by Sara Ella
We all are.
I pull a Kleenex from my tote bag and offer it to the mother of two of my favorite people. Has Merrick been here? Has he seen her since that day at the forest chapel?
“You should call him,” I say.
She blinks and smoothes the tissue over her open palm. “Who?”
“Merrick.”
“He doesn’t want to talk to me. I messed up. Wasted my last chance. It’s too late now.”
“It’s never too late to let someone know you love them.” This time it is Mee-Maw who offers her wisdom.
Is she talking to Lyn alone? Or are her words meant for both of us?
More tears spill from Lyn’s eyelids. They form streams down her freckled cheeks. Sing a song of mourning splashed with ripples of hope.
My gaze finds the mermaid painting again, so full of color and promise. The tune it plays is one I’d long forgotten. One I want to remember again.
“Here.” Lyn thumbs through a basket of postcards. “I want you to have this.” She hands me a postcard with a copy of the mermaid painting printed on it. “Maybe this will inspire your own love story someday.”
I take it, tracing the image with my fingertips. “I think it already has.”
Mee-Maw remains quiet until we’re outside. When our eyes find one another, she’s beaming. “That’s your ending.” She nods toward the postcard. “All you have to do is choose it.”
I glance over my shoulder. I don’t tell Lyn I forgive her for abandoning my friends. It’s not my forgiveness she needs or wants. It’s her own.
She nods at me through the window. She will call Merrick. Maybe not today, but soon.
Mee-Maw and I walk back through the gallery’s garden, following the path away from the hidden enchantment and out to the street once more.
When we reach a nearby bench and Mee-Maw sits to rest, I don’t join her.
“Go on, get out of here.” She shoos me with her hands. “Write that ending.”
I bite my lower lip, then give her a quick kiss on the cheek. When I pull away she catches my eye. Do I sense a little magic in her after all?
Yes. Of course I do. There’s nothing more incredible than unconditional love.
I head for the pier then. When I reach the sand, I’m already kicking off my boots and pulling out my notebook. I always keep one on hand and this one is brand new. Never been written in. Well . . . almost.
This is the last gift Hope ever gave me.
A golden mermaid silhouette decks the teal-and-white-striped cover. “I saw this on our beach field trip in the spring and thought of you,” she said on her last day at Fathoms. “I held on to it for when you returned.”
I open the cover to reveal an inscription written on the first page. As was her way, Hope penned a quote that seems written for me. For now.
“When we are at the end of the story, we shall know more than we know now . . .”
—Hans Christian Andersen
I sit, dig through my bag, and withdraw the only writing tool I can find—my red editing pen. It’ll have to do.
At last I dive in. My hand flies across the pages, the words spilling out faster than I can capture them in ink. With each new curve of an s or loop of a y I hear a new sound, each note lovelier than the one before it.
Red doesn’t have to be poison. It doesn’t always mean pain.
Red can also show warmth and passion. And maybe even . . .
Yes. I see it now. Hear it. Red is a symphony blossoming before me.
The color of light.
The song of love.
* * *
I stare at the red words at the bottom of the last page.
The End.
I can’t speak or control the elation tingling to my toes. Because I finished it.
I only wish Hope were here to read how it all turned out. Would she be proud? Would she have chosen to stay?
I close the notebook and rest my head on my bent knees. I can’t help the tears that come now. Fast and free and falling. I say good-bye to a final chapter. With only fresh pages ahead, where do I go from here?
That’s the beauty of life, isn’t it? Every day is a new page, waiting to be written.
When I stand and stretch, I stuff the newly filled notebook into my bag and walk along the beach, padding over the line of damp sand where the sea rushes my soles. About halfway between the shore and the sidewalk I see it. A corked, frosted blue sea glass bottle. My heartbeat ceases to exist.
The bottle is nearly identical to the one I found in the ocean the day I turned my own world upside down. I’ve carried it with me as a memorial token of the choice I made to keep fighting. Could it be more than just a bottle?
I whip my head left and right. It’s Thanksgiving Day. Of course the beach is abandoned. Everyone is stuffing their faces with turkey or enjoying the fall festival in town.
I give the area another once-over before kneeling in the sand beside the bottle.
It’s crazy. We were together little longer than a summer. A moment. A single scene within hundreds. But that moment? Somehow it became my air. A way to breathe through the hurt and the pain and the grief I couldn’t cope with and that all at once consumed me.
Merrick was the first person I didn’t hide from. I opened the door for him. My beacon of light in a raging storm.
This is more than a bottle.
This is Merrick’s way of keeping his promise.
“I’ll wait. However long it takes. I’ll wait for you.”
It takes some work to pull the tight cork free, but I manage. I peer through the hole with one eye. Have I missed what was right in front of me all along? I tilt the bottle until the rolled paper reaches the lip, rip the edges as I tug, but . . . there! It’s free.
I know it’s a message before I unfurl it. When I do, I stare at the words. The note is signed “Prince” and my heart can’t handle the conflicting joy and sorrow within.
