Sea Change (19 page)

“Mom, tell me,” I pleaded. I already felt I knew what was coming.

“You see,” Mom said, and she surprised me by reaching across the table to put her hand on top of mine, “a lot of truths came out in those fights I had with Isadora. During one argument, I lost my patience and lashed out at her, saying that her dramatics had driven my father to an early grave. And she told me”—Mom paused, and took a big breath—“she told me that my real father wasn’t Jeremiah Hawkins but a man named Henry Blue Williams. She didn’t say where he was from, and I didn’t want to know the details. I wasn’t even sure if she was lying or not—Isadora loved to spin fanciful tales.”

“I think he must have been from Selkie Island,” I said, my heart hammering. “A local.”
And quite possibly a merman.

Which meant that Mom—

Which meant that I—

My head swam. The kitchen began to take on a hazy, otherwordly quality. Was
that
why Leo had been drawn to me? Why I loved the ocean? Why my toes were webbed? I knew Mom wasn’t a mermaid—I’d seen her swim enough times to know that—but maybe the traits got watered down through the generations. Or maybe my own children would be…

I couldn’t think. The basics of my life seemed altered and thrown into question. After all, our families—our ancestors—are our identities. Biology is destiny.

I’m not who you think I am,
I had said to T.J. the last time I’d seen him. Maybe I wasn’t who
I’d
thought I was, either.

“That—you know, that makes sense,” Mom said quietly, pulling me out of the quicksand of my thoughts. Her eyes were tear-filled and her bottom lip was trembling, but the sight didn’t frighten me now. “My God. All this time, I had no idea—none at all—why Isadora left The Mariner to me. Yes, I loved Selkie Island, but so did Coral and Jim, and she never quarreled with them like she did with me. But…”

“Maybe this house is your birthright in a different way,” I offered, feeling choked up as well.
And maybe Isadora wasn’t such a monster after all.
I didn’t dare utter those words, although I could tell, from the look dawning in Mom’s eyes, that she was starting to think that, too.

“You know something, my love?” Mom squeezed my hand. “You’re too smart for your own good.” She let out a big sigh, then dabbed at her cheeks with a napkin. “I’d like to see those letters sometime,” she added softly, glancing up at me.

I nodded, suddenly looking forward to sharing that discovery with my mother. Maybe there was even more in those letters that would teach me things. “I mean, we have to pack them up soon, don’t we?”

“Oh,” Mom said, smiling at me. She set down her napkin and sighed. “That was the other thing I meant to tell you.”

“What?” I asked, feeling a new twinge of nervousness. I wasn’t sure how many more revelations I could handle.

“I’ve been giving it a lot of thought, and I’ve decided not to sell the house,” Mom said. “We’re keeping The Mariner.”

“We are?” I gasped. It was true that the signs had been there: Mom suddenly losing interest in packing and organizing; the conversation I’d overheard between her and Daryl Phelps. “Why did you change your mind?” I blurted, and offered the first thing that came to
my
mind. “Is it because of Mr. Illingworth?”

Mom looked at me, startled, and then she blushed—a full-on blush that, for some reason, made me grin. “In part,” she said, glancing down at her half-eaten food. “In part because of Delilah and the other friends I’ve reconnected with here. It’s funny how people change in life, Miranda. I was so
certain
about things when I was your age. I had such strong opinions about the kind of people that Teddy and Delilah and my mother were. I wrote them off. Now…after so many years…well, some people are worth a second chance.”

Like Linda,
I thought, surprising myself.

“Like Leo,” Mom said, doubling my surprise.

I blinked at her, overwhelmed.

Mom smiled at me, her eyes beseeching. “I know I was a little harsh with him,” she told me. “I’ll have to apologize to him the next time.”

The next time.
Relief and disbelief hit me like a wall of water, so powerful that I caught my breath. There
was
going to be a next time. If Mom and I were keeping the house, that meant we’d be back on Selkie Island.

I was going to see Leo again.

And that realization, more than anything else, was what made me get up, walk around the table, and give my mother a hug.

“I’m glad,” I told her. “I’m glad we’re keeping the house.” I was even okay with the idea of her spending time with Mr. Illingworth again. I really was.

Mom hugged me back, tight, tighter than she’d ever hugged me before. I wondered if Mom wished she could reverse time and hug Isadora in the same way. I was pretty sure they had never embraced over their unfinished low-country boils.

