“Ugly, right?” she says, but strokes them kindly. “But every time I look at them, I only think of my babies.”
I meet her eyes, start laughing. “Dude, did you really just say that?”
She shrugs. “It’s true.”
“That’s pretty cool.” I zip up my suit, braid my hair tight. The scents of ocean and wind play on my nerves, and I just want to get out there. “Ready?”
We wade into the cold water and then paddle over to the line. “You first,” she says.
“I’d rather just sit for a minute, watch the breaks.”
“Cool.”
We position ourselves a bit away from the main action, straddling our boards and watching the waves roll toward shore. Overhead, the clouds are looking meaner. “Is a storm coming?”
“I don’t know.”
“Maybe we’d better do this thing.”
At her nod, we paddle out and wait our turn. The guy in front of me is showing off a bit, but he’s solid. The waves are six feet, eight. I take my first ride, and it’s exhilarating, the sky and light and board. It holds together beautifully, giving me a long, elegant ride that I take nearly to shore before coming off and heading back to the line. I pause to look for my sister, and there she is, right behind me, her goofy stance, arms steady. Her grace is better than it was, and her calm. She surfs like she’s got nowhere to go, nothing to do but this.
She sees me watching and flashes a shaka, whooping.
I flash it back and paddle toward my next wave.
After an hour, we’re both tiring, but rather than head in, we sit on our boards in the undulating ocean. With my eyes on the horizon, I say, “We need to call Mom.”
Her hair is slicked back, messy. “I know.” She turns her dark eyes on me. “I also need to tell you a couple of things.”
“Do you have to? Can’t we just let sleeping dogs lie?”
She lifts one side of her mouth. “None of the dogs are really sleeping, though, are they?”
I relent. Shake my head.
“Do you remember that actor who used to come to Eden, Billy Zondervan?”
“Sure. He used to bring us kites and candy and stuff. Nice guy.”
“Yeah.” The water moves us up, down. Something brushes my left toes. “Well, that nice guy raped me when I was nine. Repeatedly.”
“What?” I paddle closer and feel the ER doctor step in, protecting me. Offering clinical distance. With fury, I push back, trying to show up as myself. “That bastard. How . . . ? I mean, we were always around.”
She shakes her head. “Pretty sure I wasn’t the first kid he molested. He had it down to a fine art. Presents, sips of his drinks, and then threats. He told me he would slit Cinder’s throat if I told anyone.”
“When was it?”
“That summer we learned to surf.” She looks into the distance. “The first time was the night before I came down to the beach and Dylan was teaching you.”
A punch of horror slams my gut. I think of her weeping and weeping when she found us surfing without her. “Oh my God, Josie,” I whisper, and paddle close, touch her leg. “Why didn’t you tell us?”
She shakes her head, and tears are sliding down her cheeks. I realize they’re sliding down mine too. “I felt so ashamed.”
I reach for her wrist, wrapping my hand around it hard. “I wish I could kill him. An inch at a time.”
She slaps tears off her cheeks with both hands. “Oh yeah, me too.”
“How long did it go on?”
“A summer. Then he tried to start something with you, and I told him if he ever touched you, even one finger, I would stand in the middle of the patio on a crowded night and tell them all exactly what he’d done to me.”
A hollow opens up in my gut. “I don’t remember that. I don’t remember him being gross.”
“No, he was slicker than that. Remember those little dolls he brought you from Europe, the ones that have dolls inside and inside?”
“Oh yeah. I do remember those. They were painted, pretty.”
“Yep. That was the opening gambit.”
“He stopped coming to Eden, right?”
“Yes, thank God.”
“You never told anyone?”
“Not for ages. I told Dylan.”
“Why the hell didn’t he expose him?”
Her face has a strange expression, as if it’s just dawning on her that he should have. She looks at me. “I made him promise not to.” She frowns. “I mean, he tried to figure out what was wrong with me for a long time, and I wouldn’t tell him. It’s impossible to express how much I thought it was my fault.”
