When We Believed in Mermaids(44)

And more. Curling up with Dylan and Josie and Cinder in the middle of a windy night on the beach, smelling their bodies like the perfume of happiness. Sitting very still so my mom could put makeup on my face for Halloween. Sitting in my dad’s lap while he pressed my hair and told someone I was the very image of his mother.

And Josie. Josie on the beach in a tiny bikini, always falling off her skinny brown body when she was little. Josie twirling around the dance floor at Eden, her long hair flying out around her. Josie appearing on my doorstep half-starved and unwell, when I swung the door open and let her in.

Finally, I am out of tears, or at least out for the moment. “I’ll wash my face.”

He offers me a clean towel, and I recognize the green cross-hatching of the kitchen linens. I’m mortified, but I take it and start mopping up my tears. “Sorry about that.”

His lips turn downward, and he shakes his head. “No apologies.” Again, that kindly hand smooths my hair, pushes a damp tendril off my forehead. “Do you want to tell me?”

I take in a long, deep breath. “I found my sister, but here’s the thing: I haven’t eaten all day.” I can’t talk to my mother yet, not until I figure out what to say. He’s been a good listener. It’s always easier to talk to a stranger or, in this case, a temporary lover. “Let’s go to the restaurant, and I’ll tell you all about it.”

“All right.” He gives my hand a kindly squeeze. “We’re going to need a lot of wine, I think.”

I snort and wipe my nose as I stand up. “Amen to that.” His shirt is damp on the shoulder. “Do you want to change?”

He slaps a hand over it. “No. These are precious tears.”

A lump forms in my throat. I like him, that’s the trouble. Like his easygoing nature, his ease in his skin. “Do you have any flaws at all, dude?”

He laughs, spreads his hands in a what can I do gesture.

It makes me smile. “Thank you, Javier.”

He winks. “De nada.”



The restaurant is called Ima. It’s just starting to fill up, and we have seats in the back, tucked into a corner so we can sit at right angles in the booth. It smells so good, my mouth is watering. Javier asks for wine and bread, and the server brings a basket of bread with olive oil and a bottle of Pinot Noir.

Javier is engrossed in the menu, asking the server questions as she pours water for us both, and I can see that he’s familiar with the kind of food on the menu, which I am not. He orders a roast chicken and an array of vegetables for dinner, then something called brik for an appetizer. “A treat, I promise,” he says, handing the menus over. “Egg and preserved lemons and tuna in a pastry. So nice.”

“My father loved preserved lemons,” I say. “They’re not traditional Sicilian fare, but he spent some time in Morocco as a young man, and he loved them. He used them a lot in his dishes.”

“Do you remember any of them?”

I sip my wine. After several generous gulps, I’m feeling the magic on the back of my neck, down my spine. There is again space in my lungs for breath. “He made a roast chicken with olives and preserved lemons that was to die for. It was one of my very favorite things when I was a child.”

“Most children like blander food.”

“He didn’t believe in giving children different food from adults. We learned to like things very young.”

It’s his turn to pause. “Were there things you did not like?”

“Not really. Josie was pickier than I was. She didn’t like a lot of different kinds of fish. They used to fight about it.” Again, I’m back at Eden, a child trying to hold the center of a dramatic and intense family. “She’s called Mari now. With an I.” I repeat it. “Mari with an I.”

“Did you speak with her?”

I nod a bit stiffly and take another tiny sip of wine, suddenly aware that alcohol might not be my friend when I’m in such a state. “More than that. I found her. Saw her.” The moment comes back to me, visceral and more powerful than I’d anticipated. “Briefly. She’s done very well for herself—a mom, wife, entrepreneur. She just bought a big house that belonged to a famous movie star from the thirties.”

He nods.

“I tracked her to her neighborhood, and then by chance I ran into her on the promenade in Devonport.”

“Not by chance,” he says, and nudges the bread plate toward me.

