Restlessly, I click back to the search results and see a local news video, filmed only the day before. Heart in my throat, I click on it.
And there is Josie, in the foyer of a beautiful house, giving an interview. Tears spring to my eyes and spill over my face without my permission. I turn up the sound, and there is her long-lost voice, a little raspy, edged now with a hint of an accent, not entirely New Zealand but no longer entirely American. The sound of it burns, but I watch every second of the video, captured by my sister as she leads the reporter through the house, showing off the wood and the view and the bedroom where a film star from the thirties was murdered.
She is still beautiful. Her hair is cut much shorter than I’ve ever seen it, to her shoulders, and it swings in that elegance of well-tended perfection. In person, age shows on her face. All those years in the full sun, in the wind and the surf, all the hard drinking, have given her skin a weathered look, a netting of crow’s feet around her eyes.
A man comes up in the frame, the same man from the photos, and slides a comfortable arm around her shoulders. He’s stunningly good-looking, with thick brown hair and the kind of tan only an outdoorsman sports. The look of adoration he rains down upon her makes my stomach ache.
Abruptly, I click it off.
In comparison, my life suddenly looks very thin. Thin and wan and lonely.
Chapter Twenty
Mari
I bring a boxful of the Coalport cups and saucers back to Gweneth, who will go nuts for them. I text her to make sure she’s not overwhelmed with a project and stop by her house before I go home.
She answers the door in an adorable ’30s-inspired romper made of black-and-white-striped linen. Her hair is pulled back into a messy bun, and there isn’t a scrap of makeup on her face. “Have you been hiking Machu Picchu or something?” she asks, holding the door for me. “You look beat.”
“Thanks, sweetheart. You look amazing too.” I park the box on the table and kiss her cheek. “I didn’t sleep much last night.”
“It was quite a storm,” she agrees. “Laura slept with me.”
Her house is a beautifully restored Victorian with antiques and period-specific artwork on the walls. Today the overhead fan is going full speed, but it’s hot. “Still against air-conditioning? I think I might put it in at Sapphire House.”
“No, no!” She waves her hands like windshield wipers. “You’ll ruin the lines.”
“I’m sure there’s a way to do it without ruining the aesthetics.”
She humphs. “Air-conditioning is a scourge.”
“Or one of the greatest blessings of mankind.”
“Come into the kitchen; I’ll make us some lemonade.”
It’s bright and lovely, and I seat myself at the table overlooking the harbor while Gwen drops ice into glasses. I know the lemonade will be fresh squeezed, and almost too tart, and utterly perfect. It’s one of her specialties. She brings over two frosty tall glasses and sets one in front of me. “So how’s the house? I’m sorry I couldn’t come this weekend, but I figured you’d want some family time anyway.”
“It’s going well. I just brought you a few bits of china to look over. I thought you might like it.”
“I saw you on TV. Great job.”
My stomach flips. “It’s already on? They just filmed it!”
“Well, it’s not like they have to do anything but upload it. It’s a good story. You told it well.”
I nod, taking a big gulp of the, yes, almost painfully tart lemonade. “Maybe someone will come forward with some kind of clue about the murder.”
“Doubtful, really.”
“I don’t know. Maybe they’ve been afraid of hurting someone or getting hurt themselves. Something like that.”
She shrugs. “I suppose it’s possible.”
“Right. I found some of the sister’s journals, actually.”
“Ooh, can I read them?”
“Not yet.”
“I dug out my old notes and remembered that there had been talk about the carpenter who did all the inlays. Gossip that he and Veronica had a thing.”
“It’s outrageously great work,” I say, reaching into my bag to pull out the notebook I always carry, now with my fountain pen.
“Ooh, is that new?”
I grin, holding it up. “You like?” I almost say, My sister and I had this thing for fountain pens, but clamp my mouth closed just in time.
“What’s wrong?” Gweneth asks. “You look like you swallowed a fly.”
“Just thought of something I forgot at the market.” Unscrewing the top of the pen, I flip to a clean page. “Okay,” I say. “I’ll check it out.”
