“Hard to take the island out of the women,” she said, nodding. “I saw you at the exhibit. Which one is your favorite?”
“Vanessa, completely. That earth mother vibe. I want to go live in her farmhouse. You?”
“Duncan. I’m madly in love with him, of course. I know exactly why Vanessa loved him.” She licked her ice cream. “I’ve been to that farmhouse. You can feel her in every room. I wrote a dissertation on the farmhouse itself, as a design idea.”
I fell right under her spell. We talked art and artists, then books and writers, all the way back to our respective homes, hers only four blocks away from mine, and we’ve been fast friends ever since.
This morning, she’s waiting for me in our usual spot, near the water. Her long blonde hair is pulled back in a high ponytail, and she’s wearing a tank and NorShore leggings that show off her long, lean figure. “Earthquake this morning—did you feel it?” she asks.
I give a curt nod. No one outside my family knows how badly I react to tremors. “Did you hear where it was centered?”
“Offshore.” She gestures at the water sudsing restlessly, splashing hard against the land.
“Good.”
“Mm.” We set off at a brisk pace, hands swinging. Sometimes we can walk a long way without talking, but today my news is so momentous, I can’t wait. “So we bought a new house.”
“Already! The last project was only finished last week.”
“Right. But Simon heard through the grapevine that Veronica Parker’s sister died.”
She stops dead, her mouth open. “No.”
I raise my eyebrows. “Yes. You are looking at the new owner of Sapphire House.”
“You’re joking.” Her face is both blank and blazing.
“No. It’s done. He bought it outright.”
“Good God. He’s even wealthier than I thought.”
I take her upper arm and move her body toward the trail that circles up a mountain on the north head of this finger of land. “His father still owns great gobs of land.”
“Oh my God!” she cries. “You know I love her so much. You have to take me inside!”
“Of course. I want your help.”
“When can we go? Not today. I have tons of work to do. But this weekend?”
“Yes. Absolutely. I told the kids we could go over there too. You can come with us.”
“Are you flipping it?”
“No.” I pause as we start walking up the hill. The sun is bright and hot on my shoulders. “We’re going to live there.”
“No, you can’t!” Gweneth flings her arms up. “I need you here.”
“It’ll take a while.”
“Oh, but then you’ll be way over in Mount Eden, and I’ll never see you anymore.”
“No. We’ll make a date and meet in some fab coffee shop in every neighborhood in Auckland once a month.”
She takes a sip of water from her bottle. “All right. And you’ll have to have grand parties in that house.”
“I will. I promise.” We start to climb seriously and focus on our breath while we acclimate.
“Hey, hey, can we bring it down a notch?” I gasp.
“Sorry.” She slows. “We should have a welcome party or something.”
I take a long gulp from my CamelBak. “That sounds like fun. I’m not sure when we’ll fit it in, but we can try.”
“I know!” She gives me a wide-eyed glance. “When did everything get so busy? I was never so busy when I worked.”
“You didn’t have children. Each child takes approximately forty-eight hours per day.”
“Ah. That’s what it is. No one told me that.”
We hike in silence for a while. To our right stretch the harbor and the irregular coastline of the city. To the north is Rangitoto, an uninhabited volcanic island popular with tourists. In the far distance stretches a line of mountains meeting the sea, the whole scene painted in blues—blue water, blue mountains, blue skies. I never thought I would find a place more beautiful than the northern California coast, but this is outrageous. “Amazing. I never get tired of that view.”
“That’s why I never leave. I wanted to as a girl. Go to Paris and New York and all those places. But I visited, and none of them matched this.”
I was luckier than I could have expressed to have washed up here. It was all blind luck, ridiculous timing, a good decision made at a moment of crisis. My throat tightens at all that I would never have known.
And right behind it, a subtle worry crawls down my neck again—that television camera, right on my face the night of the club fire. I had been in the CBD with Nan and was headed back to the ferry when I saw the news crews. Before I registered what was going on, I stared right into it for the space of three heartbeats.