“No, you’re right.” The moment of our meeting rushes back through me. “She looks so good! I expected something else. I don’t know what.” Dutifully, I dip bread into the dish of oil. “The last time I saw her, I was in med school. She just showed up one day, and she was . . . a mess. Like she hadn’t bathed, and her hair was greasy, and she looked like she’d been living on the streets, which I think she actually had. She wasn’t drunk, but she was desperate, and it broke my heart to see her like that, so I let her in.” I tear the bread and take a bite, remembering. “She stayed with me for a few weeks. I had an apartment, and she slept on the couch, and she made meals for me, which I appreciated so much I can’t even tell you. And then one day, I came home and everything was gone. Just gone.” I shake my head. “I still can’t believe she did that.” My throat is so dry, my voice rasps. “Stole everything.”

“Was she an addict?”

I nod. “I’m pretty sure she was an alcoholic by the time she was thirteen, and she was drinking long before that.” A wisp of horror crosses his face, and I wave my hand. “I’m sorry. It’s a sad, terrible story. I don’t know why I’m dumping it on you.”

“You are not ‘dumping.’” He covers my hand with his own. The weight of it eases the fluttery sensation along my nerves. “I’m here to listen.”

And really, I’m too tired to dissimulate. “When I was little, she was the star of my life. I mean, the very middle of everything. My best friend, my sister, my—” I halt.

“Your . . . ?”

“My soul mate,” I finish, and a welter of tears swells in my eyes. I have to swallow hard to control them. “Like we’ve known each other always.”

“In Spanish, we say alma gemela. Soul twin.”

The words sting the raw space of my heart. “Alma gemela,” I repeat.

“Good.”

“The thing is, my soul mate abandoned me, over and over again.” I shake my head. “After the earthquake, I was so lonely, it felt like a disease. Like something I could die of.”

“Ah, mi sirenita.” He picks up my hand, kisses my wrist, holds my palm against his heart. Quietly, he says, “People do. Die of it.”

It’s such a relief to spill this out, to feel the heat of his body close to mine, the solid strength of his hand. “I just don’t know what to think about any of this.”

“Perhaps,” he says gently, “it is time to stop thinking and feel.”

But the very idea makes me dizzy, because I am so very full of lava, simmering, simmering, beginning to boil. If I allow those feelings out, the spew will burn us all to pieces.

To keep it safely in place, I take a breath and sit up straight, give him a rueful little smile. “All I’ve done since I met you was talk about myself.”

For a moment, he only looks at me. “Your quest is powerful. You needn’t apologize for the space it takes.” He covers the hand he’s holding with his other. “That you take. You are important too. Not only your sister.”

I swallow, looking away. Nod.

Thankfully, the server brings our appetizer just then, easing the mood at the table. It’s an envelope of thin, crispy pastry wrapped around tuna and a cooked egg that spills yellow onto the plate when I cut into it. The taste is sea and heat and comfort. “Ooh, that’s amazing.”

He smiles, closing his eyes. “This one is very good. I thought you would like it.”

I spear the fork into the egg yolk and a red paste that’s quite fiery, taste the two apart from the pastry. My tongue rejoices at the mix of heat and fat. “What’s the red?”

“Harissa.”

“It’s amazing.”

“It is such a pleasure to eat with you,” he says. “I think I would like your father, if it was he who gave you such passion.”

I nod. “Yes. And he would have liked you too, I think.”

“Is he gone?”

“Yes. He died in the earthquake.”

He waits, and I realize I didn’t even know I was taking a breath, bracing myself.

“The restaurant and the house were on a bluff above a cove, and when the earthquake hit, we were only a couple of miles from the epicenter. Both the house and the restaurant fell down the mountain. My dad was in the kitchen, which is where he probably most would have wanted to die.”

He swears under his breath. “Were you there?”

“I was in the house, but when it started, I ran out the front door. They always tell you to get out, so I ran out to the road. It knocked me down, and I just lay on my stomach with my hands over my head, waiting for the end.”

“Pobrecita.” He touches my back. “You must have been out of your mind with fear.”