Page 88 of When We Believed in Mermaids

“Thanks.”

“I google you all the time. Stalk you on Mom’s Facebook.”

“You do?” It strikes me that she had this freedom, but I did not. While I was grieving her, searching crowds for her face, she was reading about me online. I look away, shaking my head.

She touches my arm, the inner flesh of my left arm, where my tattoo is. Quietly, she says, “You’re a doctor. And you have a cute cat.”

I relent. “His name is Hobo.”

She smiles, and right there, in that easy gesture, I see my lost sister—Josie, who read to me and cooked up schemes with me—and it nearly doubles me over.

“Hey,” she says softly, taking my arm. “Are you okay?”

“Not really. This is hard.”

“I know. It is. It’s hard for me, and I’ve known all along.” She gently turns me toward the parking lot. “I packed snacks. I thought I could take you to a place I like, so we can just talk. It might be awkward in a restaurant or something.”

I think of myself weeping and weeping and weeping on Javier’s shoulder. “That’s a good idea.”

She leads us to her car, a black SUV on the smaller end but luxurious. In the back seat are things that clearly belong to kids. I start to climb in on the right side, and then I see the wheel and round the car to the left. The passenger side.

“Sorry it’s a mess,” she says. “I’m starting a new project and it’s just—I never get everything done.”

“You were never exactly tidy.”

She lets go of a quick, bright burst of laughter. “That’s true. I drove you crazy.”

“You did.”

“Where the hell did that come from? It’s not like Mom was neat.” She starts the engine, and it hums into quiet life. A hybrid, which gives her points in my book. “Our destination is a little bit away but not terrible. Water?”

“Sure.”

She hands me a metal water bottle, very cold. “Sarah outlawed all plastic a while back.” In the words, I hear the hint of a New Zealand accent, the syllables slightly shortened. “Nothing plastic in the house at all.”

I’m quiet as we pull out, my emotions compressed and contained. It’s very hilly. We climb a steep one, go around and down another, up again to a village center that’s just as quaint as the others I’ve seen. “This is Howick,” she says. The streets fall away to the water, houses lined up all the way down.

“Pretty. The whole place is pretty.”

“It is. I love it. I feel like I can breathe here.”

“We can’t sleep unless we can hear the ocean.”

Her breath catches audibly, and she looks at me quickly, then back to the road. “Right.”

I imitate her accent. “‘R-iii-ght,” I sort of drawl. “You don’t sound American anymore.”

“Have I picked up the accent?” she says, exaggerating the pinch of the words.

“You have, a bit. Maybe you sound Australian, though I wouldn’t really know.”

“Have you traveled, Kit?”

“No,” I say, and for the first time I let myself be myself. “I haven’t, but since I got here, I’ve really wondered why.”

“You work a lot, I guess.”

“Yeah, I mean, but I have a ton of vacation time stacked up.” I look out the window to the sea that sparkles on the other side of a hill. “Seriously, look at this place. Why haven’t I ever seen it before?”