“You all right?”
“Just tired.” I rub my aching temples. “Maybe I ought to just go home and catch a nap before the family returns.”
The house is blissfully cool and empty when I get back. The dogs and I trot upstairs, where I draw the curtains and stretch out on the bed, my mind full of Gweneth’s speculations. Paris posts herself right beside me, and I reach out to soothe her, running my fingers through the ruff under her chin, which makes her groan ever so softly.
On my laptop, I open the file I’ve been assembling about the murder and the history of the house. In one file is a group of photos I’ve captured from the internet, Veronica in the sizzling gown that launched her career, George with his medals, looking solid and powerful and very hot, like a young Jason Momoa.
I don’t have a photo of Helen, and I search for one but come up with only three. With her sister and George just after the house was finished; as a girl somewhere in the bush, her hair natural and flying in the wind; and a few years before her death, at some kind of fund-raiser. By then, she was polished and stately, her hair smoothed back into a snowy French twist, her warm skin beautifully offset by an aqua dress.
Not a beauty like her sister but good-looking enough. In the one with George, he had one arm around her and one around Veronica, and he was grinning as they both leaned into him. It makes me think, unexpectedly, of Dylan and Kit and me, and I have to shove the vision away.
Helen, George, and Veronica were all Maori. Enjoying a level of wealth and celebrity that would have been rare for anyone but maybe was even more notable for Maoris at the time.
Huh. I make a note to read more about the celebrity romance. What did they say? How did they talk about George and Veronica?
But also—sisters. That could be a very fraught relationship, as I well know. Could Helen have had a thing for George or he for her? (Naughty George, if so, cheating on his wife, then cheating on his mistress.) But once a cheater, always a cheater in my book. Men who cheated kept cheating.
Like my father.
The first time I figured out that one of the hostesses was having sex with my dad, I was eight. I’d been out on the beach but cut my toe on a rock and raced up to Eden to get Band-Aids. My dad was in the empty bar, making out with Yolanda, the weekend hostess. They jumped up when I slammed into the room, and I just glared at them. “I cut my toe.”
My dad made Yolanda bandage my toe, and I could tell she didn’t want to. Her lipstick was all smeared, looking stupid, and she seemed like she was about to cry. “Don’t tell your mom, okay?” she said. “I really need this job.”
“Stop doing that, then,” I said.
“I promise. I won’t do it anymore.”
I went through the kitchen on my way back. My dad was the only person around, and I said, “I’m going to tell Mom.”
“Yeah?” he said, and the mean look came on his face. “It’s none of your business, little girl. You don’t know anything.”
Usually just that look was enough to send us scurrying, but I glared at him, furious when tears welled up in my eyes and spilled over traitorously. “You’re stupid,” I said, and then I ran before he could catch me and spank me for my disrespect.
Up until then I’d adored my father, would do anything to spend time with him. Afterward I could almost always figure out who
his girl of the moment was, and he always had one. She’d have big tits and big hair and big teeth, and she’d be younger than my mom by a decade—even though my mom was already a decade younger than my dad. I made the lives of the girls miserable in a million tiny ways. Salt in their diet sodas, broken ink pens left in strategic places to wreck their clothes, stealing from their purses left in the lockers in back—never money, or least not a lot. It would more be things like lipsticks or tampons or, once, birth control pills. I spilled things when they’d have to clean them up. Anything I could think of.
How much did my dad know? I don’t know. He disapproved of me, anyway, even when I was only eleven and twelve. My clothes and my hair and my grades. The older I got, the more he criticized me until by the time I was thirteen, we were engaged in a full-on war. I did as many things to drive him crazy as I did the women he kept on the side, using them, one after the other, like they were nothing, like they were shoes he’d worn a hole in.
