Page 73 of When We Believed in Mermaids

Suzanne has the grace to look away. Her rich voice rasps a bit as she says, “Honestly, Kitten, I never even noticed. By then, I was pretty much drunk all the time myself.”

The frankness pokes a needle through the balloon of my self-righteousness. “I know. I’m sorry. I just keep going over things, wondering why she got so bad so young.” With a visceral sense of loss, I remember how it felt as she slipped away from me, as if she had really become a mermaid and lived most of the time beneath the waves. It was the start of my great loneliness, and the memory is so painful even now that I have to shove it away. “She was so lost.”

“Yes,” my mother says. It’s the way she listens now, acknowledging without embroidery, but it irks me a little anyway. “It was a terrible environment.”

“Obviously,” I snap. “But we also had Dylan. He looked out for us.”

“Yeah,” she says in a droll voice. “A kid himself. And an addict.” Her eyes suddenly fill with a terrible sorrow. “He was always a lost boy, our Dylan. I did him no favors.”

“What happened to him, Mom? Before he came to us.”

“I don’t know. He’d clearly been abused physically for a long time; that’s all I knew. He never said.” She wiggles her fingers in front of the bedspread, where a furry black paw shows. “I should have—” She shakes her head, looks at me.

My heart aches. “Yeah.”

“We can’t change the past.”

I take a breath, shake my shoulders. “You’re right. I’m going to start calling surf shops and then maybe get out and do some sightseeing. There’s a bus tour that goes up north that sounds really great.”

“Good. Enjoy yourself.”

“Kiss my cat when you can, okay? And you might get some more straight tuna, see if he eats that better.”

“He’ll be okay, Kit. Promise.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

“Love you, sweetheart.”

I nod, giving her an open wave before I hang up. Mad at myself for not returning the endearment. She’s been so good for so long, but I still have trouble letting her in. What does that say about me?

At ten, I start phoning surf shops, and on the third one, I hit pay dirt. “Hi, my name is Kit Bianci, and I’m hoping to find a friend of mine who moved here a few years back.”

“Sure, love.”

“She’s very pretty, blonde, great surfer, but the thing you’d remember is that she has a big, distinctive scar through her eyebrow.”

“Oh, sure. That’s Mari Edwards. Comes here all the time. I reckon I’ll lose her now she’s bought Sapphire House, but she’s always been too rich for our blood over here.”

It takes two long seconds for the words to fully sink in, and then I’m scrambling to write the name down. “Mary, as in M-A-R-Y?”

“No, she spells it with an I, M-A-R-I.”

“Don’t suppose you have a phone number?”

“Can’t say I do, but you’ll find her right enough. Married to Simon Edwards, him who runs the Phoenix Clubs.”

“Clubs, like nightclubs?”

“Ha, no, no. Mari’s a teetotaler, and old Simon’s known for being the fittest man in Auckland. They’re health clubs. You can see his ads on the telly.”

“Wow, thank you so much. I really appreciate it.”

“No worries.”

I hang up and type the name into Google.

Mari Edwards.