My heart feels like it’s filled with shards of glass. “You were nine,” I whisper.
“Dylan should have told,” she says quietly. “Why didn’t I see that until recently?”
I shake my head. “Because we both loved him like he hung the moon.”
“And all the stars.”
I bow my head. “Why didn’t anyone protect you?”
“Believe me, I’ve asked myself that a thousand times. But you know, honestly, it wasn’t until I had Leo and Sarah that I realized how bad our parents were. We were sleeping on the beach, alone, when we were four and six, before Dylan came.”
“Yeah, I remember.”
“Think about that. A four-year-old sleeping alone with her sister on the beach.”
I half grin. “Well, we did have Cinder.”
She grins back. “Yes, we had Cinder. Best dog in the world.”
“Best dog in the world.” We high-five.
“So Billy never did anything to you?”
“No. I swear. No one did.” In the distance, a seagull rides the currents, and I’m reminded of the cove, our little beach. “Dylan was even more messed up than our parents, though. Remember the time he dived off the cliff?”
She shudders. “It’s a miracle he lived through that.”
“I think that was the point. Just like the motorcycle accident.”
She looks so sad all of a sudden that I feel bad. “Sorry, Jo—Mari. Bad memory.”
“Yeah.”
“The beginning of the end,” I say with a sigh. “Pretty sure that was one of his suicide attempts.”
She looks at me, eyes wide. “Oh, for God’s sake. I’m such an idiot. Of course it was. That’s why he was so pissed when we brought him back to the house.”
I frown. “You seriously never realized that before?”
“No.” She shakes her head, splashes water on the front of her board. “I miss him so much.” She looks at the horizon. “So much.”
“Me too.” I imagine I can see him on his longboard, arms out. “He really was like some creature from a fairy tale, cursed and blessed in equal measures.” I think of his gentle hands braiding my hair. The easy way he folded clothes. The way he stood with us at the bus stop. “I wouldn’t be who I am without him.”
“I know. And you did him so much good.”
“Both of us.”
“No.” She shakes her head. “You gave him peace. I think you were the only person who ever did.”
“I hope I did.”
“We should go back to shore. I think the storm is coming.”
By the time we wade back out of the water under an angry sky, my legs are weak and I could eat a large-size cow. Peeling out of my wet suit, I ask, “Did you bring food?”
She gives me a look. “Duh. Do you still eat the earth and all the moons of the galaxy after surfing?”
I laugh. It was something Dylan used to say. “I do. But look”—I spread my arms—“I didn’t get fat.”
“You have a very hot body,” she says. “Look at your abs, dude.”
“It’s all surfing.”
“I thought we might eat on the beach, but it’s getting too windy.”
We hustle back to her car and load up the back again with boards and wet suits. I don’t have a fleece and wish I did; seeing my goose bumps, she hands me one she drags out of the back seat. It must
be Simon’s, and the warmth is delicious. We settle on the leeward side of the car and eat pies filled with meat and potatoes, washed down with a lemony drink. For dessert, there are slices of cake. “I love how much they love cake here,” she confesses. “Such amazing cakes too.”
“This is so good,” I comment, immersed in mine, a chocolate and passion fruit concoction that melts in my mouth. “I could seriously eat a couple more moons.”
“I’m jealous of your size.”
I laugh. “That’s a turnaround.” Wiping my hands, I say, “We should call Mom.”
For a moment, I think she’s going to refuse, but then she capitulates. “Okay. Let’s do it inside the car. Too windy out here.”
Now I’m nervous as I dig in my purse for the phone. I check the world clock, and it’s only early afternoon. Perfect. I take a breath and text. You free?
It’s not five seconds before she texts me back. Yes! And then my phone bleats the FaceTime ring. I glance at Mari, and she gives a nod. I punch the button.
And there she is, sitting on the floor with Hobo on her lap. She’s wearing a pair of jeans with a T-shirt, her hair in that messy bun she likes so much lately. “Look who loves me now!” she says.
