So I did, but the silence continued, and it was excruciating. The muscles in his jaw bounced, making me wonder what he was really thinking.
Eventually, his forehead furrowed and the corners of his mouth turned down as he said, “Pavati told me about the letter she wrote you.”
I eyed him suspiciously. It wasn’t what I’d expected him to say. Was that all that was bothering him? “You know what she asked me?”
“Yes,” he said, finally turning to me. He searched my face.
“How long have you known?”
He closed his eyes to the apparently distasteful change in my colors and sighed. “A few days now. But, Lily, the last thing I want to do is fight.”
“Who’s fighting?” I asked, but I couldn’t not feel irritated with him. Why hadn’t he told me when he first found out?
Calder took a deep breath. He ran one of his fingers over the topography of my knuckles. “I’m not willing to give them what they want. And you should be more suspicious of their motives.”
A strange rush of anger flared up in my chest, derailing me from my course. “You mean, they couldn’t possibly like me for me? They couldn’t possibly want me to be part of their family? Well, news flash, they do. And I think Nadia does, too.”
Calder nearly did a double take, the change in my voice surprising him as much as me. “Of course they could like you for you, who wouldn’t? I’m only saying … Lily, I—I’m sorry I’ve been so upset with you when you talk about Mother. Maybe if you tell me what you think you’re hearing—”
“I told you. I don’t think I’m hearing anything,” I said. “Nadia is talking to me.”
“Then, tell me what you are hearing, and I’ll let you know if it really sounds like something she’d say.”
“She shows me things. About the past. And what she wants for the future. I know how my grandfather came to have this necklace in the first place.”
“That’s easily explainable. Your subconscious probably just filed away something your dad told you.”
“I’ve seen your birth mother. I’ve seen you as a little boy.”
Slight trembling ran the length of his arms, and I could tell he was wondering how much detail about his past life I was privy to.
“Nadia wants you to find your birth family.” There. I’d said it. There was no turning back now. The sudden anger I’d felt was quickly replaced by sadness because it was time to send him on his path.
“You’re wrong,” he said, his tone scoffing.
I closed my eyes and held the pendant in my fist. It took some concentration, but I did my best to mimic Nadia’s voice, liquefying my words into a vaguely recognizable cadence:
“ ‘Calder, when it is time,’ ” I quoted, “ ‘when you know it’s time, you need to go home. You need to find your mother.’ ”
“That’s impossible,” he whispered.
“Is it? A mermaid has no choice but to fulfill her promises. What if Nadia died with a promise unfulfilled? What if the compulsion to fulfill it was so strong, it followed her even after death?”
“That’s impossible,” he muttered again, pressing his knuckles to his forehead.
“I don’t think Nadia is resting in peace,” I said.
“Lily, I’ve told you, my biological parents aren’t even a thought in my head.”
It was when he lied like this that I understood him best. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe he’d let go of his human memories as soon as he was changed, but I also knew how much he wanted to belong to a family. He bent over backward to make my mom happy, and when I watched him helping her in the kitchen, or making his bed when she asked, I often thought A momma’s boy without a momma, though I’d never call him that to his face.
“But that’s just it,” I said, putting my hand on his shoulder. “They should be a thought in your head. They should be much, much more.”
“Why? Who says so? Has it occurred to you that this is more important to you than it is to me?”
“You started to search for them last summer. You said you thought they were from Thunder Bay. If it wasn’t important to you—”
“It was only a fleeting thought. And it wouldn’t have been even that much if you hadn’t made me think of them. Truth is, maybe I was a little curious, but I don’t need them anymore. I’ve already found everything I ever wanted. I’ve found a family that I want to be part of.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “I thought I kind of already was.”
I looked away and that small gesture stopped him short.
He leaned to one side and reached into his pocket. “Listen,” he said, “I didn’t mean to freak you out with this, and you don’t have to read too much into it.” He pulled out the small velvet box again. “If you don’t want it you can say no.”
He held it out to me, waiting for me to take it. “So are you going to open it? I didn’t steal it if that’s what you’re thinking. But I want … I want to ask …”
“Do you know what I want?” I covered the box with a shaking hand—the soft velvet prickled against my palm—and gently pushed it back toward his pocket. “I want you to find your parents. That’s what I want for you. And it’s something you need to do on your own. Before you do anything … else.”
The hurt in his eyes slashed at my heart. I wanted to kiss it away, but I couldn’t move. All of my muscles had clamped down.
“I don’t need my past,” he said. “I want you. You are my future. It’s you who makes me happy.”
“But that’s just it,” I said. “Don’t you see? Your happiness should not be completely dependent on me. You’re not whole. Not yet.”
“Who fed you that line? Pavati?” He grabbed my wrists, hard, and I twisted them to get free. “Don’t trust them, Lily. She just thinks she’ll have better luck with you if I’m out of the picture. They’re queens of manipulation.”
“Maybe you’re right, but it doesn’t make it less true. You need to find your parents.”
“And what if I find them?” he demanded.
“What do you mean?”
“If I find them, then what? Do you think they’d just let me walk out of their lives again?”
