Page 22 of When We Believed in Mermaids

At the very last minute, she answers, breathless. “Kit! I’m here!”

“You’re there? At my house?”

A slight beat of quiet. She knows I don’t trust her. “I’m here, Kit. I was just out in the backyard watering your plants and forgot I left my phone inside.”

“Did Hobo come outside with you?”

“Oh, no. He hasn’t even come out from under the bed.”

My stomach squeezes. I can see his black face so clearly, his tufted toes. “You slept there?”

“Yes. I swear. He is eating and using the litter box when I leave. I think he peed on your tennis shoes, though. You left them by the door.”

“He’s probably claiming me. Keep your stuff in the closet.”

“I am. We’re fine, Kitten.” The nickname is rare, and sweet enough. “Promise. I’ve had a cat or two in my life.”

“Okay.”

“It’s only been a couple of days. He’ll be fine.”

“Just make absolutely sure he doesn’t get out. I don’t want him to come looking for me.”

“I promise,” she says in a very reasonable voice, and I realize I’m freaking out a little over a situation I can’t control.

Shocking.

I take a breath and let it go. “Okay. I believe you.”

“Thanks. Now tell me about everything. What’s it like? Is it beautiful?”

I walk back to the sliding door and pull it open, letting in a waft of muggy air, and step out to the concrete balcony eighteen stories above the street. “It’s amazing. The water and the hills and these strange trees—it’s gorgeous. I’ll send you some pictures later today.”

“I’d love that.” Instead of rushing in with questions or comments, she waits for me to keep talking, a listening trick she learned at AA that would have made my childhood ten thousand times better.

“I visited the nightclub site,” I say. “It’s hard to imagine what she would have been doing there, honestly. It seems like a club that was frequented by very young Asians, not middle-aged white ladies.”

“Oh, she’d hardly be considered middle-aged.”

I raise my eyebrows. “Ifshe’s really still alive, she’s almost forty-three. Once you cross the line of forty, I think you have to admit to middle-aged.”

She makes a dismissive noise, and I hear her light a cigarette. The cigarettes she thinks I don’t know she smokes. “Well, what’s the next step?”

“I honestly have no idea.”

“Maybe you could take a picture around to the businesses in the area. Ask if anybody knows her.”

“That’s not a bad idea.”

“Crime TV has its uses.”

I laugh. “Well, if you come up with more tips, feel free to text. This is not exactly my forte.”

“If anyone can find her, you can,” she says.

“What if I don’t?”

“Then you don’t,” she says firmly. “All you can do is try.”