“The house still needs repairs, though,” Mom said, releasing me with a pat on the arm. “If we’re going to be spending summers here, we’re going to need Internet. And the study needs a new coat of paint and all that. But it will be nice. A fresh start.”

I nodded, listening to the ocean swish onto the shore and then recede. It struck me then how much the past—not just the past but history and family—was like the ocean tide. It was always the same ocean, but the waves made it fresh and new each time.

Mom and I spent the rest of the evening packing the belongings we’d brought with us to Selkie. There were also a few additions; when I showed Mom Isadora’s trunk, she grew teary-eyed again, both at the sight of her debutante gown and the letters. She decided to pack up everything, saying it would be best if we went over the letters together, at our own pace, at home in Riverdale. And the gown, she said, could use a good dry cleaning in the city. The same went for the dress I’d worn last night, and Mom said I was welcome to any of Isadora’s other dresses. “I bet you’d look very pretty in her style of clothes,” she’d said, regarding me affectionately, and I was pleased.

There was one more dress to deal with; as night fell, I
walked CeeCee’s lavender dress and her charm bracelet over to her house. After all my intense talk with Mom, I was actually ready for a dose of CeeCee’s lightness. Althea, answering the door, told me that CeeCee was in her room and that the Coopers were out for the evening. Jacqueline, Althea informed me as she waved me upstairs, was out with a young man—Macon, I presumed.

I knocked on CeeCee’s door, but she must have not heard me over the music blaring inside, so I slowly turned the knob, hoping I wasn’t overstepping my bounds.

“Are you decent?” I asked, pretending to cover my eyes.

“Oh, my gosh!” CeeCee cried, spinning away from her mirror. “Miranda! Don’t come in!”

She was wearing a short, ruffled nightie, and nothing seemed strange—until I noticed that she had a strip of white paper stuck to her chin. I glanced at her vanity, at the small tub of hot wax and the tongue depressors that sat there.

“I—I get these little hairs on my chin sometimes,” CeeCee told me unnecessarily, her face flaming. “I’ve been meaning to get electrolysis, but—I—I should have locked the door.” Her hands were trembling as she ripped the cloth from her chin in one motion.

“CeeCee, it’s okay,” I said, biting down on my lip to keep from giggling at her dramatic reaction. “It’s not a big deal.”

“Miranda, you cannot tell
anyone,
” CeeCee told me fiercely, slamming her door as I laid her dress and bracelet down on the bed. “It would ruin me.”

I turned to face her; there was an angry red mark on her chin, and her eyes were full of shame. “What are you talking about?” I asked, shaking my head. “You’re not the first girl who’s had to wax her chin. I think it’s pretty common.”

“It’s embarrassing,” CeeCee sputtered. “It’s a problem I have—I totally got it from my dad’s side of the family—they’re all
so
hairy.” She shuddered, then walked over to her bed, clearing aside clothes and magazines so she could sit. She motioned for me to sit beside her. “I really wish you hadn’t seen me doing this,” she said quietly.

I was thrown by how different she seemed from the typically chipper CeeCee. I sat down next to her, studying her pretty face. “Why?” I asked. “I’m, like, the
last
person you should be ashamed in front of.” I glanced down at my feet, encased in Converse.

“Please.” CeeCee rolled her big blue eyes at me. “You’re perfect, Miranda. You’re always so—I don’t know—in control and stuff. It’s totally intimidating.”

I was blindsided by her words. “You’re joking, right?” I exclaimed. “That’s basically how I feel about
you
and your friends,” I admitted with a shrug. “You must not realize how you girls come off to other people.”

CeeCee smirked. “Virginia and Jackie? Give me a break. Gin has a total inferiority complex—why do you think she’s always desperate for boy attention? And Jackie’s getting better, but she had major eating issues for a while there. She was all roly-poly a few years ago, and she hates it when anyone brings that up.”

I felt like CeeCee was speaking a foreign language. “That’s crazy,” I told her, trying to process everything.

“This is all top-secret, of course,” CeeCee said quickly, giving me a piercing look.

“Of course,” I echoed, clasping my hands in my lap. CeeCee looked so forlorn that I could only think of one way to cheer her up. “I have a secret, too,” I said, glancing back down at my sneakers.

“Ooh, what?” CeeCee whispered, inching closer to me. I could already feel her brightening. “I won’t tell the girls, I swear.”

