When We Believed in Mermaids Read online

  “Sit,” she says briskly, and ties an apron around her. “Omelet okay?”

  “Better than okay. Thank you.”

  “Open my laptop,” she says, dropping a pat of butter into a heavy cast-iron skillet. “I saved the clip.”

  I follow orders, and there’s the piece I saw the night before. The chaotic scene, the screams and noise. The newscaster in his bomber jacket. The face behind his shoulder, looking right into the camera, for the solid beat of three seconds. One one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand. I watch, then rewind and watch again, counting. Three seconds. If I stop the clip on her face, there’s just no mistaking it.

  “No one could look that much like her,” my mom says, coming to peer over my shoulder. “And have the exact same scar.”

  I close my eyes, as if that will get rid of this problem. When I open them again, there she is, frozen in time, that uneven scar that runs from her hairline, straight through her eyebrow, and into her temple. It was a miracle she didn’t lose her eye.

  “No,” I say. “You’re right.”

  “You have to go find her, Kit.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” I say, even though I’ve been thinking the same thing. “How would I do that? Millions and millions of people live in Auckland.”

  “You would be able to find her. You know her.”

  “You know her too.”

  She shakes her head, straightening her back stiffly. “You know I don’t travel.”

  I scowl. “You’ve been sober fifteen years, Mom. You’d be fine.”

  “No, I can’t. You need to do this.”

  “I can’t run away to New Zealand. I have a job, and I can’t just leave them in the lurch.” I shove my hair off my face. “And what will I do with Hobo?” My heart stings—the job I can navigate, since I haven’t had time off in three years. But my cat will pine without me.

  “I’ll go stay at your house.”

  I look at her. “Stay there, or go in the morning and night and feed him?”

  “I’ll move there.” She slides the omelet, steamy and beautifully studded with peppers, onto the table. “Come eat.”

  I stand up. “He’ll probably hide the whole time.”

  “That’s all right. He’ll know he’s not alone. And maybe after a day or two, he’ll come sleep with me.”

  The smell of onions and peppers snares my body, and I dig in to the eggs like a sixteen-year-old boy, my mind flashing up images. Josie bending over me to see if I was awake yet, her long hair tickling my neck when we were little; her exuberant laugh; a flash of her throwing a stick for Cinder to chase. My heart literally aches, not metaphorically—a weight of memory and longing and anger press down hard on it until I have to pause, set down my fork, take a breath.

  My mother sits quietly. I think of her voice when she told me Josie was dead. I see that her hand is trembling ever so slightly. As if to cover it, as if this is a normal morning with normal things in it, she lifts her cup to drink. “Did you surf?”

  I nod. We both know it’s how I process things. How I make peace. How I live with everything.

  “Yes. It was gorgeous.”

  She sits in the second chair of the two at the table. Her gaze is fixed on the ocean. Light catches on her serious mouth, and I suddenly remember her laughing with my father, her lips red and wide, as they spun around in a dance on the patio of Eden. Suzanne sober is a far better creature than Suzanne drunk, but I sometimes miss the exuberance of her in those days.

  “I’ll go,” I say, maybe hoping to see a whisper of that younger woman.

  And for a single moment a flame leaps in her eyes. She reaches for me, and for once I let her take my hand, squeezing it in a fit of generosity.

  “You promise you’ll actually live in my house?” I ask.

  With her free hand, she draws an X across her heart and raises that same hand in a gesture of an oath. “Promise.”

  “Okay. I’ll get out of here as soon as I can arrange it.” A wave of mingled anticipation and terror rolls through my chest, sloshes in my gut. “Holy shit. What if she’s really still alive?”

  “I guess I’m going to have to kill her,” Suzanne says.

  Chapter Two

  Mari

  Fingering the blindfold over my eyes, I ask, “Where are you taking me?”

  My husband, Simon, slaps my hand away. “Leave it alone.”

  “We’ve been driving forever.”

  “It’s an adventure.”

  “Are we going to have kinky sex when we arrive?”