Winter can’t last forever. I’ll wait for you through the storm, Brooke. Promise.
How could I ever have questioned him? Why did I push him away when all this time he would have welcomed me into his arms?
I don’t swallow my emotions when I look up. Don’t bother masking my heart behind a blank expression any longer. I see the other bottles then. Spaced every ten feet or so, creating a trail over the sand up the shore and back down again. I rise. Take my time as I kneel beside the bottles one by one. Each letter is dated and signed. One letter for every month over the past year. I follow their path. Read. Relish. Remember. At the end I’m exactly where I began. At my favorite spot beneath the pier.
Our spot.
He’s standing there, waiting. The final bottle in his left hand.
“How’d you know I’d be here?” I ask, though I already know the answer.
“Nikki. Mee-Maw.” He shrugs. “Take your pick.”
“What is all this?”
Another shrug. “You said you don’t believe in fate.”
“I don’t.” Didn’t. My smile reaches my hairline. “I’m starting to reconsider.”
“I knew it was a one-in-a-million chance you’d ever find the original bottle I sent out to sea. So I decided to give fate a little push.” He hands me the last bottle, fingers brushing mine for an instant.
I try to control the wave ready to break loose at his touch. I take the bottle and read the final letter. The short and sweet and perfect letter that says more than all of his messages combined.
Today
Dear Brooke,
I love you.
Promise.
Yours,
Merrick Prince
“We choose our own ending,” he says when our eyes meet. “And, Brooke?”
My lips part at hearing him say my true name aloud for the first time.
“I choose you. For all the endings and beginnings and in-betweens.”
We sit beside each other in the sand, the way we did many summer nights ago. Our fingers weave between the grains, sliding close
r to the other’s with each second.
We say nothing for a moment. When the silence is so long neither of us can stand it, he leans close. His shoulder against mine is a pillar. Though I’ve learned to stand on my own, I’ve also found there’s nothing wrong with relying on others.
I can have both.
The sea creeps closer. When the foam reaches us, the past urge to take refuge there lingers. “Once upon a time I believed everything was better underwater,” I say. “Where sounds and colors collide. Where my body becomes weightless.”
His pinky finger finds mine. I link my own with his, relishing the way it feels to make this silent promise with him again. I turn to face him. “Merrick, when this year began, I wanted the freedom I believed only the ocean could bring.”
I wait for the information to register. Watch as understanding settles in his gaze.
My fingers slide over his, pulling back, then pushing in and holding tighter. “I tried to end it.” I find his eyes and hold faster still. “But you saved me.” My shoulders rise and fall in a ripple. I dig through my purse and withdraw a sea glass bottle.
Not one I found today.
The one I clung to nearly a year ago when everything was gray.
His eyes grow wide.
I uncork the bottle now, discover his very first letter from last November. Why didn’t I ever think to look inside sooner?
November
Dear Brooke,
You are not nothing.
You never have been.
You never will be.
You are something to someone.
You are everything to me.
Promise.
Yours,
Prince
Merrick draws a quick breath. “Is that—”
With moist eyes and a full heart, I try to find the words. But, for once, they’re lost to me.
Because Merrick found them first.
“You said it would be a one-in-a-million chance I’d find this.” I draw the message to my heart. “But I did. I found it. And it led me back to you.”
I tell him of the storm and finding the bottle in the sea. Of hypothermia and hallucinations and the night in the cave. It had all been a dream. But now it’s my ending.
“True love”—I choke on the words, so raw and real—“makes life, even a broken one, worth fighting for.”
“If you ever find true love, hold on to it.” River’s voice comes back to me. I think of everything she believed she lost. Of all she left behind.
A tear slips down my cheek. Then another. I can’t stop them. I don’t even try. I sniffle, but I won’t wipe them away. “I once saw emotion as a curse or a disease. I thought love was a fairy tale.”
“And now?” He lifts his hands to my cheeks, catches my tears with his thumbs. He takes care to remove each one, touching them to the ocean and letting them dissolve with the foam as it recedes.
“Now I know my emotions are what make me human. And that love is as real as the healing, incredibly human tears on my face.”
“Spoken like a true writer.”
“You would know.” I wink. “You have a way with words yourself.”
“I had a good teacher.”
We stay in this place. I take in his summer scent and he holds my gaze, challenging me to keep the intense stare without looking away for fear of what he might see. I match his stare with everything inside me, unafraid for the first time to let him look into who I am.
“I found him.” He reaches into his pocket. Withdraws my bracelet. “The guy who broke River’s heart.”
“When?” My pulse picks up as he slides the pearls over my wrist.
He doesn’t draw back, instead wrapping his fingers over mine. “A few weeks now. I couldn’t figure out how to tell you at first.” Merrick hangs his head, regret shaking his shoulders. His story spills out in run-on sentences and whispered curses. At the end, he doesn’t meet my gaze.
Now it’s my turn. I place my palm to his jawline, nudging him to look at me.
