“Chelsea?” I said, finally finding the air to speak.
“What?”
“Thanks.”
She eyed me doubtfully, then said, “Whatever,” slapping her computer shut.
I ran for my car.
My eyes were wide in the rearview mirror. Patrick? Did I look like a Patrick? A rush of heat flashed through my face and then the tears came, wild and furious.
How is it that every life I touched lay in ruins? My father was dead because of me. Nadia was dead because I had not been enough to fulfill her need for a son. And what about the Hancocks? Could they have avoided their true nature if they had never met me? And now what about my biological mother? Was there at least one life that I could salvage?
As the image of my mother flashed across my mind, a guttural cry built up in my chest and broke past my lips. Salt-laced tears stung my eyes, and I could barely keep them open to see the road. I bit down on my hand to restrain the sound that was tearing at my throat.
Grief. Or joy. Or loss. No label fit. So much time lost. That was what bothered me most. She’d been so close for so long. Why hadn’t I ever recognized her touch? The curve of her cheek? Was I so far gone?
No. It couldn’t be true. There must be some mistake. Even if I had lost all memory, what mother wouldn’t recognize her own son? What kind of mother was she that she wouldn’t have known me? I’d been so close. How could she have let me slip away? Not once, but over and over and over again. I hated her. I loved her. I didn’t care anything about her. I wanted her. I wanted my mother. I felt small and alone.
Then, just when I thought I might pull myself together, the faded image of my father sinking in the lake brought a new sound of agony to my lips. I wiped my face with the back of my arm. How many people had died because of me? My father had only been the first. Maybe I wasn’t being fair to myself when it came to him, but how could I deny it? He was dead because of me.
A truck blared its horn as I veered across the center line, the sound swelling, then fading away as I swerved to the right and skidded in the loose gravel on the shoulder. I put the car in park and threw my head back, howling and bashing my skull against the headrest, over and over and over. My face contorted, unrecognizable in the rearview mirror. I’d never felt so hopeful or so low. So ashamed and in such a hurry to make things right. But I couldn’t turn back time. I couldn’t change the past. I could only run pell-mell into the future.
I abandoned the car and sprinted for the lake, just beyond the tree line. I couldn’t wait any longer for this road to carry me home.
32
LILY
Waking was like coming out of the grave. My room was dark, the curtains drawn, alarm clock unplugged. There were no sounds in the house to confess the time. No coffee gurgling, no Queen on the stereo, no smell of onions frying in a pan.
My Nadia dreams still lingered on the fringes of my mind, but, slowly, I shed the cloak of death and found my way back to reality. My head pounded and my shaking fingers found the very real goose egg on my forehead. It throbbed, and I remembered the sickeningly dull thud of my head hitting the boat cleat.
“How are you feeling?” asked a low voice.
It startled me and, not yet certain of my surroundings, I nearly rolled out of bed. “Who? Dad?”
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Yes,” I lied, not wanting to confess what I had known for quite some time. Ever since Calder had left, the mermaid’s black cloud of despair had been slowly descending until I was deep within the well. Too deep. And I didn’t see any way of climbing out of this hole I’d dug for myself.
Even Dad’s voice tunneled away from me, getting smaller and smaller like the circle of light at the top of the well. I could barely see him sitting there in a wooden chair in the corner of my room. I was conscious of only one sense. It was as if the world I’d known had been sucked into a black hole, and all that was left was a high-pitched keening in my brain. Mom was dead.
“Mom?” I asked, my voice trembling, my heart a heavy anchor in my chest.
“She’s fine,” he said. “Well, not fine. But alive.”
I didn’t believe him. I’d seen it all firsthand. He was lying to pacify me. But I wasn’t a child. He couldn’t treat me like a child. “Maris killed her,” I said.
“Almost.”
Yes, he was a very good liar. “I failed!”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Dad said.
