The house is lit from within, making it look like a cake with its gingerbread finishes. It makes me dizzy to think how far she came to land here, in this pretty little place with her children. A dozen images of Josie rush across my imagination—her little-girl self draped in mermaid jewels; her as a fierce preadolescent standing up for me, for herself, against the fighting of our parents; her promiscuous teen years; her druggie surfer years.
She said to me, Don’t you see, Kit, that I had to kill her?
Maybe there really had been no other way. But I am too emotionally weary to think about that right now.
A dog pops up in the window and barks an alert. The little girl appears at the screen door. Sarah. “That’s my niece.” I tug Javier’s hand. In this, I am eager. I wave as we come up the steps, and she swings the door open. A golden retriever comes wagging out, half his body going with his tail. Another, a sober shepherd, hangs back. “Hi, Sarah. Remember me? I’m Kit.”
“I’m not to call you by your first name. Is it Miss?”
“Right. Sorry. I’m Dr. Bianci.”
Her eyes light up. “Dr. Bianci!” She offers her hand to shake, and it’s a good solid grip for a seven-year-old girl. “Are you Mr. Bianci?”
Javier steps up solemnly. “Señor Velez, at your service.”
She giggles. “Come in.”
We follow her into a room lined with windows on two sides, casement with internal shutters I imagine must be for storms. The walls are a sunny yellow, the fabrics sophisticated patterns in primary shades. The whole is light and welcoming and cheerful, so like the childhood Josie that it nearly slays me right there.
Sarah introduces the dogs: Ty, a golden retriever; a fluffy little dog named Toby; and Paris, the solemn black shepherd. Just as she finishes, Simon comes loping into the room, drying his hands. “So sorry. Hello again!” He reaches for my hand and then kisses my cheek. “Is it Kit for everyone, or is there some other name I should call you?”
“Dad, she’s a doctor. You should call her Dr. Bianci.”
Our eyes meet, and I highly approve of the sparkle in his. “Do you mind if I call you Kit?”
“Kit is great.”
The men introduce themselves, and then we’re swept into a conservatory overlooking a spectacular garden with a greenhouse, where a table is set for six. Candles flicker in the middle, and here the colors are softer, blues and greens in the placemats, the cushions on the chairs. “This is beautiful.”
My sister appears at last, wearing a simple blue summer dress with a thin white cardigan, her hair covered with a bandeau in the same blue as the tablecloth. It sets off her cheekbones and the line of her neck but also makes no attempt to hide the scar. Her cheekbones are flushed as she comes forward to greet me, and something about her tight hug annoys me all over again. “I am so happy you’re here,” she says, and lets go to greet Javier.
She pauses ever so slightly, and he takes her hand, kisses her cheek. “Javier Velez,” he says. “Pleased to meet you.”
“Oh my gosh!” She gets a little fluttery, holds his hand between both of hers. “We’re honored to have you.” She turns to Simon, smiling. “He’s quite a famous Spanish singer.”
“Is that right?”
I give Javier a quizzical glance. He shrugs a little, tips his head, as if this might be a breach of etiquette to admit to his real life. “Perhaps a little famous in some little places.”
Simon chuckles. “I see.”
Mari gives me a look, shaking her head slightly. “You should have told me your friend was a famous musician, Kit.”
“Uh.” I look up at him, feeling disadvantaged. “I forget.”
All three of them laugh, but Javier lifts my hand to his mouth and kisses it soundly. I should not like it, such a boyfriendly gesture, but it buoys me now. “Which is one thing I quite like about you, mi sirenita.”
The boy comes down then, Leo, and he’s the spitting image of his father and as relaxed in his skin. He has been playing video games but makes no fuss about stopping.
I wander back into the kitchen with Mari, and the smells envelop me like a blast of home. “Oh my God. What did you cook?”
She smiles at me proudly, and I’m pierced by the earnestness with which she displays the meal. “Vermicelli alla siracusana.”
“With preserved lemons.” I bend down to inhale the mingled scents, and they’re so heady, I’m practically dizzy. “Beautiful. Like . . . my father’s.”