  “It wasn’t previously on the agenda, but now that you’ve brought it up . . .” He slides a hand up my arm, aiming to wander over my chest, but I swat at him. “I quite fancy the idea of you naked and blindfolded, out in the open.”

  “Out in the open? In Auckland? Uh, no.”

  I try to puzzle out clues about our destination. We left the highway a few minutes ago, but I still hear no auditory clues to the neighborhood. Distance traveled might be more of a help if we didn’t live all the way in Devonport, a long drive to many other areas of the city. I lift my head to smell the air and catch a whiff of bread. “Ooh, I smell a bakery!”

  Simon chuckles. “That should narrow it down.”

  We ride quietly for a bit. I sip my paper cup of coffee and fret about my daughter, Sarah, who had a breakdown over breakfast, her wild dark hair falling in a cape over her arms as she protested going to school. She would not say why, only that she hated it, that it was awful, that she wanted to be homeschooled like her (strange and prissy) neighborhood friend Nadine. Quite the scene for a seven-year-old who’d previously been the star of her class. “What do you think is going on with Sarah?”

  “It’s likely a schoolyard spat, but we should go round to the school and talk with them anyway.”

  “Yes, agreed.” Even with her older brother offering to keep an eye on her, she hadn’t wanted to go. At age nine, Leo is a mirror image of his father, the same thick, glossy dark hair, ocean-deep eyes, and lanky build. He shows every indication of taking after him athletically as well, swimming like a fish from the age of six months. And like his father, he suffers no dark moods or lack of confidence, unlike Sarah and me.

  I can’t even imagine a life of such calm and sunniness, though I love it in both of them. “She takes after her mother, I’m sorry to say.”

  “Were you given to moody spells as a child?”

  I laugh. “The understatement of the century.” I pat his hand on the seat, knowing where it will be even with the blindfold. “Some would say I still am.”

  “Not I. You’re perfect.” He squeezes my hand, and we turn sharply, bumping into what I presume is a drive. The car angles upward for some distance and then stops.

  “You can take off the blindfold now,” Simon says.

  “Thank God.” I rip it away, shaking my hair and smoothing a palm down over it.

  But the view gives very little away. We’re in a tunnel of wild bush made up of tree ferns and vines. An overloaded feijoa tree has dropped hundreds of dark-green fruits to the pavement. “Where the hell are we?”

  Simon lifts one heavy, dark brow, a small grin playing over his generous mouth. “Are you ready?”

  My heart skitters. “Yes.”

  He drives forward, and upward, upward, the road rutted and neglected, for another minute or two, and then we suddenly emerge from the heavy growth to a wide circular drive fronting an elegant 1930s house, standing by itself against a backdrop of wild blue sky and sea.

  The air leaves my lungs, and practically before Simon halts the car, I’m tumbling out of it, mouth agape.

  Sapphire House.

  It’s a two-story Art Deco mansion overlooking the harbor with its line of islands in the distance. I spin around, and spread out below is the city, glimmering and glinting in the bright morning sunlight. Three of the city’s seven volcanoes are visible from here. When I whirl back to look at the house again, my chest squeezes. I’ve been enchanted by it since I ar
rived, partly for the tragic story attached to it but mostly because it sits up on this hill, so elegant and aloof. Untouchable, like Veronica Parker, the murdered film star who built the house for herself in the thirties.

  “Are we going to see the inside?”

  Simon holds up a key.

  I capture it and fling my arms around his neck. “You are the most wonderful man!”

  His palms land on my butt. “I know.” He takes my hand and laces his fingers through mine. “Let’s go look.”

  “Did she die?”

  “Last month. You should do the honors.” He pauses in front of the door. “Since it is, after all, yours.”

  My blood goes ice-cold. “What are you talking about?”

  He tilts his head back to look at the roofline appraisingly. “I bought it.” His chin lowers. “For you.”

  His eyes are the color of the Pacific on a stormy day, gray and deep. Right this minute, they shine with delight in his surprise and the direct, open love he carries for me. A line of Shakespeare, lodged in my head from one of the only classes I ever attended regularly in high school, runs through my mind: “Doubt thou the stars are fire, Doubt that the sun doth move, Doubt truth to be a liar, But never doubt I love.”

