Page 46 of When We Believed in Mermaids

“Not the wife. Not Veronica’s sister,” I said, ticking them off. “Not George. Then who?”

Nan lifted a shoulder, skeptical. “My money is still on George. They never found any evidence, but he was notoriously jealous. In the case of a violent death at home, it’s nearly always a loved one who did it.”

“But he adored her.”

“Yes, but he was under a lot of pressure to—”

“No. I just don’t see it. There were never reports of domestic violence, no violence at all.” Enjoying the discussion, I lean my elbows on the table. “My father was a jealous man, but he would never have killed my mother.”

She inclines her head. “I don’t know that I remember you mentioning this before.”

I realize that I was speaking of myactualfather, not the father I made up. For a moment, a chill halts me. I’ve never been so careless!

But Nan is looking at me expectantly. Maybe it will ease my sense of loneliness to tell the parts of my story that I can. “I don’t think about it very much”—which is a lie; I compartmentalize, but they all haunt me anyway—“but he was. Traditional Italian man, of course, and my mom was not at all traditional. They had a volatile relationship. She was quite a bit younger than he was and very beautiful. Very, very, very, very beautiful. Had this voluptuous figure that my dad liked to see in expensive, fitted dresses.”

“Go on.”

“I think she liked him to be jealous.” I take a sip of lime-flavored water, opening the door to that world ever so slightly. I’m cautious, afraid of the flood of things lurking, but a minuscule bit of tension I haven’t been aware of holding gives way. “It was how she controlled him. Men were always flirting with her, coming on to her, and she encouraged it.” I see her in my mind’s eye in a slim red dress with a low, square neckline that showed off a lot of cleavage, laughing on the patio overlooking the ocean. My father fetched her, grabbing her by the wrist and tugging her behind him to a dark alcove beneath the wisteria that grew in thick ropes over the pergola. He pushed her against the post, into the leaves and flowers, and kissed her. I saw their tongues and the way they pressed their bodies together. My mother laughed, and my father let her go, swatting her behind as she sashayed back out to the patio and all their guests.

Enchanted by her power, I sashayed right behind her, imitating the swing of her hips and the way she tossed her hair. I wore a chiffon negligee she’d cut down for me, and the sheer black fabric flowed around my nine-year-old body in a way that was exhilarating. To feel it all the more, I spun around in a circle, sending it spinning outward, knowing my shorts and bikini top were mostly hidden. Air touched my belly, my thighs. Nearby, a woman laughed, and a man clapped lightly. “Suzanne, your daughter is a natural.”

Delighted by their attention, I played it up, twirling for their pleasure, dancing the way my mother danced, swinging my hips, shimmying my shoulders, and I knew when I captured them, my audience. A circle of faces, all turned to me as if I were the sun, as if I were a queen.

A body swooped in and picked me up. Dylan, who tossed me over his shoulder. “School night, kiddo,” he said. “Wave good night.”

I arched my back like an ice dancer, pointing my toes and lifting my shoulders high, flinging kisses with both hands. The patrons loved me and clapped and whistled as Dylan carted me away.

“Hel-lo?” Nan says.

“Sorry. I just thought of something I hadn’t remembered in a long time.” I grin. “I wonder if Veronica tried to make George jealous. Maybe it didn’t work, but the other person got possessive.”

“It must have been a bit more than possessive. She was stabbed a dozen times or more, wasn’t she?”

“Mm.”

“That’s passion.”

Again, I see my parents in my imagination, but this time much later, my mother throwing something—an ashtray? A highball glass?—at him.

Nan adds, “I’m sure you can find society news about them. They were a very big deal in this town at the time. Glamorous, exotic, passionate.”

“Did George live with her outright?”

“You’d have to ask Gweneth, but I’m pretty sure he did. His wife made their lives a misery, but they lived at Sapphire House.”

I nod, narrowing my eyes to think a bit more. And there, walking past the end of the street, is a woman wearing a wrinkled red sundress with a thick braid falling down her back. A man walks with his arm over her shoulder and dips to kiss her, as if he can’t resist, and there’s something in the tilt of her head that electrifies me. I’m on my feet, ready to run after her, my sister.

Kit.

She disappears around the corner, and I realize I’m being ridiculous. All the thoughts of home, the longing to understand this house and its owner, have made me a little homesick, that’s all.

But I wish fiercely for one long moment that it really had been her.

As I drive over the bridge, the memory of that night on the patio wafts around, still in the days before my parents started fighting so bitterly. Where was Kit that night? I search the memory and can’t see her anywhere. Maybe she was reading in our room.

No. Dylan set me on my feet by a banquette away from the action, so often empty. Cinder was asleep on the floor beneath the table, and tucked into one corner was my sister, her hair wild from dancing with me earlier. She’d shucked off the blue negligee my mother gave her and slept in a pair of shorts and a dirty T-shirt. Dylan reached down and picked her up, and she fell on his shoulder, nestling in close. He loved her more than he loved me, just like my dad did, and it made me mad. I danced away in my bare feet, wading onto the dance floor. I heard him call me. “Josie, come on! It’s time for bed.”

My mother, in her silly voice, enfolded my hand in hers. “Never mind, Dylan. She’s with me.”