I don’t know if Kit knew about any of it. Probably not. By the time she was ten, she was all the way into her studies of marine life and climate and surfing. God, how she loved surfing! And to my chagrin, she was better than I was. I looked better doing it, with my skinny arms and long hair and tiny bikinis—they called me Baby Babe—but Kit was just plain better. She read the waves and the wind as if they were the alphabet. Everyone encouraged her to try out for surf competitions, but she wasn’t interested. Surfing, she said, was just for her.
Same for Dylan. Just for himself. The two of them sometimes piled their boards into the battered Jeep he drove and headed up or down the coast, looking for some mythical surf.
I never went on those trips. By then, I had my own interests, things that had nothing to do with Kit and Dylan. I stayed home to have my room to myself, to read, to write in my journal and imagine the day I could finally escape Eden and my parents and make my own life.
I had no idea how soon it would happen.
Chapter Twenty-One
Kit
After I find Mari/Josie’s pictures on the internet, I wander down a rabbit hole for an hour, shaken, looking at photos of my sister’s rise to prominence as Simon Edwards’s beloved wife. He’s local royalty, a sailor and yachtsman who runs a chain of fitness and swimming clubs. He is a fit, big man with a winning smile, and I love the way he looks at my sister. In every picture, he has his hand laced through hers or an arm draped over her shoulder, one on a child’s shoulder. Their son looks exactly like him, but their daughter—
Looks like me. Almost exactly like me. Freckled and sturdy, with thick dark hair, not blonde like her mom.
Reeling, wildly emotional, I track down their address. Devonport, which is the township that I can see from my balcony, the lights that wink at me at night. When I’ve been staring out at her, she might have been standing at her window, looking back across the water at my hotel.
The thought gives me shivers.
I have to go to her. Filled with a stuttering, overwhelming adrenaline, I pull on the same red dress I’ve been wearing for two days and realize that it smells of ocean water and sunshine, and the skirt is ridiculously wrinkled. The only other things I have clean are a pair of jeans and a T-shirt that says A WOMAN’S PLACE IS IN MEDICINE. As I look at them hopelessly, I realize my hands are shaking.
Okay, breathe.
They’ll have to do. I shower and leave my hair loose to dry as crazy as it wishes in whatever way it will go, slap on some lipstick and drop the tube in my bag, and carry my hat down to the ferry dock. Because we had to wait awhile before, I’m prepared for that, but the Devon shuttle runs more regularly, and by the time I make my way to the waiting area, the ferry is boarding.
This time I don’t go up top but sit down inside and watch the city center recede. Businesspeople read newspapers, which bemuses me. It’s such an ordinary thing to do on such a breathtakingly gorgeous ride. A gaggle of teenagers talks too loudly. Tourists from every continent on Earth crowd the seats.
All I can think is, Josie, Josie, Josie.
I’m too riled up to do much of anything. My phone map shows me that the address I found is only a few blocks down the sea walk, but I’m buzzing with the kind of emotion that will do no good if I confront her.
To get a handle on myself, I walk up the main village street toward a path that leads to a volcano, trying to get enough oxygen into my system that I can stop hyperventilating. The walk works up a sweat, and the air is heavy and humid from the storm the day before, and within a block I’m feeling so overheated in my jeans that I have to stand still in the shade for a few minutes and let people pass me. I thought I could make the jeans work, but I’m going to faint of heat exhaustion.
Just ahead is a boutique with dresses hanging outside. Mostly they’re touristy T-shirts with New Zealand and Kiwi logos emblazoned across the front, but to my vast relief there are also a number of wrap skirts in soft cottons. Mindlessly, I grab one of the longer ones and hold it up to me, and it’s fine, hitting just at my knee. Taking it off the hanger, I test the wrap length, and it works too, so I gather three others in various chintzy prints and carry them into the store. “All of these, please,” I say, dropping them on the counter. “And . . . I guess I need some T-shirts.”
The woman behind the counter is a tiny English thing, with shoulders the width of a dragonfly, but she moves with a no-nonsense attitude. “Turn around,” she says, and measures a T-shirt against my shoulders. “You’ll want that rack over there.”