“Well …” Admittedly, I hadn’t thought about that. I assumed it would be hard for Calder to leave his family once he found them. I’d never considered that his parents would be the problem—that they would be the ones to not let him go again.
“That’s it, isn’t it!” Calder exclaimed. “You know I wouldn’t be able to do that. Is this just some elaborate plan for getting me out of the way forever?”
“Calder—” I knew he’d react badly, but he was starting to scare me.
“Well, excuse my confusion, Lily, but what the hell was this all about?” He gestured angrily at the blanket and the imprint of our bodies still lingering in its fibers.
“I don’t want you out of the way.” I didn’t. But I needed him to go. For him. For me. For Nadia. And for his birth mother, too.
“You’re lying. I can see the lie all over you. Tell me the truth. You owe me at least that much.”
“Nadia wants me to—”
“Damn it, Lily, she doesn’t want you to do anything. She’s dead!”
I looked up as heavy tears rolled onto my cheeks. “She doesn’t feel so dead to me.”
“She was my mother! You never even knew her! Believe it or not, the world is not yours to save, Lily. I’m not yours to save. Your dad, Sophie, Jack … If you’d let others take care of their own business instead of always—”
“Stop.”
“Too much truth?”
I didn’t need a mirror to know my face was red. My eyes glossed over and my lower lids flooded with the next set of tears. I stood up and my skirt fell to its full length. I had to get away. But Calder got up, too, and grabbed my hand, pulling me back to him. I pushed my palms against his chest.
“Lily, don’t do this,” he said. “I’ll fall apart without you.”
I winced. “Just go, Calder. Go to Canada. Find your p
arents.”
“No!” he yelled.
In that moment, he reminded me of Maris, the way she once rose out of the water, staring down at me, her face radiant with fury. Calder’s resemblance to his sister had never struck me as it did now. I took a step back. He grabbed my shoulders.
“Why are you doing this to me? What did I do?” he demanded.
“Nothing! Nothing. I’m not doing this to you. I’m doing this for you.”
“Just when I …” He didn’t finish that thought and I was desperate to know what it was. Instead he said, “I thought you loved me.”
“I do,” I said. “I’m doing this because I love you.”
“That’s bullshit and you know it.” He laughed one hard laugh. “I always thought you were so much better than me. All this time I’ve been trying to improve myself. I kept thinking, if I could just be more like you. Kind and good and giving. But you’re just like my sisters.”
I ignored his attempt to hurt me. “Just promise me, Calder. Promise me you’ll find your parents.”
“Forget it.”
“I need you to promise me.”
He stared right through me for a long moment. I wished we were in the lake, and I could have heard the workings of his mind. It would have made it so much easier to prepare for his argument. Right then, if our hearts were timepieces, mine was a stopwatch, racing toward the finish line. His was an hourglass with the last grains of sand trickling out.
“Fine,” he said. “I promise I’ll go to Thunder Bay and search for my birth parents, whom I care nothing about.”
I blinked, startled. “That’s it? Just like that? You promise?”
The corners of his mouth twitched downward, and I watched as a green light simmered behind his eyes, then slowly darkened like a candle going out in an empty room. “Yes. Are you happy?”
I wanted to say, Of course not. How could I be happy? Why couldn’t he understand this was never about me? I wished I could undo the harm I’d caused, to say, Just kidding, I didn’t mean it, but instead I said, “Yes.”
He bowed his head, and his hands dropped from my shoulders to his sides.
I took a deep breath and went to kiss him, but he turned his head and I missed his mouth. Still, I lingered on his cheek a second longer than I should have.
Then I walked toward the water.
His gaze bored holes into my body, but I never looked back. I hesitated only a second in the waves that pulsed at the shore. My skirt floated at my ankles, then my knees and thighs. I think I heard him say, “Don’t,” as I pulled my skirt up and over my head, along with my T-shirt, and dropped them both, leaving them to float in the shallows.
PART TWO
How fares it with the happy dead?
For here the man is more and more;
But he forgets the days before
God shut the doorways of his head.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam, XLIV
16
CALDER
I didn’t watch Lily leave. I slammed my palm against a tree. If she was going to walk away from me and swim right into Pavati’s arms, I couldn’t watch. If Lily didn’t want me around anymore, that was fine. I didn’t care. Not about her. Not about anybody.
Without conscious thought, I walked toward the water, but definitely not following her. Lake Superior was plenty big without Lily having to worry about running into me. Or me into her. I reached up with both arms, crossed them over my head, and pulled off my T-shirt. I dropped it on the ground. It didn’t matter where. I wasn’t coming back for it. There was no reason for me to be on land anymore.
I stripped off the rest of my clothes, leaving the ring in my pocket, and took three long strides toward the water. Goodbye, ground, I thought. Goodbye to fooling myself into ever thinking I could be a permanent part of Lily’s family … part of Lily’s life. It had been a nice run. But it was over.
A cloud passed over the sun, and my mind matched the darkening light. The wind whipped my hair around my face. I stormed across the beach and made a shallow dive. I couldn’t hear Lily. Not that I was listening for her. But did I really expect I would? She’d already proved herself capable of hiding from me in the water and, come to think of it, on land.