“Do you remember that guy in the marine center?” I said, smiling as I glanced back up at CeeCee. “The one who was giving the tour?”

“Sort of,” CeeCee said, looking confused. “He was cute?”

I nodded, feeling my smile widen and my heartbeat pick up. “We kind of, um, had, like, a thing.”

“Shut
up
!” CeeCee squealed, bouncing up and down on the bed. “How? When? Oh, my gosh—a local boy? That is
so naughty of you, Miranda!” She gazed at me with something like admiration.

“Not really,” I laughed, blushing.

“Don’t worry,” CeeCee told me in a conspiratorial whisper. “Your secret’s safe with me.”

I wasn’t sure how sincere that promise was, but I didn’t really care. I didn’t want Leo to be a secret.

Except for what I had seen, or thought I had seen, underwater—that, I knew, would belong only between me and Leo.

I stood to go, and CeeCee gave me back my jeans and shirt from the other night, along with a quick hug. She’d, naturally, learned last night that Mom wasn’t selling The Mariner, so she said she couldn’t wait for us to hang out again soon.

“Oh, and I forgot!” CeeCee added as I was leaving. She reached out to touch my hair, beaming. “I really like your new look.”

I thanked CeeCee, realizing how comfortable I felt with my hair loose while wearing a standard outfit of vintage jeans and Converse. It was a nice balance.

Walking home from CeeCee’s house, my thoughts turned back to Leo. I wished he wasn’t out on his dad’s boat, that there was some way I could let him know the good news about my being able to return to Selkie. I knew I could call the marine center and leave a message for him, and I was sure he
had to have e-mail or a cell phone. But, as always was the case when Leo was in his world and I was in mine, those two worlds seemed very hard to bridge.

The next morning, though, as Mom and I walked onto the hot, sun-soaked dock with our bags full of old letters and old dresses, I glanced around hopefully—first toward the fog of Fisherman’s Village, and then at the glimmering blue ahead. Deep down, I was sure that, in his half-magic way, Leo had to know what had transpired and would show up at the last minute on his father’s boat to tell me how glad he was. But I didn’t see him.

Back on Glaucus Way, The Mariner was locked up, Llewellyn Thorpe’s book was still on the shelf in the study, everything was in its place. Yet I felt unsettled, unsteady, as if I were already on the boat.

Mom joined the line of passengers waiting for the ferry—among them the little blond boy and his parents who’d made the trip over with me—but I stood still on the wooden slats. I shielded my eyes from the glare, imagining Leo on his father’s boat and hoping to catch sight of a fishing trawler.

There was nothing.

Maybe Leo wasn’t really on a fishing trip, I thought, remembering our moment underwater. Maybe Selkie mermen needed
to return to the ocean for a few days, as a kind of maintenance. I smiled, realizing that was the sort of detail Llewellyn Thorpe would have put in his book.

The ocean seemed so ordinary today, so itself—the swells and dips, the way it caressed the dock—that it was hard to believe in the unbelievable. I peered into its murky depths, trying to make sense of everything the water could contain.

When I glanced up again, there was a white speck on the horizon, and my heart sprang into my throat. But as the speck grew larger and larger, I realized it was
Princess of the Deep.
A sense of disappointment overwhelmed me, and for the first time since Leo and I had argued outside his house, I doubted him. I gave a sigh that made Mom glance at me over the tops of her sunglasses.

Letting out its familiar belch, the pretty ferry began to dock. The boat seemed much smaller to my eyes than it had a few weeks ago;
had I grown?
I wondered.

It seemed so strange that our time on Selkie was over for now, that in a few hours we’d be back to the firm reality of New York. And I’d be starting my internship, and maybe—maybe—thinking about calling Linda. But what I now knew about Mom, and what she knew about me, would follow us.

As the waiting passengers surged forward, Mom took my arm and steered me toward the gangplank. My throat welling
with emotion, I glanced over my shoulder, still hoping to catch a glimpse of Leo’s golden hair.

“Come on, Miranda,” Mom said in her businesslike way. “Don’t dawdle.” The closer we got to the ferryboat—the closer to the mainland—the more she seemed to be returning to her old self, the accomplished surgeon.

Fighting tears, I stepped up to the gangplank and was fiercely studying my Converse when a gravelly male voice said, “We meet again, sweet pea.”