushed whisper of the books and the faint dusty smell of them, in front of a deliciously huge collection of children’s books.

I pick up a couple, open them at random to read a page. Nancy Drew and the Boxcar Children, Harry Potter in many different formats, some regional work I don’t recognize and that intrigues me. I shoot a photo of their spines to look for them later.

And there, in the middle of it all, is a battered copy of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I gasp a little under my breath, as if someone dead has come back to life, and pull it out, holding the weight gingerly in my hands for a moment. It’s the same edition we owned, a book Dylan brought home from a trip to San Francisco. I open the cover, flip to the first page, and fall back in time.

To a cold afternoon long ago, me and Josie with Dylan between us. I leaned into his hard ribs, smelling the soap he used to scrub his hands of garlic and onion. “I can’t wait to read this to you,” he said. “It’s such a good story.”

“I can read it myself,” Josie said, and it was true that at eight, she could read anything she wanted.

“But if you read it,” Dylan said, “then we don’t get to sit here like this, together.” He dropped a kiss to each of our heads. “Doesn’t that sound better? We can read a chapter a day before you take showers.”

“Why do we have to take showers every day?” I asked, falling across his lap. “Mommy doesn’t make us.”

He pinched my side, tickling me a little, and I giggled, shoving his hands away happily. “Because you smell like little goats after you’ve been out there playing in the sand all day.”