Josie, because she’s Josie right now, starts to cry at the sound of her voice.
“That’s great, Mom. Thank you so much for doing that. Listen, I have some news.”
“You do?” Something in my voice must have alerted her. She sits up straighter. “What?”
“I found her.” I turn the camera to the other direction, and there is my sister, so unmistakably herself.
“Hi, Mom,” she says.
My mother makes the most piercing sound, halfway between a howl and a laugh. “Josie! Oh my God.”
Josie is crying too, tears streaming down her face. She reaches for the screen, touches it. “I’m so sorry, Mom.”
For a long time, they only weep and look at each other, murmuring things: “You look so good.” “I can’t believe how little you’ve aged.” “I just want to look at you.”
Finally, Josie sits up and, for the second time this morning, wipes tears off her face. “You look amazing, Mom!”
“Thank you. So do you. You quit drinking.”
Mari nods. “Quit everything.”
“Me too.”
I roll my eyes. “Okay, can we have the AA meeting some other time?”
They both laugh. “I have so much to tell you,” Mari says.
“I want to hear every bit of it. And Kit!” She yells the last like I’m in another room. I click the camera around to my face.
“I’m right here, Mom.”
She looks stricken and happy, and she wipes her face. “Thank you. I can’t wait to hear about your journey too. Are you okay?”
I pause, thinking of the search and Javier and now the terrible recognition that my mother’s neglect allowed my sister to be raped at the age of nine. “Yeah,” I say, but it’s clear that I’m not sure. “I will be, anyway.”
“Okay.”
“Let me talk to her again,” Mari says, and I hand her the phone.
“Mom, there are two things I need to tell you today, and then we have to go because there’s a storm on the way. I’m married and have two kids, so you’re a grandmother.”
My mother makes a noise, and I can see her in my imagination, covering her mouth.
“Their names are Leo and Sarah, and Sarah is like a mini Kit, all the way down to those webbed toes. You will love her, and you have to come see her.”
“I will, sweetheart. I promise.”
“Things are kind of crazy right now, though I hope they’re going to work out, but no matter what, I want to see you. And, Mom, thank you for the day of the earthquake. I never said thank you.”
Now I can hear a slight sob in Mom’s voice, and it gives me a weird anxiety. “You’re welcome.”
“We have to go, Mom,” I say when Mari gives me the phone back. “Kiss my kitty, and I’ll let you know when I get tickets back. Very soon.”
“Take your time, honey. I’m happy, and you see Hobo is fine.”
I hang up the phone and hold it in my hand, aware of a faint, low trembling of reaction running beneath my skin. Josie leans her head against the window, tears running down her face, looking at something far in the distance.
Chapter Thirty-One
Mari
On the way back to the high-rise, we’re quiet, Kit and I. My heart feels shredded into ten thousand pieces, and I still haven’t told her the last thing. My thoughts are skittering forward to Simon, and back to the look on my mother’s face when she saw me, and the way Kit sobered when I confessed the truth about Billy Zondervan.
“You should turn him in,” she says as we get close to the high-rise. “He’s probably still doing it.”
I nod. “Obviously I couldn’t do it before, but I’m thinking about it now. I just worry that it might make people feel sorry for me. It might make my kids think differently about me.”
“The first thing—no. No one will feel sorry for you if you get a pedophile off the streets. On the second—maybe they don’t have to know.” She shakes her head. “Yeah, right. I mean, I get that part. Only you know what they can handle.”
“Thanks.” I pull into the small drive in front of the high-rise.
“I’m probably going home in a day or two,” she says. “Get back to work.”
My gut twists. “No! Not yet!”
“I know. It’s fast, but we can keep in touch.”
As if we are just old friends who bumped into each other. But I have to give her space. “Thanks for coming out. Thanks for talking to me. Thanks for all of it, Kit. I mean it.”
