When We Believed in Mermaids(41)

The woman behind the counter is a tiny English thing, with shoulders the width of a dragonfly, but she moves with a no-nonsense attitude. “Turn around,” she says, and measures a T-shirt against my shoulders. “You’ll want that rack over there.”

“All right.” I glance at the colors of the skirts—turquoise, red with yellow, yellow with blue, and a striped green and blue that’s really quite pretty. I toss through the shirts, find some that are acceptable, and add them to the stack.

“You’ll be wanting some jandals too,” she says.

“Jandals?”

She points to a wall filled with flip-flops.

“Yes.” I point to them. “Jandals,” I repeat. “Like sandals?”

“Japanese sandals.”

“Ah. Got it.” I select a pair, try them on, find the fit is fine. “Great.”

She rings me up. I pay with a card. “You can change over there if you like. But if I were you, I’d wear the medicine shirt. Everybody has the New Zealand ones.”

I smile. “Thanks.”

“Are you a doctor, then?”

“Yes. ER.”

“You’re not the one who saved that boy?”

For a moment, I’m so surprised I hardly know what to say. “Uh. The one who jumped off the pilings?”

“That’s him. They’re all talking about you, you know. Heroic to jump in and save him.”

I tuck my card back in my purse. “That was the ten years of lifeguard duties, not the ER,” I say. “Hope he’s doing all right.”

“Wouldn’t be your fault if he’s not. Lunatic.”

I head for the changing rooms. Peeling off the jeans is one of the best experiences of the day, and I tie the skirt with pleasure. The sandals are soft and squishy, the toe hold covered with synthetic velvet.

The whole normal interchange has calmed me. I take a deep breath, blow it out. In the mirror I look like someone else, with my wild hair tumbling down my back, and the high color of a lot of great sex and sunshine, and my bare legs.

Shoulders back, I wave at the woman and head out into the day, carrying a bag with the clothes in one hand and my city purse tossed crossways over my body. I’m fortified now. I can face her.

I cross the street and round a Moreton Bay fig that spreads arms out across a massive area. The trunk has many parts, making it look like a tree that would be populated by fairies. I can see my sister and me crouched on the beach, making tiny furniture for the fairies who lived around the cove, and stole sweets, and switched sugar for salt.

The thought makes my heart ache.

But there is only one reason I am here in this place at all. With the focus that saw me through twelve years of study, I shove away my emotions and look at my phone for directions. From here to my sister’s house is, by Google Maps estimation, a nine-minute walk, straight down the waterfront.

The houses must be the same era as the Victorians in San Francisco, and again I’m reminded of that city. Pedestrians stroll along the sidewalk, fit retirees in pastel golf shirts and white pants and mothers with children and—

I halt, sure that I’m imagining her. A woman walking toward me with my sister’s distinctive, un-self-conscious amble. She never walked fast enough for me, and it drove me insane.

She’s wearing a simple blue sundress and no hat even in this awful land of skin cancers, plus jandals like mine on her feet. A million memories tumble through my brain: sleeping on the beach in our little tent, that strange summer when Josie got so weird, the earthquake, the news of her death.

She’s alone, lost in thought, and I think she might have walked right by me, humming under her breath, until I reach out and touch her arm. “Josie.”

Josie turns, cries out, and covers her mouth, and for one long moment, we only stare at each other. Then she grabs me, hard, and hugs me, weeping. “Oh my God,” she whispers, her hand hard against my ear. I don’t realize until I feel her ribs moving against me that I’m hugging her just that tightly in return, tears running down my own face. She’s sobbing, her body shaking from shoulder to hips. I close my eyes and clutch her close, smelling her hair, her skin, the Josie-ness of her. I don’t know how long it goes on, but I can’t let her go, and I can feel her grip on me like a vise.

She’s alive. She’s alive. She’s alive.

“Oh my God, Josie.”

“I fucking missed you so much,” she whispers fiercely. “Like a kidney. Like my soul.”

I finally pull back. “Why did you—”

Josie looks over her shoulder, grabs my hand. “Listen. Call me Mari. My family is following me. They just stopped to buy something, and I wanted to get my steps.” Her grip tightens. “They don’t know anything. Give me a chance to explain to you—”

“Mom!”