I shook my head, trying to clear the wailing in my brain. It drowned out the sound of my own voice. “It is. It is. Mom’s gone, and now you’re bound to your promise. You’ll have to leave and join up with Maris.”
“I told you. She’s alive. But you are right about that last part. We only asked Maris to try, and there were no loopholes when it came to me.”
“I’ll kill her!” I screamed, tearing at my blankets. I didn’t care if Maris thought she had been freeing Dad from the so-called problem. I would be her problem from now on.
Dad looked at me with a puzzled expression, which only made me angrier.
“Maris,” I explained, as if my threat required further explanation. “I’ll kill her.”
“Lie down, Lily,” Dad said. “You hit your head pretty hard. You’ve been sleeping for two days. You must be starving. I’ll go make you some tea and toast, then I’ll explain everything.”
As soon as he was gone, I whipped back the covers and went to the window. My feet were unsteady from lack of use. Staggering across the floor on pins and needles, I bumped my hip against the dresser. The screen on my cell phone lit up. It was ten a.m. and there was a text from Calder:
Lily? You still there?
Unfortunately, his message did nothing to pull me out of the hole. It was too little, too late. I scrolled back and found my original message to him:
Does Mick Elroy mean anything to you? I think it’s important.
I couldn’t remember what my message meant, or why I’d wanted to send it. I dropped my phone on the floor with a clatter and pulled back the thick curtains that covered my window. The bright sunlight was an assault on my eyes and a personal insult. Stupid sun. Stupid ball of gas making me go blind.
I slung both legs over the windowsill and slunk across the porch roof. Dropping to the ground, I crouched beneath the downstairs windows and looked toward the lake, which lapped at the shore like a thirsty dog, all tongue and slobber.
The very smell of it—an icy coldness, if cold has a smell—attached itself to the center of my brain like a lead sinker that, when released, plummeted down my central cortex, through my nasal passages and my throat, burning past my heart, to the cold empty pit of my stomach.
I was gone before Dad came back with the toast.
A black web of misery spun out from the center of my body. When it felt like the last bit of life had been pulled through my final fiber, I found myself standing in the lake with no memory of having crossed the yard.
A face appeared no less than twenty feet in front of me. A rippling circle broke around her square shoulders. Would Maris really make it this easy for me to kill her?
“Lily,” she said, without any hint of apology for what she had done. Her voice threw gasoline on the fire raging inside me. I charged into the water, my hands drawn like claws.
She didn’t retreat. Her tone was soft. Soothing even, like balm to my splintered mind. It was a well-practiced sound, as if she had been confronted by someone like me a million times before. There was no concern on her face at all, which only made me angrier.
I snarled, swiping at her cheek. She dodged the blow, saying, “I see how low you’ve fallen.”
“That’s ironic!” I screamed, aiming for her eyes, my fingers like talons. Within seconds, Maris was directly behind me, one arm wrapped around my waist, the other around my throat. The image was that of an orderly subduing a mental patient with a straitjacket. I was still in human form, but she was not. The disparity of our physical states made her infinitely stronger. I couldn’t break aw
ay.
“I can help you,” she said, her voice like butter.
“I’ll take a pass on any help you’re offering,” I said, straining against her arms.
“You’re not feeling well,” Maris said.
“You think?”
Maris’s coal-black tail undulated beneath us, slowly pulling me out deeper. “I know how to help with that,” she said. “Do you think you’re the first of our family to fall so low? I know you’re angry. Maybe rightfully so. But there’s no need to suffer. Let me do at least one good thing here. One good thing for you.”
“I’ll feel better once Calder gets back,” I growled, remembering his text. I knew it was a stretch.
Maris clicked her tongue behind my ear. “You can’t be serious. He turned his back on his human family. Then he turned his back on us. You’re just the next in a long line of abandoned people in Calder’s wake. We’re creatures of habit, and leaving … that is his.”
By this time I’d been in the lake for more than a minute. The change was rippling through my body in uncontrollable waves of energy. Maris released me and backed away as my body exploded and my clothes tore away, floating to the surface.
