I let go of the smoke.
“Better?”
“Yeah. Again.”
He hesitated, but I gave him my steely look, and he took a toke, a really big one, and smiled at me as he did it. I got ready for him to blow it to me, and maybe because I was already getting high, the exchange lasted a thousand years. I looked at his pursed mouth and noticed it was pink and plump, and there were sprouts of new beard coming in on his chin. The smoke left his mouth, and I sucked it in, and sucked it in, and sucked it in, deeper and deeper and deeper, and then I fell sideways holding my breath as well as I could. And only when it was completely impossible to hold it another second did I breathe out in a big gasp.
“Thatta girl,” he said, his voice low and approving.
I rolled over onto my back, my hands on my rib cage, the sparkling bright stars looking twenty times larger. Dylan fell down beside me, and we just lay there, side by side, looking at the sky and letting the wind move over us, for a long, long time.
“Dude, you got me high.”
“You were having a panic attack,” he said mildly. “So that makes it medicine.”
I giggle.
“I’m not kidding.” But he laughed too, then slowed. “Now you have something to tell on me about, so you can trust me.”
I turned my head, and his eyes were right there, pale and bright as moonlight, never eyes like a real person. “You have mermaid eyes.”
“I wish I was a merman. That would be pretty cool.” He turned his head back to the sky, and I used my finger to draw the outline of his profile in the air.
“Might get lonely, though.”
“Might.” He waited a long time before he said, “You’re not going to tell me, are you?”
I touched each of three scars on his upper arm—all three burns. “Did somebody burn you with a cigarette?”
“Cigar,” he said. “What if you don’t have to say it and I just guess?”
“Why do you wanna know so bad? It was awful, but it’s over. I’m good.”
“You’re not, though.” He brushed my hair off my forehead. “You’re sad all the time, and doing things that aren’t really appropriate for your age.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“I know. But if I tell you that it would feel good to talk to somebody, you need to believe me.”
“Talk to somebody? Like a counselor?” I looked up, horrified.
“You can just tell me.”
But I couldn’t. I knew he would tell. No one but me could keep a secret this big.
In the big pantry at Sapphire House, the memory rips through me. I suddenly miss Dylan so much it feels like a fresh wound. Sinking to the cold linoleum, I wrap my arms around my knees and let the tears fall.
I think now of my barely pubescent self having anxiety attacks and smoking pot to quell them and wonder again what the hell. Why didn’t he tell my parents, no matter how angry I would be?
But I also loved him, so very, very much. He would have said his first loyalty was to his promise to me. In his own scarred way, he was trying to protect me.
Dylan, Dylan, Dylan. So lost, so wrong, so misguided, but all three of the Bianci women tried to save him. None of us could.
In fact, I did the exact opposite. Because of me, Dylan died.
Chapter Nineteen
Kit
By ten the next morning, the cyclone has pushed through, leaving behind a glittery, humid morning. Javier doesn’t linger. “I have an interview,” he says, leaning over the bed to kiss me where I still sprawl. “Are you free tonight?”
His hair catches the sunlight, and for the first time, I see that it isn’t black at all but a very warm brown. I brush my fingers through it and tell myself I should say no, but I can’t find the discipline.
And anyway, one of the hallmarks of a great holiday romance is the immersion factor. “I’ll have to check my calendar,” I joke, “but I imagine I’ll be here.”
“Good. Someone told me there’s a very good Israeli restaurant nearby. Would you like to try it?”
“Absolutely.”
He straightens, tucking in his shirt. “What will you do today? More surfing?”
“I’m going to run down some ideas I had about finding my sister.”
He buttons his shirtsleeves, and I find myself wondering if I’ve ever slept with a man who owned a long-sleeve oxford shirt with crisp lines down the arms from ironing.
“Are you sure you wish to find her?”
I tuck the covers over myself more firmly. “No. But I have to follow it through now.”
“I looked for her yesterday.”
I frown. “What?”