  I fall into him, forehead against his chest, arms around his waist. “God, Simon.”

  “Hey, now.” His hands stroke my hair. “It’ll be right.”

  He smells of laundry detergent and our bed and a faint note of autumn leaves. His body is strong and broad, a bulwark against the marauders of the world. “Thank you.”

  “There is a slight catch.”

  I lean back to look up at him. “Yes?”

  “Helen, Veronica’s sister, had two dogs. Her stipulation was that they came with the house, and there will be a society checking in on them.”

  I laugh. “I kind of love her for that. What kind of dogs?”

  “Not sure. One large, one small, that’s what the agent said.”

  Dogs are no problem. We both love them, and our golden will be so glad to have company.

  Simon nudges me. “Come on—let’s go in.”

  Heart pounding, I unlock and open the door.

  It swings into a foyer two stories tall, with an airy gallery surrounding it. A skylight pours in great bucketfuls of sunshine on such a bright day. The rooms open out in a circle, and the doors are propped open, offering glimpses of the windows and views. Against the wall of what looks to be the long living room, a row of French doors reveals a staggering view of blue-green sea, sparkling and rolling. Far in the distance, a sailboat bobs by.

  But inside is even more astonishing. The paintings, the furnishings, the rugs and appointments are all period, mostly Art Deco with its clean, clear lines. A few Arts and Crafts pieces are mixed in. An exquisite black-and-red lacquered cabinet holds a carved vase filled with dry stems, and next to it sits a round chair that has almost certainly never been perched upon. The rug is red and gold, with stylized vines.

  My voice is hushed. “Is the whole house like this? So . . . untouched?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t been inside.”

  “You bought it sight unseen?”

  He takes my hand. “Let’s go look around.”

  It’s a magical wander—practically a museum of the world in 1932—the furniture, the bedding, the walls and art. The three bathrooms are tiled, and one in particular, the master bath, is such a jewel that I have to do a little dance of delight in the middle of the room. I run my fingers over the understated green and blue tiles that cover the walls, the ceiling, an alcove for the bath.

  The splendor of the house would be a find even if it were classic Art Deco, but this house was built with a sense of Oceanic pride. The stairs are polished kauri wood, the banister Australian blackwood. A theme of stylized ferns and kiwis weaves through the accents and woodwork and tiles, and as we move through the hallways and rooms, I trail my fingertips over the precise inlays and carvings, wondering who the woodworker was. French doors with stylized cutouts lead from room to room and to a vast patio that looks out to sea.

  Only three rooms of the twenty-two have been updated—a bedroom and sitting room at the back of the house, which are an ode to the charmless seventies, and portions of the kitchen, which has a stove and fridge that both look to be about a decade old. The stainless steel appliances clash with the rest of the room, which was designed for a household filled with servants and is suitably vast. The tile work is less spectacular here, but the stove sits in a tiled alcove, and I can see that there might be more buried beneath an unfortunate coat of paint.

  Simon and I wander back through the butler’s pantry, still stocked with everything from fish knives to soup tureens and china in every possible variation. I open one of the glassed doors and take out a bread-and-butter plate with a dark-blue rim on white china, a pattern of dual lionesses and stylized flowers in gold along the edge. “This is . . . incredible. It’s like a museum.” Carefully, I settle it back in place. “Maybe that’s what it should be. Maybe it’s selfish to want to live here.”

  “Don’t be silly, darling.” He tugs me through the narrow room and into the dining room and through one of the French doors in the long line. “Look at that.” He flings his hand toward the horizon, as if he’s painted the view himself. “Imagine our children growing up with this. Imagine that the house finally has life in it.”

  The breeze ruffles his hair, and I’m drawn, as always, into his vigorous, optimistic view of the world. “You’re right.”

  “Right.” He pats my shoulder and slides his sunglasses down to his tanned face. “I’m going to take a look at the boathouse and leave you to your explorations. We’ll have lunch at Marguerite’s, shall we?”

  “Yes. I’d like that,” I say, but I’m already drawn back into the house, anxious to put my hands on everything, touch it, make sure it’s real.

