Learning to Swim (20 page)

He didn’t answer. He came and sat down next to me. The smile was gone from his face. “I didn’t know you were crying this time,” he said.

I wiped my eyes and sniffed loudly. “I’m not crying,” I said.

His face cracked into that grin of his. He tried to stifle it. “It’s okay; I get caught not crying all the time.”

There was a marked difference in him. He was so much calmer here on the pier.

“How did you know?” I said. “That night when Princess fell in, I mean. How did you know I was crying? You appeared out of nowhere.”

“You’re on
my
jetty, you know,” he said. “Such a little princess. Goes wherever she wants. I guess it’s my fault for not marking it properly. I’ll have to invest in some signs.”
His
jetty. No wonder he was so calm here.

I snorted and he nudged me with his elbow. I rocked sideways into the water and righted myself. My toes were warm in the water.

“Are we done not crying? It gets tiring.”

“I think we’re done,” I said. I sniffed loudly.

We sat in silence as my mind wandered to every corner of my being, searching for something interesting to say. Rory was comfortable in the silence, but my body was bursting with too many emotions to be silent. I finally asked, “What’s spring tide?”

Rory chortled a bit. “Uh, I think it’s around the full moon and the new moon, when the tide gets the highest and lowest. That’s when it has the longest range. Why? Is that what you were crying about?”

“Not crying,” I clarified once again. “I was just thinking of Mrs. O’Leary. She told me once that that’s the only time the selkies can change.” I paused, wondering if he thought about Mrs. O’Leary’s fairytales as much as I did. Or at all. For some reason, I knew that I would be disappointed if I learned that he didn’t. “Do you think Seamus’s soul is down there? In a merman’s cage?”

“Jesus, you do need cheering up,” he laughed gruffly.

“Have any of the other sailors been found? Mr. Hall said there were two left.”

Rory sighed. “Todd Phillips was. Washed up on shore.”

I was silent. Another body on land, another soul in the cage, lodged in the sand of the ocean bottom. Was there a woman somewhere who was still madly in love with Todd Phillips?

“Hey, you’re really depressing me. Do you want to see something that might cheer you up?” Rory said. “I mean, it’s pretty warm tonight, it should be good.”

I wiped my eyes and rubbed my cheeks. The tears had run dry, though my face was still wet. And I could tell he wanted desperately to avoid more of my tears. “Sure,” I half-said, half-sniffed.

He jumped up and grabbed my still-wet hand. Even through my haze of tears and confused sadness, something magical shot through my arm like electricity. This wasn’t like when Owen held my hand. This … this was
magical
. I got up and let him pull me down the pier and farther south, away from the big houses and away from town. He was nearly running.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

He stopped abruptly and spun around. “Two things,” he said. He held up one finger, “Do not talk.” He held up another finger, “Do not make a sound.”

I smirked. “That’s kind of the same thing.”

“Just promise,” he demanded.

“Okay.”

“That’s not good enough.”

“I promise?” I said.

He raised his eyebrows.

“I pinky promise?” I tried again.

He extended a pinky, and I linked mine around his. “There is nothing in this world more binding than a pinky promise.”

He whirled off again, his hand firmly holding mine. We stumbled awkwardly, half-running, for just a few more minutes. The beach was rocky here, but we came to a great sand dune perched on a small piece of land that jutted out into the ocean. Here, he stopped and began to carefully climb the dune. He pressed a finger to his lips as a reminder and moved stealthily.

Near the middle of the dune, he got down on his hands and knees and crawled to the top. There, he lay flat on his belly and peeked over.

I stood at the bottom, watching him. When he realized I wasn’t following, he looked at me with a grin that made my knees weak and gestured for me to follow, nodding over the crest of the dune.

I scrambled up after him. Near the top, I crouched down next to him and peeked over. A gasp escaped involuntarily, and despite his rules, Rory grinned.

Below stretched a long wall of the dune that swept toward the sea and ended in a rocky jumble near the water. But below us, amid a group of smooth rocks at the meeting of the dune and the coast, was a small knot of sleeping seals. They were all bunched up, almost like they were cuddling. There were little clusters of them, snuggling. One was even laying on top of two others. They were still and silent, and I felt like we were intruding on something sacred.

Rory nodded toward the water. There in the dark, on a wet rock that jutted out into the waves, was a lone seal. He wasn’t sleeping, and his eyes, looking in our direction, glowed in the night. The moon reflected a deep golden color in them. He must not have seen us, for he didn’t react. I waited for him to bark—or make whatever noise seals make—and wake the others. But he didn’t. Eventually he turned back to the water.

I was watching the seals, but I was very conscious of how close I was to Rory. His left arm was curled around my back, so that his mouth was perfectly even with my ear. I felt warm and protected against him, with the wind whipping ruthlessly around us. It couldn’t touch me.

When he breathed, it tickled my ear.

“How many do you think are selkies?” He had said it so quietly, so close to my ear, it was more like breathing. Like we didn’t need to talk to communicate.

I couldn’t answer, considering I’d been sworn to silence, but when I craned my neck around, Rory was watching me, not the seals.

For a brief millisecond, I thought we were going to kiss. But then he swallowed and looked back out at the peaceful scene in front of us. I let myself relax into the sand beneath his arm, protected from the wind and the swirling sand, and watched the seals sleep.

Suddenly, Rory plucked something from the sand right beside me. One of the tin whistles had fallen out of my pocket. His face was lit with excitement. “Where did you get this?” he mouthed.