He inclines his head. “Miguel has lived here a long time now. He had good ideas.”
I sit up. “You told Miguel about her?”
“Not so much. Only that you were looking for someone.”
“That’s my business, Javier. I only shared it with you because we were—” I struggle with why and give an exasperated sound. “That was very invasive of you.”
He seems unconcerned. “The good news is, he thought he recognized her.”
“I don’t care. This is my business, not yours.”
As if he doesn’t even hear me, he picks up my phone from the side table and hands it to me. “Take my phone number, and then send yours to me.”
I glare at him. “Who do you think you are?”
Finally, he inclines his head. “Are you angry, gatita? I only meant to help you.”
For a long moment, I only look at him, feeling invaded and upset and tangled and yet still so very drawn to him. “I’m not the kind of woman who likes to be shuttled along by a man.”
“I did not intend—”
“Please don’t get in my business like that.”
He sinks down beside me, tucks my hair behind my ear. “Don’t be angry.”
“I am, though.” I slap his hand.
Which makes him laugh. He tries to catch it, fails. “Sorry.”
“I’m not kidding. Do you understand?”
“Yes. I swear.” He holds up his hand, palm out. “I will not help you again.”
Relenting, I pick up my phone and punch in the numbers he gives me, then call the phone so he’ll have mine. It rings on the table in the kitchen. “There you go.”
He smiles at me, the expression slow and appreciative. “Tonight, then.”
I turn on my side to watch him go. My body is soft from making love, a delicious laziness in my spine. When he pauses at the door, I lift a hand to wave, and he blows a kiss.
Ridiculous. And lovely. I know better than to get mixed up with a charmer, to let down my guard, and yet—it’s limited by circumstances. I’m safe enough.
I roll over to look at the harbor. The water shines an opalescent deep blue. No sailboats this morning, but a sturdy-looking barge makes its way toward the open sea. Closer in, the offices are coming alive, and I watch a woman in a dark-blue pencil skirt bustle from her office into the hallway, then pop up in an office a little farther down the way. What would it be like to live her life, I wonder, a person who works in an office, at a desk, wearing fancy clothes? In Auckland.
Not my life at all. I don’t miss the ER, but it has been only a few days. I haven’t had much time to consider what else I might do, what kind of medicine might be calling me next. Or if anything is calling me. It’s possible that what I’m doing right now is giving me a chance to recharge my batteries.
If not for Hobo, I’d volunteer with services like the Red Cross or Doctors Without Borders. Maybe the Peace Corps.
But I can’t leave Hobo.
Speaking of my cat, I need to call my mother. Tossing off the covers, I pad naked into the shower, then dress and make a pot of coffee. As it brews, I text her to see if she’s free to FaceTime.
She rings in on my tablet almost immediately. “Hi, sweetheart!” she says, and moves the camera to show me a little black face poking out from beneath my bed. “Look, Hobo. It’s yo
ur mama!”
“Hi, baby!” I coo.
He lets go of a pitiful, squeaky meow. “Oh no. I don’t know if it’s good that he hears me.”
“Blink at him,” Suzanne orders. “That’s cat language for ‘I love you.’”
“I know that, but how did you know it?”
“I looked it up.”
“You did?” Pierced, I realize that she’s taking this very seriously. Her devotion to the task slides beneath my defenses, reveals how much my mother has changed. She carries the tablet closer to the bed, and Hobo stays where he is, making that same pitiful little meep.
“Hey, Hobo,” I say, and give him a slow blink. “You’re safe, and I love you, okay?”
He stares at the screen as if suspecting a trick, then skitters backward, hiding behind the drop of the bedspread. Suzanne’s face comes back on camera. “He’s okay, honey, just scared.”
This is the only creature who’s ever depended on me, and I’m letting him down. “Is he eating?”
“Not as much as I’d like. He must come out when I’m gone, because he’s using the litter box, but he doesn’t come out when I’m here. I put his food by the bed, and he eats it when I’m out, so I’ve been filling a plate in the morning and then going for a walk.”
