Page 5 of When We Believed in Mermaids

“It’s likely a schoolyard spat, but we should go round to the school and talk with them anyway.”

“Yes, agreed.” Even with her older brother offering to keep an eye on her, she hadn’t wanted to go. At age nine, Leo is a mirror image of his father, the same thick, glossy dark hair, ocean-deep eyes, and lanky build. He shows every indication of taking after him athletically as well, swimming like a fish from the age of six months. And like his father, he suffers no dark moods or lack of confidence, unlike Sarah and me.

I can’t even imagine a life of such calm and sunniness, though I love it in both of them. “She takes after her mother, I’m sorry to say.”

“Were you given to moody spells as a child?”

I laugh. “The understatement of the century.” I pat his hand on the seat, knowing where it will be even with the blindfold. “Some would say I still am.”

“Not I. You’re perfect.” He squeezes my hand, and we turn sharply, bumping into what I presume is a drive. The car angles upward for some distance and then stops.

“You can take off the blindfold now,” Simon says.

“Thank God.” I rip it away, shaking my hair and smoothing a palm down over it.

But the view gives very little away. We’re in a tunnel of wild bush made up of tree ferns and vines. An overloaded feijoa tree has dropped hundreds of dark-green fruits to the pavement. “Where the hell are we?”

Simon lifts one heavy, dark brow, a small grin playing over his generous mouth. “Are you ready?”

My heart skitters. “Yes.”

He drives forward, and upward, upward, the road rutted and neglected, for another minute or two, and then we suddenly emerge from the heavy growth to a wide circular drive fronting an elegant 1930s house, standing by itself against a backdrop of wild blue sky and sea.

The air leaves my lungs, and practically before Simon halts the car, I’m tumbling out of it, mouth agape.

Sapphire House.

It’s a two-story Art Deco mansion overlooking the harbor with its line of islands in the distance. I spin around, and spread out below is the city, glimmering and glinting in the bright morning sunlight. Three of the city’s seven volcanoes are visible from here. When I whirl back to look at the house again, my chest squeezes. I’ve been enchanted by it since I arrived, partly for the tragic story attached to it but mostly because it sits up on this hill, so elegant and aloof. Untouchable, like Veronica Parker, the murdered film star who built the house for herself in the thirties.

“Are we going to see the inside?”

Simon holds up a key.

I capture it and fling my arms around his neck. “You are the most wonderful man!”

His palms land on my butt. “I know.” He takes my hand and laces his fingers through mine. “Let’s go look.”

“Did she die?”

“Last month. You should do the honors.” He pauses in front of the door. “Since it is, after all, yours.”

My blood goes ice-cold. “What are you talking about?”

He tilts his head back to look at the roofline appraisingly. “I bought it.” His chin lowers. “For you.”

His eyes are the color of the Pacific on a stormy day, gray and deep. Right this minute, they shine with delight in his surprise and the direct, open love he carries for me. A line of Shakespeare, lodged in my head from one of the only classes I ever attended regularly in high school, runs through my mind:“Doubt thou the stars are fire, Doubt that the sun doth move, Doubt truth to be a liar, But never doubt I love.”

I fall into him, forehead against his chest, arms around his waist. “God, Simon.”

“Hey, now.” His hands stroke my hair. “It’ll be right.”

He smells of laundry detergent and our bed and a faint note of autumn leaves. His body is strong and broad, a bulwark against the marauders of the world. “Thank you.”

“There is a slight catch.”

I lean back to look up at him. “Yes?”

“Helen, Veronica’s sister, had two dogs. Her stipulation was that they came with the house, and there will be a society checking in on them.”