“All right.” I glance at the colors of the skirts—turquoise, red with yellow, yellow with blue, and a striped green and blue that’s really quite pretty. I toss through the shirts, find some that are acceptable, and add them to the stack.
“You’ll be wanting some jandals too,” she says.
“Jandals?”
She points to a wall filled with flip-flops.
“Yes.” I point to them. “Jandals,” I repeat. “Like sandals?”
“Japanese sandals.”
“Ah. Got it.” I select a pair, try them on, find the fit is fine. “Great.”
She rings me up. I pay with a card. “You can change over there if you like. But if I were you, I’d wear the medicine shirt. Everybody has the New Zealand ones.”
I smile. “Thanks.”
“Are you a doctor, then?”
“Yes. ER.”
“You’re not the one who saved that boy?”
For a moment, I’m so surprised I hardly know what to say. “Uh. The one who jumped off the pilings?”
“That’s him. They’re all talking about you, you know. Heroic to jump in and save him.”
I tuck my card back in my purse. “That was the ten years of lifeguard duties, not the ER,” I say. “Hope he’s doing all right.”
“Wouldn’t be your fault if he’s not. Lunatic.”
I head for the changing rooms. Peeling off the jeans is one of the best experiences of the day, and I tie the skirt with pleasure. The sandals are soft and squishy, the toe hold covered with synthetic velvet.
The whole normal interchange has calmed me. I take a deep breath, blow it out. In the mirror I look like someone else, with my wild hair tumbling down my back, and the high color of a lot of great sex and sunshine, and my bare legs.
Shoulders back, I wave at the woman and head out into the day, carrying a bag with the clothes in one hand and my city purse tossed crossways over my body. I’m fortified now. I can face her.
I cross the street and round a Moreton Bay fig that spreads arms out across a massive area. The trunk has many parts, making it look like a tree that would be populated by fairies. I can see my sister and me crouched on the beach, making tiny furniture for the fairies who lived around the cove, and stole sweets, and switched sugar for salt.
The thought makes my heart ache.
But there is only one reason I am here in this place at all. With the focus that saw me through twelve years of study, I shove away my emotions and look at my phone for directions. F
rom here to my sister’s house is, by Google Maps estimation, a nine-minute walk, straight down the waterfront.
The houses must be the same era as the Victorians in San Francisco, and again I’m reminded of that city. Pedestrians stroll along the sidewalk, fit retirees in pastel golf shirts and white pants and mothers with children and—
I halt, sure that I’m imagining her. A woman walking toward me with my sister’s distinctive, un-self-conscious amble. She never walked fast enough for me, and it drove me insane.
She’s wearing a simple blue sundress and no hat even in this awful land of skin cancers, plus jandals like mine on her feet. A million memories tumble through my brain: sleeping on the beach in our little tent, that strange summer when Josie got so weird, the earthquake, the news of her death.
She’s alone, lost in thought, and I think she might have walked right by me, humming under her breath, until I reach out and touch her arm. “Josie.”
Josie turns, cries out, and covers her mouth, and for one long moment, we only stare at each other. Then she grabs me, hard, and hugs me, weeping. “Oh my God,” she whispers, her hand hard against my ear. I don’t realize until I feel her ribs moving against me that I’m hugging her just that tightly in return, tears running down my own face. She’s sobbing, her body shaking from shoulder to hips. I close my eyes and clutch her close, smelling her hair, her skin, the Josie-ness of her. I don’t know how long it goes on, but I can’t let her go, and I can feel her grip on me like a vise.
She’s alive. She’s alive. She’s alive.
“Oh my God, Josie.”
“I fucking missed you so much,” she whispers fiercely. “Like a kidney. Like my soul.”
I finally pull back. “Why did you—”
Josie looks over her shoulder, grabs my hand. “Listen. Call me Mari. My family is following me. They just stopped to buy something, and I wanted to get my steps.” Her grip tightens. “They don’t know anything. Give me a chance to explain to you—”
When We Believed in Mermaids Page 21