Poor Hobo. “Oh my God, I feel terrible!”
“Don’t,” my mother says firmly. “I’m taking good care of him. He’s healthy and safe.”
“You promise he’s eating?”
“I swear, Kit.” She raises a long-fingered hand in an oath.
I swallow, feeling a strange welling of gratitude and softness. “Thank you, Mom.”
She waves a hand. “Now, tell me what’s happening with you. Any leads?”
“No, but I do have some ideas.”
“Good. I have to say, sweetheart, that it’s doing you some good to get away. You have color in your cheeks.”
I try very hard not to allow more color to seep into my face, forcing an offhand smile. “I went surfing yesterday, and it made me wonder why I haven’t done more travel like that, you know? I mean, why not?”
“You should! I could get you rooms at any of the NorHall hotels anywhere in the world.” She works as a concierge at the one in Santa Cruz.
“Maybe you should do some of that yourself.”
Her slim shoulders twitch. “I think I feel safer with my routines.” She twirls the most recent of her AA chips between her fingers, over and over.
“Mom, you’ve been sober a long time. But you know, I bet they even have sober tours these days.”
“Yeah, we’ll see,” she says, but I know it’s a dismissal. “Do you like it there?”
“It’s amazing.” I carry my tablet over to the window. “We had the edge of a cyclone go through last night, and everything is pretty quiet, but look at that view!”
“It seems like the kind of place your sister would love, don’t you think?”
Something about that comment irks me, and I turn the camera back to my face. “I guess.”
“What are you planning for today?”
“I’m going to call surf shops,” I say. “I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before. No way she’d give up surfing.”
“If she was still herself, I agree. But what if she had amnesia or something?”
I frown. “I guess it’s possible. Not that likely.”
“You see it in books and TV all the time. And why else would she leave us to grieve her like that?”
“Because she was selfish? Because she was an alcoholic and an addict?”
Thousands of miles away in my own little house, my mother sits at my table and gazes calmly, steadily through the camera at me. This is what Josie will look like in twenty-five years, the graying blonde hair, the high cheekbones, the full lips that have thinned only a little with time. “Or maybe,” she offers, “she was lost. Broken.”
“Poor Josie,” I say with sharpness. “You know, I was thinking about the way she drank when she was only eleven or twelve, stealing sips from everyone, getting smashed. Why didn’t you stop her?”
Suzanne has the grace to look away. Her rich voice rasps a bit as she says, “Honestly, Kitten, I never even noticed. By then, I was pretty much drunk all the time myself.”
The frankness pokes a needle through the balloon of my self-righteousness. “I know. I’m sorry. I just keep going over things, wondering why she got so bad so young.” With a visceral sense of loss, I remember how it felt as she slipped away from me, as if she had really become a mermaid and lived most of the time beneath the waves. It was the start of my great loneliness, and the memory is so painful even now that I have to shove it away. “She was so lost.”
“Yes,” my mother says. It’s the way she listens now, acknowledging without embroidery, but it irks me a little anyway. “It was a terrible environment.”
“Obviously,” I snap. “But we also had Dylan. He looked out for us.”
“Yeah,” she says in a droll voice. “A kid himself. And an addict.” Her eyes suddenly fill with a terrible sorrow. “He was always a lost boy, our Dylan. I did him no favors.”
“What happened to him, Mom? Before he came to us.”
“I don’t know. He’d clearly been abused physically for a long time; that’s all I knew. He never said.” She wiggles her fingers in front of the bedspread, where a furry black paw shows. “I should have—” She shakes her head, looks at me.
My heart aches. “Yeah.”
“We can’t change the past.”
I take a breath, shake my shoulders. “You’re right. I’m going to start calling surf shops and then maybe get out and do some sightseeing. There’s a bus tour that goes up north that sounds really great.”
“Good. Enjoy yourself.”