I wheeled around. We were now evenly matched. Or so I thought.
“Calder hasn’t turned his back on his family. He’s looking for them,” I countered.
“You’re sure?” she asked, still annoyingly calm.
Of course I wasn’t sure. Not at all. He could be anywhere, doing anything. This was all my fault. Just like always—I wanted to make things better, but I made them worse.
I lunged at Maris, but she flipped under my arms and came up behind me.
“Lily, I know what you need. It doesn’t have to be this way.”
I shivered in response. I never felt cold when Calder was here.
“Seriously,” Maris scoffed, breaking her calm exterior for the first time. “I will never understand anyone’s aversion to survival. There’s nothing wrong with acknowledging your nature.”
Once more Maris’s eyes dropped to my neck. Although we weren’t submerged, I could tell what she was thinking—that I wasn’t worthy to wear her mother’s pendant.
Maris said, “I can see this isn’t coming as easily as I thought it would. I blame myself for not taking you under my wing sooner. I was hoping you’d reach this moment on your own.”
“Hoping?” I sneered.
Maris clucked her tongue again. “Expecting. I expected you to reach this moment much earlier.”
This moment? So that was the help she was offering? She was going to teach me to hunt? “Calder can resist the urge,” I challenged. “And so can I.”
“Sure, he has,” she said, shrugging. “Calder has always experimented in self-control, but there hasn’t been just one experiment. There have been many over the years. Too many to count, really. He always falls off the wagon for a few years before trying again. No one can deny themselves forever, and that includes you, Lily Hancock.
“We all wear the mask—play pretend, put on a good show for human eyes. But in the end, you are who you are.”
“And who are you, Maris?” I asked.
“Me? I am the best choice to lead this family. Mother believed I could keep this family together.”
“But you didn’t.”
For the first time I saw her falter, but she composed herself. “I was young. I didn’t know how to play the mother role. Obviously I made mistakes.”
“Tallulah,” I said, hoping the sound of the name would cause her pain.
“And Calder, too,” said Maris, unflinching. “I don’t want to make the same mistakes with you.”
Oh, she was good. Too good. The black cloud of my heart churned stormily inside me. Without wanting to, I heard myself say, “You’d help me?”
“Back then, I was too young for the responsibility. I was too young to shoulder my siblings’ grief. Revenge was the only thing I understood, so it was the only thing I had to offer. I can see now the damage that caused. And yes, Lily Hancock. I can help you.”
“I feel so empty.”
“I can fix that. Trust me. No need to feel ashamed.”
PART THREE
Thy voice is on the rolling air;
I hear thee where the waters run;
Thou standest in the rising sun,
And in the setting thou art fair.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam, CXXX
33
DANIEL CATRON
I lifted the bottom of my T-shirt and scrubbed the yellow pollen from the Hancocks’ kitchen window so I could peer in. No one had answered the door when I’d knocked. No one seemed to be inside. Not even Mrs. Hancock, whom I’d never seen leave the house. All the lights were off.
Huh. Maybe it was a good thing.
I’d reached the end of my rope when it came to Pavati blowing me off. I’d spent the past three nights lying awake, trying to figure out the best way to find her. I hadn’t gotten any sleep, and that had nothing to do with Adrian. It was basically now or never. Or at least now or succumb to insanity.
Knowing Lily, she’d probably try to talk me out of what I was planning. So it was a good thing she wasn’t around. Maybe my stars were finally aligning, if stars ever aligned for me. Yeah. Funny.
But I couldn’t help thinking that maybe the Hancocks’ absence was, like, fate or something. Maybe Pavati wanted to see me just as much as I wanted to see her, and maybe she’d been waiting for an opportunity like this where we wouldn’t be interrupted or judged or yelled at. Maybe she’d done something to make them leave for a while, just in the hopes that I’d stop by. Maybe freakin’ maybe, baby. It was about time I found out. I mean, it wasn’t like I could be re-rejected, right?