She touches my arm, the one with the tattoo. “I covered mine tonight,” she says quietly, “but they will notice. Little sister.”
I touch it, green and blue mermaid scales with a scrolly script that looks as if it were written with a fountain pen that says, LITTLE SISTER. “Friends,” I say with a shrug.
She nods. “Of course. But you’re obviously the big sister.”
“Ha. That’s the joke, right?”
“Yes.” Again that accent, making her someone else. She touches my arm. “That was the first time I tried to get sober for real. After I saw you and we ate at the diner. When we got the tattoos.”
“Really? I didn’t know that. Why?”
She shakes her head, looks toward the purpling sky through the window. “You were so focused on your career. It was inspiring. You weren’t letting”—she takes a breath, blows it out—“everything that happened hold you back.”
I think of how sad I felt this afternoon that I’ve never told my mother how proud I am of her. “You did it, though,” I say. “I’m proud of you.”
She swallows and turns to the stove. “Thanks.”
Sarah comes into the kitchen. “Do you want to see my experiments?”
“Sure. Do we have time before dinner?”
“Only a couple of minutes, honey,” Mari says. “Don’t be long.”
“Sweet!” Sarah takes my hand and leads me to the back door. “Do you want to see?”
I’m so happy to have her little hand in mine. “I used to do experiments all the time.”
“I have some plant experiments going,” she says, pointing to the greenhouse. “My papa helps me set them up. We’re growing three different seeds to see which ones grow best, and we’re also growing avocado seeds in three different environments. And celery.”
I’m startled by the sophistication she displays, her articulate descriptions. “Have you learned anything yet?”
“We had to throw away the fourth avocado seed because it died. They don’t like salty water.”
I nod and let her lead me through her barometric center and her measurements, piercingly recorded in her childish handwriting. We visit the rock crystal center and the mini greenhouse for avocado seed number three. Overhead, rain begins to patter onto the glass roof, and I hear Mari call, “Come on, you two, before you get soaked.”
We both laugh and then dash for the house, our legs getting wet. At the door, she says, “You’ll have to take off your shoes. Otherwise my mum will get mad.”
I bend down to unbuckle my sandal, and she touches my hair. “We have hair just the same.”
I grin at her. “We do. Do you like it?”
“No,” she says sadly. “A girl at school makes fun of me.”
“She’s just jealous of your amazing brain.”
“Papa says just the same thing!”
“Papa is Simon’s father,” Mari says, holding the door for us. “Do you want some socks?”
“No, thanks.”
She touches my bare arm again, as if I am her child. It disarms me. “I’m so glad you’re here, Kit. You have no idea how much I missed you.”
“I think I do,” I say, and slide away from her touch.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Mari
Over dinner, I finally find a way to let go of my held breath. Kit is so tender with Sarah, and she laughs at the jokes Leo makes trying to impress her. She’s dazzling, a fact I hadn’t expected and should have. She has my mother’s slim shoulders and robust cleavage, my father’s laughter and
wide smile. Together with the confidence she lacked in her younger days, it’s quite a package. Both my husband and my son vie for her attention, while Sarah simply worships, rapt, at her side.
As does Javier. He looks at her as if she’s the sun, as if she might command flowers to bloom and birds to sing. It’s clear that he’s trying to hide it, to be cool, but he’s smitten with her.
It’s less easy to read Kit. Over the years, she’s created an urbane but kind shell that lets little of her true self leak through. I catch sight of the real Kit every now and again, when she listens to Sarah and she leans close. When Javier touches her arm or shoulder or pours her a little more water from the pitcher.
Mainly I see her when she engages with Simon. As if she wants to know and like him, which gives me hope.
But it’s also Simon who is making me fret. Every so often, he looks perplexed or surprised. In his smooth, lovely way, he nourishes the conversation, asking Javier about his music, Kit about her passion for medicine. But every now and then, he gives me a glance, a little frown. Is he looking at her tattoo?
Leo notices. “Hey, you and my mom have the same tattoo!”