She softens and leans forward to hug me. I smell her hair, feel her muscles. “We’ll stay in touch.”
“Javier is in love with you, Kit. I think you might want to give that relationship a chance.”
“Mm,” she says, and sits back in her seat. “I hope things work out with Simon.”
“Yeah.” I run a thumb along the seam of the leather on the steering wheel. “Are we just leaving it like this? That’s it?”
“I don’t know. What are we supposed to do? I’ll call you when I get home.”
“Okay. Sarah will love writing to you.”
“And I will love writing to her.”
I take a breath. Consider keeping this one last thing to myself. Rain starts to plop down hard on the windscreen. “Kit, there’s something else I need to tell you. So everything is out in the open.”
Wariness fills her entire body. “Maybe don’t.”
“We can’t go forward with any more secrets.”
She bows her head. Touches her fingernails. “Go ahead.”
“When Mom and I went to Santa Cruz the day of the earthquake, I was having an abortion.”
She raises her eyebrows. “I’m sorry that happened,” she says. “But it’s not exactly a big shock.”
“Well, actually, I did make out with a lot of boys at that time, but I didn’t have sex with anyone. I was afraid. But then I did.” The burning in my chest feels like it will melt my bones. “When you were at that doctor camp and Mom and Dad went to Hawaii, I got Dylan really drunk, and I had sex with him.”
Her body goes so still it’s like she’s turned into a photo of herself. All the color leaves her face.
“The abortion—it was his. And he was dead, so what could I do?”
She still doesn’t move for the longest time. Rain patters down on the roof, obscures my view of the world. “Why didn’t you tell me, Josie?” she asks quietly.
“I didn’t want you to hate me. Blame me for his death.”
She sighs, closes her eyes. “That’s why he drowned himself,” she says, and it’s not a question.
My bones all melt, and I can’t look at her. “He was so angry and ashamed. I should never have done it. I don’t know why I did. He was so fucked up.” Tears I can’t halt fill my eyes. “He never spoke to me ever again.”
“You kind of deserved it,” she says, and then opens the door and jumps out, then turns around to face me, the rain pouring down on her head, soaking her hair, tipping her eyelashes. I love her like she’s one of my own organs, my eyes or my heart. “No one ever protected you the way they should have. But I would have.” She’s crying. “I would have.”
She slams the door.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Kit
Two weeks before the earthquake, when I was thirteen, I found Dylan’s body.
It was a cold, misty morning, with a fog so thick I almost couldn’t see coming down the steps to the cove, and I had carried down a breakfast of Pop-Tarts and a bottle of milk to get away from the endless fighting that filled our house. My mom yelled at my dad. My dad yelled at Josie. She yelled back. On and on and on. She’d done something bad this time, but I didn’t know what it was, and honestly, I didn’t care anymore. They called her names at school, really bad names, and after four years of steadily declining behavior, I was over trying to understand her. Her actions embarrassed me.
Dylan was lying facedown on the hard-washed sand, just about where we used to set up the tent long ago. He wore the same shirt he’d left with the day before and jeans and no shoes. His hair was loose and tangled. On his left wrist was the leather bracelet I’d made him in fourth grade, the one he never took off, with silver beads. There was no question he was dead.
I sat down beside him. Touched the bracelet. My heart in my chest was exploding, a scream I couldn’t allow into the world. Once I told them that he was here, I would lose him forever.
So on the beach where we’d spent so much time, I sat beside him and wondered if his ghost was still around. If he could hear me. “I wish you hadn’t done this,” I said, and took a bite of Pop-Tart. “But I guess you just couldn’t stand it anymore. I guess I knew you would eventually.” Tears welled up in my eyes, and I let them fall down my face. “I just want you to know that you made my life better. Like, so much better, dude.”
Some of my tears fell on my upper chest. I took another bite and chewed it, in no hurry. “Number one, you helped me get to school every day, and you know how much I liked that.”
When We Believed in Mermaids Page 30