When We Believed in Mermaids(45)

“Yes and no. I was frightened, but I also knew”—I laugh without much humor—“because I was such a geek, that the shaking usually doesn’t last more than thirty seconds or so, and I just focused on the actual experience. You know, thinking about the amazing fact that the earth was moving against itself.”

His smile flashes.

“I did realize that this was a big one, and I started trying to estimate what it would be on the Richter scale—definitely a seven. Maybe even an eight, which would be super rare.”

“And were your estimates close?”

“They were.” The waiter approaches with our food, and I lean back to allow it to be set in front of us. “It actually only lasted fifteen seconds, officially, at six-point-nine, with seven hundred and forty-five aftershocks.”

The plates give off a grounding scent—a succulent roast chicken along with a big plate of vegetables, carrots studded with feta, a tomato salad, rice with lentils, and spinach. It smells of everything whole and homey in the world, and I barely notice the waiter taking away the empty dish, refilling our glasses, disappearing again.

“Allow me,” I say, reaching for the knife to cut and serve the chicken. Some for Javier, some for me. We dig into the vegetables, and then, as if we are puppets on the same string, we both put our hands in our lap and pause. Not a prayer but certainly a moment of gratitude. “It’s beautiful,” I breathe.

“Yes,” Javier agrees.

Across the table, my father sits down and plucks a tidbit of chicken from the plate, tastes it, nods happily.

We all dig in.

“When I was a boy, I liked disasters,” he says. “Pompeii, the Black Death, the Inquisition.”

“Cheerful subjects.” I savor a bit of carrot. “Do you remember the details?”

“Oh, sure. In seventy-nine AD, Vesuvius exploded with a force equal to a hundred thousand times the force of Nagasaki—”

“A hundred thousand?” I echo skeptically.

He holds up a hand in oath. “I swear. It sent stone and ash thirty kilometers into the air and killed two thousand people where they stood.”

“Have you been there?”

“Mm. It’s a strange and haunting place.” He pauses, looking at the tomatoes. “Delicious. Have you tasted them yet?”

“Yes. Have you tried the rice?”

He nods, moving things on his plate with the tines of his fork, admires it all. “Miguel told me this place was wonderful, but I did not expect it to be . . . so perfect.”

A wave of emotional weariness passes over me. I want to let go of all the heaviness of finding my sister, the heaviness of the past, and look forward instead. I suddenly wish that I could sit with him like this many times, over many years. I can almost see a ghostly version of us, sitting in this same place, a decade or two out. His hair will silver by then, but those long lashes will still frame his lovely dark eyes, and he will still eat like this, reverently.

Cool it, Bianci, I tell myself, and shift the conversation. “Miguel is your ex-wife’s brother?”

“My brother now; it has been so long.”

“Does he play with you often?”

“No.” He inclines his head. “We are . . . not in the same circles.”

It’s my turn to smile. “You’re being modest right now, aren’t you?”

He lifts one shoulder. “Perhaps.”

Helping myself to more of the carrots, I invite, “Tell me about your ex. Were you married a long time?”

“No, no. We were young when we met and very good together in bed, you know?”

Jealousy, green and hot, ripples down my spine. Weird. Jealousy is not usually my thing. “I’m sure all women are good in bed with you,” I say, aiming for something light and realizing only as it falls out of my mouth that it’s quite the opposite.

His eyes glitter. “I will take that as the compliment you have so graciously offered,” he says in a low voice, “but it is unfortunately not true. The chemistry must be right with lovers, or else—” He makes a pssht sound, spreads his hands.

I nod, pretending that I’m not feeling the heat of my cheeks.

“We married, and it was good for a while. She liked to travel with me, liked all the crowds and celebrity, you know?”

I take another bite of succulent, exquisitely seasoned chicken. “Mm.”

“In the end, I think she only wanted an ordinary life. Children and a dog and trips to the plaza to see friends on summer nights.”

“A nice life.”

“For some.”

“Not you.”

“Not then. That was a long time ago.”

“And what about now?”

“Now? Do I want that life?”