Careless, but honestly—how many news events happen on an average day? Not even a cataclysmic nightclub fire would spend much time in the spotlight.
At the top of the headland, we pause briefly, leaning on a bunker built in WWII, and catch our breath. It’s one of the best views I know of anywhere—the islands and Rangitoto, the skyscrapers of the CBD, the quaint tumble of villas along the Devonport seafront.
“We are so lucky,” Gweneth said.
“Yes.” I bump her shoulder. “We have each other.”
“Sisters,” she says, flinging an arm around me. “Forever.”
No one will ever be my sister except Kit, but I can’t bear a life without close female friendships. “Sisters,” I agree, and lean my head on her shoulder, looking east across the water to where my sister lives. For a faint, foolish moment, I wonder if she is looking toward me too, across time, across the miles, somehow sensing that I am still alive.
Chapter Nine
Kit
I ride the elevator down to the eighth floor. It’s still very early on a Friday morning, so there aren’t many people about—it’s between the crack-of-dawn, before-work crowd and the post-school-run moms. The area is nearly empty, only one person swimming laps.
The pool is wildly inviting, full Olympic length, the water a rich turquoise, maybe three lanes wide. Windows look out to the high-rise-building forest, and I’m cheerfully anticipating a good swim as I kick off my flip-flops. The man in the pool is swimming vigorously, powerfully, and comes up for air at the far end where I’m standing.
Damn.
Of course it’s Javier.
“Of all the gin joints in all the world,” I say.
“Pardon?” He gives the word its Spanish intonation as he wipes water from his face. A face, I note with some despair, that is just as fabulous as it was yesterday. Maybe even better.
“Never mind,” I say, and pick up my towel. “I won’t bother you.”
He easily hauls himself out of the water and stands there with wet skin and powerful shoulders and modest swim shorts still showing a lot. “No, no, please. I’m nearly finished. You can have the pool.”
“Stay. It’s plenty big enough for both of us.”
“Sure?”
I feel like an idiot. “I’m sorry about last night.”
A twitch of his shoulders. He gestures to the water. “A race?”
“That’s not fair. You’ve warmed up.”
“Warm up, then.” He sits on the side of the pool, folds his hands.
Light trickles over his skin, and I look away, cast off my wrap, and braid my hair, knowing that he’s looking at all my parts. The suit is a one-piece designed to contain my chest and modestly cover my butt, but it’s not exactly a garment that leaves much to the imagination. Securing my braid, I slide into the water. “Oooh,” I sigh. “Ozone.” I dive under the surface of the silky pool and kick my way half the length before I come up for air, swim hard to the end, and turn back to the start.
He’s still sitting on the side. His legs are covered with black hair. “Impressive.”
“You can’t just sit there and watch,” I protest. “You have to swim.”
“Let’s swim, then,” he agrees, and slides bac
k into the water himself, taking off without warning.
So we swim. Laps, mostly. I’m conscious of his skin, only an arm’s length away. I’m conscious of my own skin, swept by the water. And then, as always, I forget anyone else and the problems of the day and meld with the water, moving easily, rhythmically, the world forgotten. I don’t even remember learning to swim, any more than I remember learning to walk.
He stops before I do, hooking his elbows backward over the wall, his hair slicked back. I keep swimming, but then I’m worried he’ll leave before we have a chance to talk, which is backward from what I wanted last night. But maybe for once I’m going to go with what I actually feel instead of what I think I should.
When I lap back, I come up and pause. “Are you leaving?”
“Do you want me to?”
I shake my head.
“There is a spa pool over there,” he says, and points to a door going outside. “I will wait there if you like.”
“Yes, please.”
He doesn’t smile, and neither do I. I lean back into my stroke and do a few more laps before I give in to the lure of him and climb out, wrapping a big towel around my waist, which is ridiculous, because then I just take it off.
The spa pool is protected, but it is outside, with views of the office buildings around us. I drop my towel on the chair. “How is it?” I ask.
“Quite good.”