She could justify her reasons for sending me away anyway she wanted, but none of it made sense. After all we’d been through! Didn’t she remember any of it? Didn’t any of it matter to her anymore?
I’d been rejected. I had no one to blame but myself. I had nothing to offer. If only Lily had never made me hope for more. Never made me think we belonged together. Never brought me so far. Never taught me to love. I’d been right to fear losing her. I’d lost everyone else, hadn’t I? But out of all the people I’d lost, she was the only one who’d chosen to leave.
I swam fast and far, bending the water behind me. The more I thought about it, the more I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I shook my head, trying to clear the pain, but it was no use. The threads of depression thickened into ropes, which knotted themselves deep into the crevices of my brain. My heart seized. Without Lily, despair quickly crept in.
I hadn’t been paying close enough attention. Like noxious vines once pruned back, they reclaimed the house as soon as the gardener left his post. For me, those vines were the urge to hunt, which I’d kept at bay for so long. Too long apparently. Eighteen months of abstinence were shrieking at me like an old woman trapped in a well.
A call for help cut through both the water and my self-pity, and I surfaced hungrily to find a stranded kayaker caught on the rocks. She was shrouded in the ashy gray of desperation, though when she turned and saw me watching, she showed no fear. Rather, a faint tinge of embarrassment, followed by gratitude—then the most delicious color of relief washed over her, flashing bright with an explosion of salvation. Oh, God.
“Wow, I didn’t expect to see anyone else out here,” she called. “I’ve caught a line on these rocks. I thought I was going to be trapped here forever. Give me a hand?”
She smiled, releasing a flurry of emotions that made my every synapse quiver with expectation. The water trembled and rippled away from me. Without thinking, I closed the space between us so quickly she had no time to react. Her sense of relief continued to flood my mind, my veins, surging for my heart.
It didn’t take more than a second to flip the kayak.
My mind went blank, the world black. I ground my teeth together. The whole maneuver was instinctual. I didn’t fight myself. I didn’t think at all. It was like I’d never been out of practice.
Within seconds, I’d sunk my teeth into her life jacket and torn it into pieces, which floated toward the surface like neon orange petals in memoriam. Relieved of the vest, the girl’s body touched mine. I clenched her to my chest, spiraling into deeper water that pushed the life out of her. Supple arms chilled and hardened as I wrung the last bit of happiness from her heart.
When there was little left but bone and skin, I released my grasp and let her sink.
Slowly.
Watching
her graceful
descent.
Her arms floated in front of her, rounded, a ballerina pose. Her long blond hair circled her head like a halo. But instead of rising, this angel was sinking.
Only then did the wretched horror of what I’d done wrench the fleeting jubilation from my mind, replacing it with a shame I had never known. She deserved better than this. What a disgusting creature I was.
Damn it.
I raced after her body, buoyed it up, carried it from the depths back to the beach. I stayed in the shallows. There was no time to transform.
I cradled the body in my arms and blew air into its empty lungs.
“Wake up. Please, wake up. Wake up. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.” Spit sizzled through my teeth. There was no excuse, no justification—not even a thin stretch of one that I could make myself believe. All that was left was this cold corpse lying in my arms, head tipped back, blue lips agape over too-white teeth.
/> “Please.” I filled her lungs again. I shook her. Hard. “Wake up!”
I placed my palms flat against her temples and said a prayer—though I’d never learned exactly how. If I could have traded places with her, I would have. Maybe that was as good a prayer as any.
I inflated her lungs a third time, then pressed my face into her wet hair, saying, “I’m so, so sorry.” Then, from some kind of nowhere place, she sucked in air like a vacuum.
The noise startled me, and I dropped her onto the sand. Her chest expanded. Her eyes bulged open. A feral growl of air raced through her. Before she was fully conscious, I pulled away into deeper water and watched from a distance as she rolled over in the sand, peeling back the hair plastered to her face, her chest heaving. She looked at her pebble-peppered hands, then collapsed back onto the beach.
She was exhausted. But she was alive.
That’s it. Never again. But I could never go back to Lily now.
She was right; I was not whole and clearly I never would be. How could I ask Lily to waste her life with someone like me? The truth trickled icily through the veins in my arms, down to the tips of my fingers, tingling there. There was no escaping the past.
I snorted a short, humorless laugh. But that’s what Lily wanted for me, wasn’t it? For me to reclaim my past? Well, she’d got what she wanted. I hoped she was happy.
I swam to Red Cliff and found a safe spot to transform. Clouds were rolling in, and before I was done, a sharp wind brought the first pelting drops of rain, which pockmarked the lake.
The promising snap of laundry flapping on a clothesline drew me from the beach and up the bank. At the top, three small clapboard houses lined a narrow dirt road. One of them had pillowcases, socks, and several pairs of pants hanging out to dry—forgotten in the rain. I kept low, creeping in my nakedness along the tree line. When I was sure no one was around, I stepped into the yard and pulled some white gym socks and jeans off the line. The socks went on easily, but it was a struggle to get the wet denim over my legs, and when I did, the jeans barely reached my ankles. But at least I wouldn’t get arrested for indecent exposure.