Page 79 of When We Believed in Mermaids

For a moment I consider it, consider sitting with my niece and listening to her tell me about her experiments. I think of what my mother will feel, knowing these children are in the world and that she knew nothing about them. I look into Josie’s face, so familiar and yet so unfamiliar, and I can’t sit here tonight and pretend.

I’m not ready. Not yet.

“I’m sorry,” I say, turning to Simon. “I really do have plans.”

“Oh, not really?” Mari cries. “You can’t just go! We have to catch up, tell each other everything.”

I hand her my phone, and now my hands are shaking with rage. She sees and grips one tightly. Her eyes are fixed on my face, and I see the faint, small shine of tears. For a long second, I’m overwhelmed with gratitude, with love, with a hunger to touch her face and hair and arms, to assure myself that she’s not some robot version of herself but Josie, my own Josie. Here. Alive.

“Give me your number,” I say. “We can get together as soon as you have time.”

“First thing in the morning,” Mari says. She punches in the number and then calls it, making her phone ring in her pocket. As if to show me the evidence, she pulls it out, still ringing. Her eyes meet mine, steady. More assured than I ever remember, and something about that softens my fury the slightest bit.

“It’s good to see you so happy,” I say, and bend in to hug her. So quietly only she will hear, I add, “But I am so furious with you.”

She hangs on, tight, tight, tight. “I know,” she whispers. “I love you, Kit.”

I let her go. “Call me.”

Sarah steps over. “I hope you’ll come see my experiments.”

“I will,” I say. “I promise.”

And I force myself to keep walking past them, toward the address where they live. I walk there so I won’t run into them, and I see the house, which is a pretty thing with a porch and a second story looking out to the water.

None of us can sleep if we can’t hear the ocean.

On the ferry to the CBD, I’m back to a whirling mental state that tosses out a thousand images, moments, emotions. I veer between extreme fury and melting sentimentality and something that feels like...hope. Which makes me even madder, and the whole thing starts again.

In my pocket, my phone buzzes, and I pull it out.

Finished, Javier texts.Shall I pick you up at 7?

Yes. That would be great.I hesitate and then add,It’s been quite a day.

I will look forward to you telling me about it.

His face rises between the screen and me, and I know he will listen. Quietly and intensely. I can see him taking a bite of food, his hair shining under the lamps of the restaurant, then focusing on me babbling and babbling. Because that’s what I’ll do. If I start talking, it’s all going to spill out, the bad and the good, the ugly and the beautiful.

Do I want him to know me that well?

No. I don’t want anyone to know me like that.

But at the same time, I don’t have any defenses left at the moment. All my tricks and tools have been deployed in this whole business of tracking down my sister.

I had not expected to be so undone by my niece. By a face that looks so much like mine and a heart that’s like mine too.I have experiments.I want to know every single thing about her.

And Josie named her son after our father. Which is such a weird choice after how long they were at war. When we were small, they were close, but all I remember is how much they fought later. Constantly, furiously, violently.

He once lost his temper with her and slapped her so hard her lip bled. He was instantly ashamed, but she stood there staring at him like a warrior goddess, her hair a long cape around her tanned body, her eyes shimmering with the tears she refused to let fall, her lip split and bleeding. I wanted to cry for both of them, but I huddled in my corner, defending neither.

My mother snapped, “Josie, go to your room until you can speak properly.”

Dylan wasn’t there. Maybe he was working. Or on his motorcycle. Or with one of his many girlfriends.

I only know that he heard about it later and confronted my father, and then the two of them had a fight. An actual fistfight, which sent all three of the Bianci women into hysterics, trying to break them apart. Dylan had youth and speed on his side, and he tried to simply duck away from my father’s beefy fists, but my father had blinding fury on his side, along with size and power and the treachery of age. He broke Dylan’s cheekbone, a fact none of us knew until later, and ordered him out of his house.

My mother caught my father’s arm and hauled him out of the room, into the kitchen of the small house, but Dylan had already grabbed his keys and flung himself out the front door. Josie and I ran after him, yelling his name. “Dylan! He didn’t mean it. Come back—where will you go?”