When We Believed in Mermaids(30)

But I happen to look up at Simon and, as wives can do, pick up the subtlest twist of his lips. I touch his thigh beneath the table. He covers my hand with his.



At Sapphire House, we forget all that, and I make a dramatic moment of our entry. “You know, children, that I have loved this house ever since I came here, right? It sits so high above everything—”

“Like a palace!” Leo cries.

“Yes, like a palace. And so when your daddy found out it was up for sale, he bought it for us to live in.”

“I want to see the greenhouse,” Sarah says.

“In a bit, love.” I give Simon a smile. “First, let’s take a look at the inside of the house and the balconies and all the great things there are here.” I fling open the door and say, “Ta-da!”

They both dash in and pause. “Whoa!” Leo cries, spinning a circle as he looks in every direction at once.

Sarah is more moderate. She walks in like a girl in a storybook, taking in the setting for her new chapter. She peers up the staircase, and runs her fingers over the wall, and lets the wide bank of windows in the back call her to the view over the sea. “Mummy, look! You can see the cyclone!”

She’s been taking measurements and gleefully following a weather site she loves over news of the cyclone, which has been blowing our way for a couple of days. While the sky is sunny, she’s right—you can see the dark storm gathering in a line along the horizon.

“Let’s go out and look at it,” I suggest, opening one of the French doors.

The view is utterly gorgeous, the deep aquamarine of the water, the navy-blue mountains in the distance, the emerald grass between us and the water, the bright-blue sky, and that slim, faraway line of eggplant cloud. The layers and layers and layers of blue against green against blue against green is ever dazzling, impossible to get used to. “Isn’t it beautiful?” I ask, my hand on her back. “We can have a table out here. Some chairs.”

She leans on me unexpectedly. “Won’t cyclones hit us here?”

“I don’t know, baby, but the house has been here for eighty years. I’m sure there’ve been some big cyclones in that time.” I stroke her curly hair. “Are you afraid of cyclones?”

“No. Strong ones are rare.”

“That’s true. So you needn’t worry.”

“I don’t want to move, really. I like our house. And how’ll I move all my experiments?”

“I’m sure we can figure that out, sweetheart. Your grandfather will have good ideas.”

I remember the old-school telephone. “I have something to show you, and then we can go upstairs and look at bedrooms.”

“All right.”

She follows me into the house, and we head for the alcove. “Do you know what this is?”

“Of course. It’s a telephone.”

I’m deflated slightly, but there’s more. I pick up the earpiece, listen, and offer it to her. “Do you know what that is?”

“No. Why does it make a noise?”

“It’s called a dial tone. This is a landline, which means it’s connected to the wall with a wire, and the wire is what connects it to other phones. You lift up the receiver for the dial tone to make sure it works, and then you use the ring to dial the numbers.” I illustrate by dialing my own phone number, and it rings in my hand.

Sarah nods. But she’s turning away, heading for the stairs. “I want to see the bedrooms.”

Leo is already up there. “Mom, you’ve gotta see this! This room has its own little bathroom, and there are tiles all over it! Can I have this room?”

“You don’t get to choose before I even see!” Sarah protests, and runs past him into the bedroom.

I follow more slowly, because four of the six bedrooms have their own bathrooms, and all of them are tiled magnificently. Leo runs into the one I knew he’d love, with its row of windows like a captain’s quarters in the prow of a ship. They overlook the driveway and the city.

The children dash around, pulling open drawers and doors to peer inside. Most of it is empty. I haven’t spent time in the secondary bedrooms yet. This one looks weary, with a faded mural along the top of the walls and curtains of no distinction. From my bag, I take out a notebook and scribble a few notes to myself, using a fountain pen I picked up yesterday and filled with a bright-magenta ink. The reds and yellows were always my shades, while Kit loved turquoise, violet, green. Dylan liked brush calligraphy in a Chinese style, using the darkest, blackest ink he could find. I always thought Kit seemed like a person who’d want more serious ink, the heavy blacks or browns, but no. She loved vivid shades in her colors and favored a fine tip for her precise handwriting. As I make note of the curtains, the wallpaper, I’m pleased by the elegance the stubbed tip lends even my scribbled notes.