When he does, his dark but forever warm eyes express more emotion than a hundred thousand words could. “I’m sorry. For what he did. For not finding him sooner.”
“Thank you. For keeping your promise.” Our foreheads meet, tips of our noses barely touching. “He doesn’t matter. River wouldn’t want me to dwell on revenge. She would hate to know I wasted my time on someone who didn’t value hers.”
“I’ve never seen you like this.” His admission warms my cheeks. “So calm. Present.”
I close my eyes and linger on his words. “Now is all we have. And right now I am completely in love with you, Merrick Prince.”
My heart sets the truth free and a moment of terror grips me. How could he love me when I still struggle every day to love myself? Then again, a life without love—without Merrick—is a life of drowning. I’d rather struggle together than face another second apart.
I push aside the old voice of fear and uncertainty and close the distance between us, matching my lips to his. He doesn’t need to speak the words. He’s written them, made them permanent on a page, and etched them over my heart. Besides, Merrick’s soft response now speaks more than words ever could. Our lips part and join, like the waves meeting the shore. We don’t come up for air for a while. We kiss until our breaths aren’t our own and there’s no telling which one of us draws back first.
“You stole my line,” his lips say against mine. “That was from one of my letters.”
“Are you going to arrest me for plagiarism?”
“Most definitely.”
We share another long embrace and several more tentative kisses before the sun fades. When we stand and walk hand in hand up the beach, we collect the bottles until our arms are as full as our hearts. We walk back to town, ready to celebrate together. Our holidays will always be bittersweet, missing the faces of those no longer with us. Sorrow remains an unwelcome companion in the days ahead.
But joy follows close behind. And laughter. We can take the journey side by side, find healing in sharing every heartache. Discover hope in every tear we freely shed.
And maybe—just maybe—our own version of happily. Ever. After.
Enden.
(Which, in Danish, means “The End”)
After
“When we are at the end of the story, we shall know more than we know now.”
—Hans Christian Andersen
I never thought I’d get here.
To the beginning.
To the place where everything starts over. Fresh. Bursting with new life, and color, and love.
I soak in the light that seems to drown me now. Though the darkness is never fully gone, I’ve learned how to fight it. It only takes one drop of sunlight to break through an Abyss.
It might be impossible to change the past. But who said starting over had anything to do with going back?
No matter where after begins, there’s always a chance for a new before.
Before starts right now. Because I choose after.
And after will never be the same again.
Author’s Note on Hans Christian Andersen’s Tragic Tale of Tears and Tortured Souls
Oh, Dear Reader, welcome to the end.
And, as it turns out, the beginning.
This tale has been a journey, to say the least. When I began writing this book, I had no idea it would be about mental health. The Disney girl that I am wanted . . . well, Disney. But something happened during the writing (and rewriting) process that took me down a path I never expected. A road of learning about myself and others who have experienced trauma and heartache. There are more of us than we know.
“But a mermaid has no tears, and therefore she suffers so much more.”
This single line from the original tale sent my mind spinning. While I’m a Disney girl through and through—and allude to the 1989 film that brought Disney animation back to life throughout this book—I was also heartbroken that these words were somehow lost in the film adaptation.
> For those who aren’t familiar with the story as it was first told, Andersen wrote of a little mermaid who longs for a human soul. Because mermaids do not possess a soul, they become as the foam of the sea when they die. And without a soul, mermaids cannot cry.
This simple concept got me thinking about life as we know it. About stoicism and the idea of being tough or “just getting over it.” As if it were that simple. For those who have never experienced depression, anxiety, or trauma (physical and emotional), it can be difficult to explain the concepts of numbness or dissociation.
I cannot represent every situation, and I won’t claim to. I am also not a licensed counselor or therapist. But I do know something about grief and loss and being told to “get over it.” When I assumed I’d cried every last tear an ocean could hold, I reached a point where I felt removed from my own life. As if all the things that had happened to me were happening to someone else. I couldn’t cry and I couldn’t feel. There were no more tears to shed, and that was a new kind of suffering. A suffering inside myself that no one else could see.
And that is why this story hangs on this single line written by an author I could only aspire to be like. It is a story not necessarily retold, but rather reimagined.
If you have been or are in a place where your tears no longer fall, I relate to your suffering. And it’s a suffering far greater than many could ever understand.
There is much more I want to say on this topic. Ways I want to explain why this novel took the direction it did. But there are not enough pages and never enough words. So I leave you with this—reach out to someone. A family member. A friend. A counselor. You have a voice. You don’t have to drown alone. Talk to someone you trust and let those tears come.
I’ll be right there with you in spirit.
You are not nothing. And you are not alone.
With all my heart,
Discussion Questions
Warning! Spoilers Ahead
Several themes from the original, dark fairy tale of “The Little Mermaid” are addressed throughout the book. Hans Christian Andersen wrote, “But a mermaid has no tears, and therefore she suffers so much more.” Discuss what you think this means on an emotional level for Brooke, Coral, and Amaya Hope. Does Merrick experience this type of “suffering” in his own way?