“Kiss my cat when you can, okay? And you might get some more straight tuna, see if he eats that better.”
“He’ll be okay, Kit. Promise.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
“Love you, sweetheart.”
I nod, giving her an open wave before I hang up. Mad at myself for not returning the endearment. She’s been so good for so long, but I still have trouble letting her in. What does that say about me?
At ten, I start phoning surf shops, and on the third one, I hit pay dirt. “Hi, my name is Kit Bianci, and I’m hoping to find a friend of mine who moved here a few years back.”
“Sure, love.”
“She’s very pretty, blonde, great surfer, but the thing you’d remember is that she has a big, distinctive scar through her eyebrow.”
“Oh, sure. That’s Mari Edwards. Comes here all the time. I reckon I’ll lose her now she’s bought Sapphire House, but she’s always been too rich for our blood over here.”
It takes two long seconds for the words to fully sink in, and then I’m scrambling to write the name down. “Mary, as in M-A-R-Y?”
“No, she spells it with an I, M-A-R-I.”
“Don’t suppose you have a phone number?”
“Can’t say I do, but you’ll find her right enough. Married to Simon Edwards, him who runs the Phoenix Clubs.”
“Clubs, like nightclubs?”
“Ha, no, no. Mari’s a teetotaler, and old Simon’s known for being the fittest man in Auckland. They’re health clubs. You can see his ads on the telly.”
“Wow, thank you so much. I really appreciate it.”
“No worries.”
I hang up and type the name into Google.
Mari Edwards.
It comes back with thousands of hits. Most mention her only in relation to Simon Edwards, but there are a handful of photos of her.
My sister. Nearly always pictured with a tall, dashingly handsome man. The rare photos of the entire family show a boy and a girl, everyone hale and athletic. In one, they’re all wearing wet suits, surfboards at their sides.
A rush of cold and heat bursts through my body, running under my skin, making my heart race.
She’s re-created the Tofino fantasy.
&
nbsp; When we were ten or eleven and things got so bad between our parents, Josie and I made up a family who lived in British Columbia. We’d seen a TV special on Tofino, a town on the west coast of Vancouver Island known for enormous January waves, and all three of us—Dylan included—were madly in love with the idea of going there. In our fantasy, the mom was a teacher and a swim coach, and the dad went to The Office. Every summer, they took vacations in the car, driving down the coast, singing songs and eating in diners. They had an Airstream, and everybody loved surfing, so they always surfed together, wherever they went.
That was our real family, we said. We were only staying here at Eden because our parents were spies and had to finish up one last job. They’d be back for us as soon as they were done.
Josie—Mari—and her family look just like the one we made up.
A sense of rage rockets through me. How did my loser sister, the druggie and alcoholic who stole everything I owned at a time I could barely feed myself, land on her feet like this? When I am—
What?
Alone. I am alone. With no family. No children. No husband.
I leap up from the table and whirl around aimlessly, spun in circles by fresh fury. I want to throw something, break something, scream. She let us think she was dead, and she’s fine. More than fine.
Lava burns and gurgles in my gut, threatening to erupt.
Get a hold of yourself.
I yank open the sliding glass door to the balcony and step out, gripping the rail with tight fists. I take in a long breath, tasting sea and city, humid greenery and exhaust. I close my eyes and breathe out.
The rage eases, leaving behind the most profound urge to sob, but I observe this too and let it go. I open my eyes and focus on the view, objectively noticing the flash of car windows crossing the long Harbour Bridge and a barge passing beneath it. Foot traffic moves on the streets below my perch, miniature human figures dressed up in miniature human clothes.
Had I wished to find her in dire straits? Do I wish her ill? Why am I mad over her beautiful little family?
I don’t know, but I am.
Slapping the tears away, I go back to the computer and slide my finger over the trackpad to bring the photo up again. She has children. My niece and nephew. My mother’s grandchildren. She looks healthy. Happy.
When We Believed in Mermaids Page 20