The Mermaid's Secret

 

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For Finn and Bridget

 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Once again I am indebted to Kristin Sevick, who helped give this story legs (and fins), and Marlene Stringer for her sage advice and unflappable support. I am so thankful to the rock stars at Forge—Bess Cozby, Emily Mullen, Todd Manza, Tim Green for the amazing cover. Big thanks to the Newburyport Police Department for giving me a window into their world. Meg Mitchell Moore, what would I do without you? Lise Goddard, thank you for ferreting out the underwater details with me (next time I'll use the predatory nudibranch as a plot twist—no one will see it coming!). Mom and Dad, your encouragement is endless and always appreciated. Finn and Bridget, with whom I've spent many a low-tide to high-tide beach day, you make it all worthwhile. And, of course, my love and gratitude to Michael, my first reader.

 

N
E'
H
WAS, THE
M
ERMAID

A long time ago there was an Indian, with his wife and two daughters. They lived by a great lake, or the sea, and the mother told her girls never to go into the water there, for that, if they did, something would happen to them.

They, however, deceived her repeatedly. When swimming is prohibited it becomes delightful. The shore of this lake sands away out or slopes to an island. One day they went to it, leaving their clothes on the beach. The parents missed them.

The father went to seek them … The girls swam up to the sand, but could get no further. Their father asked them why they could not. They cried that they had grown to be so heavy that it was impossible. They were all slimy; they grew to be snakes from below the waist. After sinking a few times in this strange slime they became very handsome, with long black hair and large, bright black eyes, with silver bands on their neck and arms.

—Charles G. Leland,
The Algonquin Legends of New
England or Myths and Folk Lore of the Micmac,
Passamaquoddy, and Penobscot Tribes,
1884

 

O
NE

Out the windows of Kotoki-Pun Diner, I squint into the morning sun toward the Atlantic and watch a set roll in. The last wave spikes into a perfect peak and peels right. If I close my eyes, I can imagine myself in that little pocket of power, ripping down the face.

“More coffee, Jess?” Anne-Marie asks, walking up to my table with a glass carafe smudged in fingerprints. Her eyes aren't on me; they're watching the ocean as well.

“I'm good,” I say. I haven't even touched my first cup.

“Got a lobster omelet for the special. Side of coleslaw.” She straightens her apron.

“Lobster? For breakfast?” I pick at my nails, flaking black polish onto my bare legs.

“Honey, it's summer. We'd put lobster in the brownies if
they'd
buy it.” She points her chin toward the sea, the waves, the distant ferries under sail somewhere between the mainland and our island.

A breeze blows in and I can smell the salt water. “Did you know that lobsters are part of the cockroach family? It's literally like eating bugs.”

Anne-Marie doesn't flinch. “Then they're in good company in our kitchen.” She taps her pencil against her notepad. “So, what'll it be? Haven't got all day.”

“I'm waiting for someone. Can you give me a few minutes?”

She looks down at me. Her hard eyes soften. “Sure thing, honey.” Waitresses at Kotoki-Pun Diner are supposed to be prickly and tough. They're always telling customers to “Hurry it up” or “Get your own damn ketchup.” If you talk back, they skimp on your order or eighty-six the fries on you, even when you know that places like Kotoki-Pun Diner have at least five years' worth of frozen french fries stored in their walk-ins. For some reason, tourists love the abuse. I guess it's because people are always trying so hard to say the right thing that no one ever says what they're really thinking. Hearing the truth—for example, that you have no business ordering a strawberry sundae after chowing down a half-pound burger and side order of onion rings—takes people off guard. And being taken off guard is what makes people laugh. Wakes them up to the moment.

But I get special treatment. Special, awful treatment. With a side of pity.

Outside, a police siren wails. I lift my hoodie over my head and slink into the booth, the skin on the back of my legs sticking to red vinyl. Blue lights flash across the tin ceiling.

The diner door swings open and Sheriff walks in. There's a slouch in his shoulders, which makes him look old and broken, like a schooner with a snapped mast.

All the locals in the diner know him and look up with reverence, or else sympathy. Hard to tell the difference. They nod, greet him with “Sheriff.” He knows them all and nods back. “Gary.” “Jean.” “Louise.”

The line cook looks up, wipes his glistening forehead with the back of a sleeve, and gives him a “Morning, Sheriff.” He swats at something I can't see behind the grill. Probably a cockroach.