I lift a shoulder. “That life. That woman.”

His eyes narrow faintly. “Not the woman. Sometimes, yes, maybe the life.” He picks up a slice of bread. “You do not strike me as a jealous woman.”

“I’m not,” I say, and admit to the rest. “Usually.”

“My marriage was long ago. It’s to me like a story I read once.”

On the table, my phone buzzes, and I glance at it in alarm. “My mother is the only one who’d text me, and it’s the middle of the night there.”

“Yes, of course.”

I turn the phone over. We should plan a meeting place for tomorrow.

The lava boils in my belly, and I think of Pompeii. “I forgot I gave it to my sister,” I say, turning the phone back on its face.

“I won’t mind if you answer.”

I shake my head, covering the phone with my palm as if to keep Josie out of my life. She made me wait long enough. “She can wait.”





Chapter Twenty-Four

Kit

On the ferry to Half Moon Bay the next morning, I’m as calm as a surgeon. Which, honestly, is another word for bloodless. I’ve known a few who had some juice, but you’ve got to be at least part robot to make that life work. I was a nervous wreck on my surgical rotations. Give me an emergency every time.

Anyway. I’m drinking a cup of coffee in the nearly empty commuter ferry. At least on the way out—the people pouring off when it docked at the CBD didn’t seem as if they’d all fit.

This one is not geared for the tourist trade, so I sit by the window and watch the scenic spread of volcanic islands and think of what it would be like to see one erupt at 100,000 times the force of the Nagasaki bomb. It’s hard to even picture it, given the serene blue water and bluer islands. Javier did not stay over, at my request, and I slept so hard my face had lines all through it.

But I admit I kind of missed his company this morning. He hasn’t texted. I almost did and then thought better of it. He knows that I’m going to meet my sister, because I texted her on the way back to the hotel, and she suggested where we should get together.

Which I am anticipating and dreading in equal measure.

I haven’t talked to my mom yet either, because I hardly know what to say. Yes, she’s alive. Yes, she’s fine. So fine! And you have two grandchildren who are nine and seven who you’ve never had a chance to know.

Maybe say it better than that, as Javier suggested.

So I’m putting it off for a little longer, until after this meeting today.

After a few minutes of the agreeable movements of the ferry, I find the water doing its usual magic. I watch a guy in a kayak avoiding the wake of a motorboat, then swirling through the wake with joy, and it makes me smile. I’m falling in love with this place. It’s so much water, so much sky. I love the village centers that feel a little out of time with their covered walkways and shops of all sorts, and the very real way the landscape dominates everything.

Like the way the ferry carries me into a bay I hadn’t seen before, hidden and surrounded by hills. A marina boasts dozens of sailboats and yachts of various sizes, and the hillside above is a tumble of houses. I disembark, and there is Josie, hair pulled back from her face, sunglasses hiding her eyes. She has a hat in her hand, and she uses it to wave to me.

I lift a hand and both admire and hate myself for my cool. It doesn’t encompass the way I feel, which is nervous and shaky and on the verge of tears, which I would hate more than I can possibly say.

When I get closer, I see that tears are streaming down her face, which infuriates me, and when I’m close enough, she reaches for me. I hold up a hand to stop her, my voice icy cold. “No. It caught me off guard yesterday, but all this time you knew how I’d feel, and you let me suffer, thinking you were dead. How could you do that, Josie?”

“Mari,” she says, and I hear her voice deflating. “My name is Mari now.”

“I don’t—” I want to hit her.

She must see it on my face, because she says, “Look, we can do all of that.” She shifts her glasses to the top of her head, and I see that there are circles under her eyes. “You can yell at me, and I’ll answer any question you ask as honestly as I can. But can we just . . . start . . . in a better place?” Her eyes are as dark as buttons, just like my dad’s. Swimming in their depths, I’m captured.

It softens me. “Okay.” I start. “You look good, Jo—Mari. Really good.”

“Thanks. I’ve been sober fifteen years.”

“Since you died?”

She meets my eyes, her chin up. On this, she is not ashamed. “Yes.”