Kit holds up her arm. “One difference, though. Can you spot it?”
He peers at it, frowning. “Oh! Hers says big sister.” He frowns. “But you’re bigger.”
She glances at me. “I wasn’t always. She grew tall first, and then I did.”
Javier says, and I get the feeling he does it to distract from the tattoos, “I expect you’re going to be quite tall one day. Do you play sports?”
“Yes.” He sits back down and dives into his pasta. “Lots of them. Lacrosse is my favorite, but my dad likes us to swim because he has the clubs.”
“Hey, now. You’ll give me a bad name,” Simon protests, but he laughs. “You’re free to give it up anytime, son.” He takes a slice of garlic bread from a plate. “But that will guarantee that Trevor will take the lead this season.”
Leo scowls. “I’ll never beat him. You know I won’t.”
“You can do what you believe,” Kit says calmly.
“You don’t know how this kid swims. Everybody says he’ll be going to the Olympics one day.”
“He might,” Simon said. “You may as well give up.”
Leo shoots him an evil glance, and Simon chuckles. “That’s what I thought.”
It all goes remarkably well. Leo and Sarah clear the table while I make coffee. The other adults settle in the more comfortable lounge, and Simon cues some music from his phone, some midcentury jazz and pop that set a mellow stage. These are our habits, the dance we have created. When he comes into the kitchen, all feels completely normal until he asks quietly, “Why does this feel so stilted tonight?”
“Does it?” I look up at him guilelessly. “I hadn’t noticed.”
“You’re as jumpy as a cat. She must know a lot of secrets about you. Where all the bodies are buried.”
“Don’t be silly.” I wave him away. “Get back in there and entertain them.”
His fingers brush the top of my back, and then he’s gone. Laughter spills out in the other room. Leo asks if he can play Minecraft, and I dismiss him. Sarah isn’t finished circling the sun of her new idol, and she helps me by carrying a plate of petits fours into the other room.
“Don’t tell me you made these as well,” Kit says.
“No way. Simon picked them up at a bakery on the way home.” I pour and pass cups of coffee. “It’s decaf,” I say.
Sarah sits next to Kit, who says with some humor, “Your mother was the worst cook ever when we were young.”
“Really?”
Kit gives me a look and settles her cup on the table. “Really. Like, couldn’t even cook bacon.”
“Why didn’t you just put it in the microwave?”
“We didn’t have one,” Kit says, then recognizes her slip. “None of us did.”
“You didn’t?” Sarah echoes, wrinkling her nose.
And in that instant, with the faces of my sister and my daughter mirroring each other, both with the same nutmeg curls, the same tilt of eyes, the same freckles on the same nose, I recognize there is no way this secret can be kept. Sarah is Kit’s mini me, down to inclinations and eye color.
At that moment, Sarah says, “Hey, we both have the same toes!”
Kit looks at Sarah’s foot, held beside hers. One short leg, one long, the same second and third toes, such a specific genetic order, webbed in exactly the same way. Kit looks up at me, touches her niece’s hair. “So we do. That’s crazy.”
My heart speeds up, and under my hair, the sweat breaks out. I look at Simon, who gives me a perplexed shake of the head. He spreads his hands. What is this?
He speaks to Sarah, however. “Sweetheart, it’s time to go upstairs.”
She lets go of a huff, and I think she’s going to protest, but she only turns to Kit and says, “It’s adult time. I have to go. Will you come back?”
“I’ll do my best.”
Sarah hugs her, hard, and I see how it shatters my sister, the way she squeezes her eyes tight and her fierce arms circle my child. “It was so nice to get to meet you.”
“Bye,” Sarah says in a small voice, and heads upstairs.
A vast silence fills the space beneath the music as she departs. Kit glances at Javier, and he takes her hand in a protective way, moves closer.
At last Simon says, “She couldn’t look more like you.”
Kit bows her head, looks at me.
And here it is, the moment I must have known was coming. I’ve been feeling it bearing down on me for weeks, this collision of my old life and the new one. I take a breath, meet Simon’s eyes. “We’re sisters.”