The little girl is running down the sidewalk toward us. In wonder, I say, “She looks exactly like me.”

“Yeah. Follow my lead.”

And because I really don’t know what else to do, I turn with my sister, who says, “Sarah! I want you to meet someone!”

The girl doesn’t give me a toothy smile, just turns her face and looks up, waiting as Josie/Mari says, “This is my friend Kit, from my childhood. We were the very best of friends.”

“Like sisters,” I say, offering my hand, which feels like it should be shaking, to go along with the buzz in my ears.

“Hullo,” Sarah says, and I have no idea why it’s such a surprise that she has a Kiwi accent. “It’s nice to meet you.” Her gaze catches on my T-shirt. “Are you a doctor?”

“Yeah.” I touch the words. “I am. Emergency medicine. I think they call it something else here.”

“I’m a scientist. I have all sorts of experiments.”

My heart melts, and I drop to her level. “You do? What do you have?”

“Weather,” she says, counting it on her thumb, “which is mostly a barometer and cloud recordings. And plant experiments, and some crystal things.”

“That’s amazing. I used to do experiments when I was your age too. I thought I was going to be a marine biologist, but I ended up in medicine.”

She inclines her head. “Do you like it?”

“Yes.” I pause, swallowing. She is like me, so very like me. How could Josie have kept her a secret from me all this time? How could she have been so cruel as to hide her babyhood, her toddler years, everything? A distant howl of fury and pain sounds in the distance, and it takes every scrap of self-control I have to keep my emotions in check. “Yes, most of the time I do.”

The other two are joining us, and I stand up as my sister says, “Kit, this is my husband, Simon.” I can hear the pinch in her voice, her fear that I will break everything, and for one moment I want to do just that. Spill everything, let the consequences fall where they may.

But my little niece, so like me as a child, stops me. “She’s a doctor, Daddy!”

He’s even more good-looking in person, with a genial kindness in his face that isn’t evident in pictures and a charisma field as wide as the entire park we’re standing in. I reach for his hand and meet his eyes, and a ripple of surprise washes over his expression for the most fleeting of moments. “Hello, Simon.”

Mari says, “Simon, this is Kit Bianci. She was my very best friend.” To give the words weight, she leans on me, her hands on my arm, her face against my shoulder. “We just ran into each other. Isn’t it wonderful?”

I give her a brief, shocked glance.

“Is that right?” he says. His grip is firm and warm. “Good to meet you.” He turns to bring his son forward. “This is Leo.”

Leo. Our father’s name. I force myself not to shoot a glance toward Josie. Mari. Whatever her name is. “Hi, Leo. Nice to meet you.”

He’s as polite as his father. “You too.”

“Just like Tofino,” I say to Mari.

She takes my hand. “We were lucky to grow up there.”

“Mm.”

“We’re just going down to have supper,” Simon says. “You must join us.”

For a moment I consider it, consider sitting with my niece and listening to her tell me about her experiments. I think of what my mother will feel, knowing these children are in the world and that she knew nothing about them. I look into Josie’s face, so familiar and yet so unfamiliar, and I can’t sit here tonight and pretend.

I’m not ready. Not yet.

“I’m sorry,” I say, turning to Simon. “I really do have plans.”

“Oh, not really?” Mari cries. “You can’t just go! We have to catch up, tell each other everything.”

I hand her my phone, and now my hands are shaking with rage. She sees and grips one tightly. Her eyes are fixed on my face, and I see the faint, small shine of tears. For a long second, I’m overwhelmed with gratitude, with love, with a hunger to touch her face and hair and arms, to assure myself that she’s not some robot version of herself but Josie, my own Josie. Here. Alive.

“Give me your number,” I say. “We can get together as soon as you have time.”

“First thing in the morning,” Mari says. She punches in the number and then calls it, making her phone ring in her pocket. As if to show me the evidence, she pulls it out, still ringing. Her eyes meet mine, steady. More assured than I ever remember, and something about that softens my fury the slightest bit.