Page 93 of When We Believed in Mermaids

Traffic edges forward slightly, and I realize it’s nearly three, and I’ve invited Kit and her plus-one over for a dinner that isn’t even started. Is there anything to cook in the house? I briefly consider takeaway, but I really want to cook for her. Cook something from our childhood, something beautiful and comforting, to show that I’ve turned over this leaf too. She did all the cooking after we moved to Salinas, food my mother and I often ignored or took for granted—stews and soups in the winter, fresh salads and homemade pizzas in the summer.

What would she like? What would my dad have cooked for such a family reunion?

Pasta, for sure. I run through a bunch of ideas—ravioli will take too long; lasagna is too ordinary. Bucatini is lovely but also time-consuming. My mouth tastes eggplant and red peppers, some olives, some Parmesan. Yes.Vermicelli alla siracusanawith my dad’s favorite preserved lemons, which I keep on hand. And cauliflower salad. And cake. Chocolate cake. I can do all of it even if it takes an hour or more to get home. On the steering wheel, I push a button to make a phone call and tell my phone to dial Simon. He doesn’t answer, but I leave a message to let him know Kit and her friend are coming for sure, and he needs to pick up wine. We rarely have any in the house.

Kit, in my house. With my children. My husband. The delicate, sturdy life I’ve built here.

My stomach turns over. It’s the most terrifying thing I’ve done in my life, and a part of me wonders why I’m doing it this way, the most dangerous way. Anything could go wrong. A slip of the tongue. A full revelation from Kit.

But it feels like theonlyway, as if I have to cross a tiny, rickety bridge to the next stage of my life or remain here on the precipice, poised to fall, forever.

It occurs to me that I don’t have to wait for the revelation. I could just tell Simon myself.

But I imagine his face turning to stone, and I can’t. I just can’t.

Traffic is immovable. My mind wanders backward.

Helplessly, I follow.

When my father and Dylan beat each other up in the kitchen of our house, we didn’t see Dylan for days and days. There were no cell phones then, so we couldn’t call and nag him, just wait for him to return.

Which he always had before.

Kit was furious with me for fighting with my dad, for supposedlycausingthe fight with Dylan and Dad, but it wasn’t my fault, and I wasn’t about to take the blame. My dad and I weren’t really talking either, and neither were my mom and dad—unless they were fighting, bellowing at the top of their lungs, throwing things.

Everything was falling apart.

We found out where Dylan was when the hospital in Santa Barbara called. He’d been in a brutal motorcycle accident only days after he’d taken off, and his injuries had been so severe that they had induced a coma. “How severe?” my mother asked over the phone. The hand that held her super-skinny Virginia Slims cigarette trembled, and my stomach dropped out of my body. Kit, standing nearby, went stone-still.

The three of us drove down to see him. He was conscious again but really drugged, his face swollen, black and red, his mouth torn and stitched, his right arm broken cleanly, his collarbone broken, his skull cracked. But the worst of it was a mauled right leg, broken in four places, pinned back together precariously. He wouldn’t be able to walk for six months.

The doctors showed my mom his X-rays when I was sitting there. Kit had gone to get snacks or something, and I don’t know why the doctor said anything when I was there. Maybe he thought I wasn’t listening, because I’d been readingThe Little Princeto Dylan, even though he was asleep.

“Is he your son?”

“No,” my mother said, without adding the usual justification that he was her nephew. “He works for us, helps take care of the girls.”

“How long has he been with you?”

She was uncomfortable. I knew that he had lied and said he was sixteen, but he was really only thirteen. She went with the lie and then some. “Three years. He was seventeen.”

It had been six years, and she knew it.

“Well, you see the new damage here, on his leg, his arm, his collarbone. Cracked cheekbone seems almost healed.” I watched the pointer pick out bright-white spots on the gray bones.

She nodded.

Then he moved to the other leg, a ragged gray line across the ankle, one in the wrist, several across ribs. Old injuries, the doctor said. “I’m not sure he ever had medical attention for them.”

My mother covered her mouth. “Jesus wept. Who would do such a thing?”

“You’d be surprised,” the doctor said.

I stood next to Dylan’s bed and covered the old broken wrist with my hand, then bent down to put my head against it. I thought of all the scars, the cigars and the belt buckle, and I wanted to kill somebody.

Very slowly.

It was a brutal, powerful emotion.