He’s bewildered. “Why wouldn’t you just say that?”
I take a breath, unable to halt the tears that fill my eyes. “You said I could tell you anything, but—” I look up. “This is a really long story.”
Kit stands up, her hands fluttering over her skirt. “We should go. This is between you two.”
Simon waves her down. “Please don’t go yet. I’d like to know the story.”
She hesitates, looking first at me, then toward the stair, then gives Simon a short nod. She tucks her skirt beneath her legs and perches at the edge of the couch, ready to flee at any moment.
A shivery fear makes my skin cold. “It would be better if we talked first, Simon. Seriously.”
He shakes his head.
I’ve already lost him. I can see it in the set of his shoulders and the loose, apparently relaxed way he holds his hands. He hates lying. He won’t tolerate it in employees or friends, and I’ve known that for almost as long as I’ve known him.
But not before I fell in love with him.
Sooner or later, you have to face things, face your life. Here is my reckoning. “Okay. Short version is: My real name is Josie Bianci. I grew up outside of Santa Cruz. My parents ran a restaurant. Kit is my younger sister. Dylan was our—” I look at Kit.
“Third,” she says. “Not a brother, exactly. Not a relative. But our”—she looks at Javier—“soul mate. Alma gemela.”
“I don’t understand.” Simon blinks, as if he’s trying to see through fog. “Why lie about something so ordinary?”
“Because,” I say wearily, “until a few days ago, Kit and my mother thought I was dead.” I swallow, meet his eyes. “Everyone did. I walked away from a terrorist attack in Paris and let everyone think I died.”
He pales, the skin around his eyes going white. “Jesus! Is that how you got the scar?”
“That was the earthquake.”
“That’s real, then.” He runs a finger over his own eyebrow, a gesture that means he’s striving for control. My heart squeezes—ordinarily I would be the one to offer comfort. “Jesus.”
Kit stands. “I really have to go.”
Javier stands too, his hand on the small of her back.
Kit says, “Simon, I enjoyed meeting you.” She turns to me, and I see that there
are tears in her eyes. “You know how to find me.”
All the grief and hope and terror I’ve been stuffing back down into my body now rush upward, and I stand and fling myself into her arms. And for the first time, I feel her wholeheartedly grip me, loving me back. If I let even one tear fall, I will be lost, so instead I am only trembling from head to toe. She holds me fiercely for a long time; then she pulls back and puts her hands on my face. “Call me tomorrow, okay?”
“Don’t worry; I’ll still be sober.”
“I’m not worried in the slightest.” She’s so tall, she kisses my forehead, and I realize in a bright, sharp moment how much time I’ve lost with her, how much I’ve deprived her of. Both of us. “Can I say good night to Sarah?”
“Yes,” I say before Simon can step in, and I go to the foot of the stairs to call her.
She tumbles down so quickly that I worry she’s overheard it all, but even if she has, we need to have a better talk before it all comes out. She halts three stairs from the bottom so she can look Kit in the eyes, she says, “I’m so very glad to have met you. Will you write to me when you go back?”
Kit makes a sharp, strangled little sound. “I’ll do better than that.” She reaches into her purse. “This is one of my favorite pens. It’s a fountain pen, and right now it has my favorite ink, which is called Enchanted Ocean. I’ll send you a bottle, and your mom can show you how to refill it.”
“Oh, this is lovely!” She holds it in her hands, as smitten and awed as I’ve ever seen her. “Thank you.”
“What’s your favorite color?”
“Green,” she says decisively.
“I’ll send you some green inks too, and you can decide which ones you like best.”
Sarah nods.
“May I hug you?” Kit asks.
“Yes, please,” says my polite little girl.
And they do. “Please come back,” Sarah says in a small voice.
It pierces me, how much my daughter has wanted an ally, a person to look up to. Someone like her.
Had it been that way for Kit too?
Both Kit and Javier touch my shoulder on the way out. I kiss Sarah’s head and send her back upstairs.
I take a breath and go into the lounge to face Simon.
When We Believed in Mermaids Page 27