I step into the hot, swirling water and sink down, letting it cover me to my neck. He sits on a higher ledge, and I can’t help admiring his well-shaped arms, the black hair on his chest. He’s ever so slightly overweight, carrying the extra right over his belt line, which makes me like him more—the sign of a man who relishes life.
Or travels a lot, I think, remembering that he said he’d been on the road too much.
He doesn’t speak, only dabbles his hands over the water.
Fair enough. “Sorry I bolted last night,” I say.
His dark eyes rest on my face, and he lifts an eyebrow in question.
I can’t hold the eye contact and look down at my hands, floating in the blue water. I shake my head. “I don’t know.”
“Mm.”
“Look, it was stupid, and I’m sorry. Can we start fresh?”
He turns his lips down in consideration. “Okay.” Offers a hand. “My name is Javier.”
I laugh. “Not all the way at the beginning.”
“Did you like my song?”
“You have a beautiful voice.”
“Thank you.” He slides deeper into the water and lets his feet rise, the toes poking up into the air. It seems strangely revealing. “Perhaps one day you can hear more than one song.”
I give him a wry smile. “Maybe so.”
“How long will you be here in Auckland?”
“I’m not sure, really.” I take a breath and find myself telling the truth. “I’m sort of on a mission—to find someone.”
“Not a lover, I don’t think.” His toes disappear beneath the surface.
“No. Not at all. My sister.”
“Did she run away?”
I sigh. “It’s a very long story.”
“This is your sister who died?”
I forgot I told him that. “Yes.” I give the answer a shortness that conveys my unwillingness to add more.
He nods, his eyes fixed on my face as his hands swirl over the water, graceful, strong. Beautiful hands graced with square nails. “Will you look for her today?”
A trickle of water makes its way down his cheekbone, slides along his mouth. I want to put my open palms on his bare shoulders. “Yes. I found some leads. But I probably won’t be busy with it all day.”
He smiles at last, and beneath the water, his foot brushes mine. “What if I help you look, and then you come with me on a sightseeing tour?”
I think of not having to spend the day entirely by myself. “All right. I’d like that.”
“Do you want to know what we will see?”
With a smile, I shrug. “Whatever it is, I’ve never seen it before.”
His smile is generous, considering. “Nor I.”
Suddenly there is a sway, a splash, and I feel off-kilter. It’s not my imagination—Javier tilts toward me, a hand reaching behind me for the lip of the pool.
I lift my head, looking for things that could fall on us; then I’m clambering out of the spa and heading for open space. “Come on.”
“What—?”
The sway, not terrible but unmistakable, comes again. “Earthquake,” I say, and hold out my hand.
He wastes no time, and we hurry out to the open passageway that leads back to the pool. “Is it dangerous?”
“No.” I rest my hands on the wide stone ledge. Sunlight floods the area. “Very minor, but you don’t want to be under anything that could be shaken loose.”
He looks up, but there’s nothing above us, only sky. The sway is less remarkable here, out of the water, and soon it’s gone. “That’s that,” I say.
“How did you know it was an earthquake?”
“I live in northern California. They’re part of the landscape.”
“Have you ever experienced a big one?”
I think of the cove, scattered with the decayed ruins of what had once been Eden and our home. “Yes, unfortunately. The Loma Prieta in ’89.” Then add the way everyone remembers it, “San Francisco.”
“How old were you?”
“That’s an odd question.” He’s leaning one hip on the ledge, and his hair has begun to dry in swooping waves. “Twelve. Why?”
“Such a thing will leave a mark, no? More or less, depending on your age.”
It was, almost certainly, the worst day of my life, but being twelve had nothing to do with it. “Really. And what does my being twelve say?”
“That it was terrible. But your face says that.”
I touch my jaw, my mouth. “Does it?”
Finally he touches me, just his fingertips against my cheek, then away. “Yes.”
Things I don’t think about tumble out of their boxes—the rumbling, the sound of breaking glass, my urgent dive for the door. Lying flat on the ground in the open, counting seconds.