  As I walk through the rooms now, touching doorjambs and walls and artwork and vases, I listen to the atmosphere for anything ghostly or sad, but the rooms are only quiet. Hushed, almost, as if waiting. Leaving the master bedroom for last, I explore it all, then move silently up the swirling staircase to the room that occupies fully a third of the second floor. French doors open to a balcony that extends the length of the room, and opposite rise ceiling-high closet doors, sleek and varnished, with discreet chevrons inlaid along the edges.

  Ghoulishly, I look at the floors, parquet covered with pink and gray rugs. This is where the original owner of the house was found murdered, stabbed to death at the tender age of twenty-eight.

  Veronica Parker, a dark-haired and voluptuous beauty, was a New Zealand lass who’d risen to Hollywood stardom in the midtwenties. In 1932, the Olympics were held in Los Angeles, and Veronica was part of the welcoming committee for the athletes of her country, which was how she met Auckland native George Brown, an Olympic swimmer. A tumultuous love affair began. Veronica had already built Sapphire House, but George was married to his high school sweetheart, who refused to give him a divorce.

  It was, by all accounts, the undoing of Veronica.

  The turbulent romance lasted six years. On April 9, 1938, she was found stabbed to death after a party on the hill. Dozens of suspects were interviewed, but everyone was sure it was George who killed her. His world in tatters, he secluded himself for the last three years of his life. Some said he died of grief. Some of guilt.

  I toe the floor, wondering, but I can see no signs of foul play. Of course, it was scoured some eighty years before. Still, I find it intriguing that Veronica’s sister lived in the house all this time and never slept here.

  Or not. Who would want to sleep where a sibling had been murdered? Why did she live here, alone, for such a long time? Had she been so grief stricken that she could find peace only in this house her sister had built? Or was it simply expedient?

  Not expedient. She could have done a hundred other things. Sold the house, made it over into her own tastes. Instead, she lived in those three unassu
ming rooms, leaving the rest of the house almost exactly as it was when her sister was alive.

  Except here.

  Rounding the room, I open drawers and find them empty. The closets are bare. Only the desk, sitting in the corner, holds any artifacts. Yellowed paper and desiccated sealing wax fill one drawer. In another, I find a dried-up bottle of ink and a fountain pen.

  My fingers curl around the pen, and a shimmer of loss brushes the edges of my throat. The pen is substantial, smoothly inlaid with geometric patterns in green and yellow. Tugging off the lid, I find a carved silver nib.

  Time slides away.

  I am ten, practicing calligraphy with a dip pen as a storm pounds the windows of the bedroom I share with my sister. Her curly hair falls in her face as she bends over her page, meticulously drawing an L, her favorite letter. It’s better than mine. Her calligraphy is always better than mine.

  I drop the pen back in the desk drawer and wipe my hands on my thigh.

  The house might not be haunted, but I surely am.

  Chapter Three

  Kit

  A couple of days later, I’m boarding a big-bodied Air New Zealand plane, feeling oddly nervous. I haven’t traveled a lot, not counting spring break trips to Mexico a few times, so I booked myself a window seat in business class. Since I don’t buy anything but surfboards and fountain pens for myself, I also splurged on a juicy Airbnb in a high-rise building in the city center, overlooking the water. That way if the whole trip is a bust, at least I’ll have had a little vacation.

  Cocooned in the white noise of the engines and the murmuring voices, I find myself falling almost instantly asleep. Inevitably, the dream arrives. It’s always the same.

  I’m sitting on a rock in the cove with Cinder beside me. I have my arm around him, and he leans against my body. We’re staring out to the restless ocean, watching waves that are too big race toward shore and smash against the rocks that are so dangerous. Spray splashes us all over, but we don’t move. In the distance, Dylan is riding his surfboard, not even wearing a wet suit but only his yellow-and-red board shorts. I know he shouldn’t be out there, but I just watch him. The wave is too big to safely ride, but he does it, skates along the center of the curl with his hands out, his fingers trailing in the water in front of him. He’s happy, really happy, and that’s why I don’t want to warn him that the wave is breaking up.