Adrian lifted his head off my shoulder and sniffed at the cool air. “Yeah, buddy. You and I need to get out more, don’t we?” Seriously, that apartment was getting majorly depressing. There were only so many episodes of Cops one guy could stand, and I’d run out of variations on macaroni and cheese: mac ’n’ cheese with mushrooms and onions, with spaghetti sauce, with tuna, with Cajun spices; in a pinch I’d invented leftover macaroni soup.
I pulled Adrian’s bottle out of the diaper bag and stuck it in his mouth, carrying him like a football in the crook of my arm. He’d already lost one sock somewhere in the trip from my apartment to Lily’s front door. I pulled off the other and dropped it on the hood of my car as I made my way toward the water.
Do I call her name? Do I go underwater and call? In the past, Pavati had always just showed up, without any effort on my part. I used to think we had some deep emotional connection because she always showed up right when I was thinking about her, but then I realized I was always thinking about her, so it wasn’t so cosmic after all.
When I reached the end of the dock, I sat down cross-legged and propped Adrian up between my legs. I took off my shoes and socks and dropped one foot in the water. Nothing said come hither like sweaty feet, right?
I pulled my foot out, laid Adrian’s head on one of my shoes so he was comfortable, then dangled my hand in the water. Come on, Pavati. Don’t be shy.
The lake looked dead. I couldn’t find a single pinprick of an air bubble, a rippling circle … nada.
“Pavati,” I called out. I glanced over my shoulder at the house just in case someone had been home all along. For a second I thought I saw an upstairs curtain move, but there was still no one.
“Pavati!” I called, louder this time.
Adrian cried. His bottle had rolled away. I popped it back in his mouth and balanced my other shoe on his stomach to hold the bottle in place. I pushed myself farther over the edge of the dock and dropped my whole head underwater.
I called again, this time into the water, “Pavati!” Bubbles fluttered past the sides of my face.
I listened, but didn’t hear anything other than a boat motor. I pulled myself out, flipping my wet hair back and drenching the rest of me. Adrian startled when the cold water sprinkled his face, and
he cried out. The bottle clunked onto the deck boards.
“Sorry, dude,” I said as I popped it back in his mouth.
The boat I’d just heard appeared around the bend and came surprisingly close to the Hancocks’ dock. When it was just twenty feet out, I saw a girl was driving it. She had chin-length, thick black hair and piercing eyes that told me she wasn’t one to take any crap. Binoculars hung around her neck. Gabby Pettit. Damn it. What did she want?
She cut the engine.
“Is that you, Catron?” she asked.
“What?” I put my hand to my ear as if I couldn’t hear her.
She smirked, so I guess I wasn’t going to win any Oscars for this performance. “What are you doing here?”
“I came to see Lily,” I said, “but she’s not home.” It was a lie, of course, but I hoped Gabby couldn’t tell.
“I didn’t know you two were friends.”
I shrugged. “Sometimes. When the mood suits her.” I didn’t want to play nice with Gabby. (She’d shaved my eyebrows off at Jimmy Watts’s party sophomore year.) But I had to be careful with what I said. Lily had told me Gabby had suspicions about mermaids and her brother’s death.
“Yeah, I know how that goes,” she said.
“Where are you headed?” I asked, an idea suddenly occurring to me. If Pavati wasn’t going to show herself close to land, maybe I could get her attention farther out. It would be worth spending time with Gabby if that was the payoff.
“Nowhere in particular,” she said. “Just cruising. Is that … is that a baby?”
Adrian was pulling the last drops out of the bottle with a dry sucking sound. “I’m babysitting for my cousin.” It hurt to deny him as my son, but I knew lies were going to be a permanent part of our future. “Want to give us a ride?”
Gabby looked at Adrian hesitantly. “Is that okay with its mom?”
“I’m pretty sure. His mom is a … water enthusiast.”
She paused.
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