I swallow, then take one step closer and rest my palm on his chest. He doesn’t bend down to kiss me, as I had expected, but only presses his hand over mine, holds it there. “Life is capricious, no?”
I think of getting to my feet when the shaking stopped to find nothing left, the house in ruins. The absolute silence told me what I knew instantly. Still, I cried out my father’s name. Called until I had no voice left. Called until darkness fell.
I nod.
He is the first to step away. “Shall we go?”
I shower the pool from my skin and tame my hair with product, drawing it away from my face in the vain hope that it will behave for a few hours. To protect my skin from the harsh sun—New Zealand has some of the highest melanoma rates in the world—I bring a broad-brimmed hat. It’s too hot for long sleeves, so I’m wearing the sundress again, and I slather on heavy-duty sunscreen. Carrying a rattan bag, I head down to meet Javier in the lobby.
This time I’m the first to arrive, and I wait by a bank of windows overlooking the square. Young people, mostly students by the look of them, sit in the sunshine, reading or talking in clumps of two or three. The girls have a wide array of color in their hair—sometimes silvery with purple ends or ombre shades of watermelon or leaves. One girl has streaks in a rainbow array, and she wears oversize sunglasses and bright-red lipstick.
It seems like a long time ago that I felt that young, so dewy. If I ever did. At twenty, I was buried in textbooks, working two jobs to stay afloat. It didn’t leave a lot of time for lazing around in the sun. I’m piercingly envious for a moment.
“You look lovely,” Javier says nearby.
I swing the red skirt. “I only have the one.”
He touches his chest. “This is one of two.” It’s a soft gray button-up with very thin blue stripes. Exp
ensive. “I cannot bear to bring more than a carry-on.”
“I’m not that efficient,” I admit as we head toward the elevators to go down to street level. Inside, I smell his cologne, a continental touch I’m unused to.
“I have become so over the years. Two good shirts, jeans, slacks, one pair of shoes, maybe a pair of sandals.”
The door slides open, and we head outdoors to the heavy day. I slide my sunglasses down my nose. “Whew. I’m not used to heat,” I say. “It’s not this hot in California, at least not by the ocean.”
“I like California,” he says. “The people are friendly.”
“You’ve been there?”
“Many times.” He’s dropped his own sunglasses over his eyes, very black aviators that give him a glamorous air. “It’s beautiful. Where do you live?”
“Santa Cruz.”
He frowns slightly.
“Just south of San Francisco?”
“Ah. So you stayed there, even after the earthquake.”
“I’ve never lived farther than sixty miles from the hospital where I was born. Native Californian.”
“Is your family there?”
“My mother. She’s staying with my cat.”
“Not the cat with her?”
I laugh softly. “He’s afraid to leave my house, so she came to him.”
“That’s very kind of her.”
I look up at him, recognizing the truth. “It is.”
A sign alerts me to the shopping area I’d been hoping to find. “I think this is it. How much time do we have?”
“As long as you need. There is no hurry.”
“I just want to duck inside here and ask around.”
“Of course.”
In a bar of shade, I pause to pull out my phone and then find a still I lifted from the video of the nightclub fire. I show it to Javier.
“This is your sister?”
“Yep.” I look down at it, feeling butterflies flutter around in my gut.
“You’re very different.”
I snort slightly, a very unladylike sound I wish I could take back. “Understatement of the year.”
He cocks his head, and a swath of light undulates over the waves in his hair. “How so?”
“She was tiny. I’m tall. She loved—loves—metaphor, and I love facts.” I look up at the various shops. Boutiques with seven dresses hanging in rows. It’s hard to imagine Josie ever shopping for clothing like that. “She was a complete hippie. I’m a doctor.” An upscale florist. Several restaurants. “She was outgoing, and I was introverted.” I don’t say, She was beautiful. I am not, but that might have been one of the more obvious things. Josie and Dylan and my mother were beautiful. I was the sturdy, sensible one.
When We Believed in Mermaids Page 9