I put my finger to my lips, mocking his rules. He shook his head and twirled the whistle deftly around his fingers like he was performing a practiced trick.

I would never have tired of that, lying there pressed into his side, watching the seals sleep. But he eventually motioned for us to go. He turned away and climbed down the dune without looking back, no parting glance for the seals, as if he did this all the time. I, however, kept looking over my shoulder for one last peaceful glance until they were out of sight.

When we were far enough not to disturb the animals, Rory turned to me, wielding the whistle. “You little thief!” His face was bright with a smile. “Where did you find this?”

“On the jetty,” I said. “Is it yours?”

He didn’t answer, but banged the whistle on his palm, holes facing down. Then he picked at the holes with a fingernail and banged it some more. When we were back in familiar territory, he seemed to be satisfied. He stopped and blew into the whistle, hard and sure. Sand puffed out, and he dashed to the water and dunked it in the waves. He put it to his lips again and embarked upon a litany of clear, high-pitched notes. It was, somehow, exactly how I’d expected it to sound, when played correctly, but at the same time completely foreign.

He raised his eyebrows as he played, as if to ask my approval. Approval was an understatement. The music seeped through my skin, went right to my veins. My courage was lifted past any previous level in my life by the little ditty that mixed and broke away from the sounds of the ocean and distant sounds of revelry. It was as if what I was about to do next was preordained.

I grabbed the whistle from his mouth a little too roughly. Playfully, he held on, but then I kissed him and both our hands fell gently to our sides. I just leaned over and kissed him! Rosie would
never
believe it.

His lips were soft and both of our lips tasted fleetingly of salt. He kissed gently, as if to heal every time he’d ever caught me with tears in my eyes. His left hand skimmed my arm and landed next to my neck, just the tips of his fingers rested against my throat. My whole body warmed under that touch, slight though it was.

The reality of what I’d just done hit me quickly, and my stomach flipped. I’d just kissed a boy.
Without knowing whether he wanted to kiss me.
I pulled away abruptly, no longer sure of what to do with my lips. Or my limbs, for that matter. But apparently neither did he. We were both still holding the tin whistle.

I hazarded a glance up at Rory’s face in time to see a grin slowly forming there.

“If you didn’t like my music, all you had to do was say so.”

An Athair

The Father

I thought about the scene as I fell asleep at night and even called Rosie to share the news, censoring facts about who he was and how angry my parents would be. I replayed the scene over and over in my head, going over how I could have done it differently. How I should have told him all about everything Mr. Hall had told me. How I didn’t have to scuttle home immediately after kissing him, embarrassment flooding my cheeks. But that’s what I had done.

He had called after me once. “Hey, your whistle!”

“It’s not yours?” I asked, still backing away.

He shook his head.

“What about this?” I plucked the silver one from my other pocket and held it up.

He was nothing short of shocked. “A regular little thief.” His grin was crooked. I was just short of swooning.

I ran back to him to show him the silver whistle. “Where did you get this one?” he asked.

“The yard of the fabulous Ritz estate,” I said in my best British accent. “I’m gonna give it back to Mrs. O’Leary.”

I didn’t see his face as I turned, my dress whirling satisfactorily, and pranced home, utterly on top of the world.

But now, as I made my way past Mrs. O’Leary’s every day, I regretted not having stayed. Not having made plans, gotten his phone number, made a tin can telephone,
anything
! I was too chicken to go directly to the resort and ask for him, but I walked hopefully by the little yellow house every day … okay, several times a day. But he was never there. And, more surprisingly, neither was Mrs. O’Leary.

I was sure she was inside, but I felt some unspoken agreement that what we had was restricted to the porch. I felt it would be intruding to call on her in her little house, where she retreated each evening. She had always retreated reluctantly, but with an air of relief too, as if it was only in the little house that she could get away from the constant nagging of the ocean.

Mr. Hall came back to the Pink Palace for what my mother termed a “follow-up” visit, as if the house was ill and in desperate need of a doctor. Which is, more or less, how my mother viewed it. This time, despite the unpleasant memories and thoughts he brought up, I didn’t shy away from the man. It was as if my night with Rory had given me the courage to face the things about Mrs. O’Leary that I hadn’t wanted to face before.

As soon as my mother left the kitchen, I stopped rummaging through the refrigerator and turned to the older man. “What happened to the babies?”

He looked unsettled, but not altogether surprised.

I walked quickly to the table and sat down across from him. “The O’Leary babies,” I pressed on. “What happened to them?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I already told you all that I know.”

I didn’t believe that for a second. “Well, who was with them when they disappeared? You don’t leave a newborn on its own.”

Mr. Hall looked at me evenly. “Lia was with them both.”

What?
I could read the accusation in his voice. But I didn’t believe it. She couldn’t have—not intentionally …

“Well what does she say happened? Did she say somebody else—”

“Do you really think you’re the first person to wonder? People have been wondering that for fifty years.”

“And? What have they come up with?”

“Well, the prevailing idea among the townspeople at the time was that the boys drowned. The both of them. And that she facilitated it.”

My mouth fell open. “That’s ridiculous,” I said simply.

Mr. Hall shrugged. “So is the disappearance of two children under the same mother’s care within years of one another. It’s not as though her life was perfect. Their marriage … well there were problems. You might not want to believe that, but there were. Oh, there were problems.”

I let the thought drift into the silence, hoping it would evaporate there. But Mr. Hall interrupted it.

“You know the two youngest O’Brien boys very well, don’t you?”

Oh Jesus
. Was I about to be lectured by this old man on who I spent my time with? He had to have been speaking to my mother about it!