“What about me?” Sarah says. “Which room do I get?”

“Come here.” I tuck pen and book back in my bag and take her across the hall to a room very similar to the others. The walls are a faded, awful shade of grimy yellow, and the bookshelves are sagging, but all that is cosmetic. The best feature is the one Sarah narrows in on immediately: a trio of porthole windows that looks to the sea. She dashes toward them, stands on her toes to look out. On either side of the portholes are two windows that open outward, and I crank one energetically to let nature in. “Listen,” I say, putting a hand to my ear.

“I do like to listen to the ocean,” she says, smiling. “It helps me sleep.”

My heart stings. It’s something we always said—the Bianci women need to be able to hear the ocean when they sleep. For a moment, I am unbearably sad that she will never know she even is a Bianci. “I know,” I manage in an upbeat voice. “That’s why I thought of it.”

“Thanks, Mummy.” She hugs my waist.

“Let’s go check out the greenhouse, shall we?”

But Simon calls up, “Mari, darling, can you come down?”

I take Sarah’s hand, and we head down the stairs. A woman with a video camera on her shoulder and another wearing the coiffed hair and suit jacket of a television reporter are standing in the grand hallway. The camera blinks red, recording, as it tilts itself upward to Sarah and me, coming down the sweep of stairs. “What’s going on?”

Simon, looking highly pleased with himself, introduces them. “This is Hannah Gorton and Yvonne Partridge from TVNZ. They’re here to do a feature.”

My heart freezes so hard I think it might shatter. “Nice to meet you,” I say, walking toward them to shake hands. Then I turn back to Simon. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

“Of course.” He follows me into the pantry, out of earshot.

“What are they doing here?”

“I told them they could come.”

“Why didn’t you tell me? I might have wanted some better makeup, you know!”

“I knew you’d resist, and it will be good for publicity.”

“Why do we need publicity?” A frantic terror of revelation bangs around in my chest. “I don’t want our private lives made public!”

“It’s just business. We’re going to want to sell the other parcels at the best possible price, and this will generate excitement,” he says with a firmness I know will not budge. He’s a lovely man in a thousand and one ways, but when he decides on something, he is immovable. “And it’s only a half hour.”

“What other parcels?”

“I told you—to make this profitable, we’ll be developing the lower levels of the land into housing.”

“I don’t remember you talking about that.” Pressing my fingers to my temples, I try to calm down. It’s true that in the land-starved suburbs, housing parcels will make a mint. “But why do we have to put our lives on television?”

He presses his palm into my shoulder. “Come on, now. It’ll be right.”

For one long moment, I feel the two sides of my life in direct conflict. I feel them both on either side of my heart, pounding against each other. If I let him have his way, my face will be out on the internet again, increasing the danger that someone will recognize me. But I can’t argue with Simon when he makes up his mind on something. I may as well slam my head against granite. And if I’m too resistant, he’ll wonder why.

Shoving my fears down, I say sharply, “Fine,” and push his hand away, then stomp back into the other room. With effort, I plaster a smile over my face and laugh in a way I’ve learned to do, and I let them film me in the lounge and the halfway horrible kitchen. After a little while, I let go of everything but this—showing them the exquisite stairs made of kauri wood and Australian blackwood railings, the master bath entirely tiled in the Art Deco fashion, and the amazing windows with their views of the harbor, islands slumped across the horizon.

And as we do another walk-through, I find myself falling more and more in love, feeling as if Sapphire House might be the reason for everything. The children tear through the rooms, and it’s all I could ever want.

I’m meant to be here. It was fated.

Looking at Simon across the room, so hearty and cheerful, I wonder what would happen if he knew everything. My terrible reputation as a teen, my reckless, reckless behavior, my—