The woman called Louise keeps looking at him long after he's passed her table. She has a smile on her face like she's just been crowned Miss Ne'Hwas, Queen of the Lobster Parade. It gives me the creeps. Not just because it's unnerving to see old people flirt, but because he's not available. Look at the wedding ring, Louise. I want to tell her to go fish in some other pond.

But I resist.

He stops at my booth. Everyone's eyes are on me—the line cook, that Louise lady. I know what they're thinking. The delinquent with the hoodie and the black eye makeup, busted before breakfast. Must be serious. Drugs. Solicitation. Grand theft.

“You had to use the siren?” I say.

“I was running late.”

“It's embarrassing.”

He sits down, pulls off his hat, and places it on the seat next to him. “For you,” he says, and slides a box with a pink ribbon across the table. “Happy birthday, Jess.”

I try to smile, but I've forgotten how. I feel the muscles in my cheeks draw my lips toward my ears. The skin tightens across my forehead. But my eyes don't change. It's a cartoon smile drawn by a big cartoonist hand in the sky.

“Next time, can you just pick up a phone to let me know you're running late? Like a normal person?”

“I don't trust mobile phones,” he says. “Reception's spotty on the island.”

You'd think we live on the moon. But it's not quite the moon. It's Ne'Hwas—pronounced nuh-
he
-wuz, as all tourist brochures by the cash register point out. According to the plethora of marketing materials designed to drum up summer business, we are “a quaint island in the Gulf of Maine with lush mountains and glorious beaches … a charming retreat for the whole family … a world-class fishing destination … a perfect mix of rugged nature and refined living.” If I were to write my own brochure, I might add “isolated, suffocating, and haunted.”

I pull off the ribbon and open the box. Inside is a comb carved of bone, its prongs sharp and buffed to a polish. On the handle, four concentric spirals swirl outward from a star inlaid with black onyx.

“It's the Passamaquoddy symbol for strength,” Sheriff says. “I got it at a strange little shop downtown. Right near your apartment, actually. Lady in the shop told me it's made out of sperm whalebone.”

I turn it over, admiring the intricate carving, the burnished bone. It's a unique piece. Very cool. Very me. I'm thankful it's not something girly that I'd never wear, like a pair of pewter sand dollar earrings from the Anchor's Away gift shop downtown.

“It's legal,” Sheriff says. “I checked. The tribe gets special dispensation for collecting whalebones under the Marine Mammal Protection Act.”

I fumble through a series of responses, trying to find an appropriate way to express my feelings. Finally, I mumble out, “Thanks, Dad.”

He smiles.

I never call him Dad. He's always been Sheriff. He earned that nickname when he was a kid, and it stuck. Apparently, he was always keeping other kids in the neighborhood safe, facing off against bullies, rescuing people from rip currents and rising tides. He was the sheriff in town, there to protect and serve all.

Well, almost all.

I pull off my hood and let my hair fall down to my shoulders. I twist it into a bun, and stick the comb in. “What do you think?”

“It's very becoming on you,” Sheriff says. “She had one with the symbol for harmony, but I thought this suited you better.”

“Yeah, harmony isn't exactly my thing.”

“I was going to get you a pretty little sand dollar bracelet,” he says.

I smirk.

“But that old woman was quite insistent on this comb. She's Passamaquoddy, just like you. Figured she probably knew more about it than I do.”

“Sometimes I think you're more interested in my Passamaquoddy roots than Mom,” I say.

“It's who you are, Jess. You have to honor that. Your heritage is as old as the rocks that line Kotoki-Pun Point.”

“I'm half Creary, too,” I say, but as I look into Sheriff's blue eyes and freckled Irish skin, I don't see any of me in him. I inherited my mom's dark skin, high cheekbones, and golden eyes. I definitely look more Native American than Irish cop.

“Did you hear from her?” he asks, cradling the cup of coffee Anne-Marie has set down for him.

“Not even a card.”

“Well,” Sheriff says, blowing into his cup, “don't hold it against her if she doesn't call you today. She's hurting.”

“We're all hurting.”

The first year after you lose someone, there are no birthday parties, because celebrating doesn't even enter your mind. Holidays only serve as reminders of what you've lost—the first Thanksgiving Kay and I won't stay up all night watching a
Godfather
marathon; the first Christmas Kay and I won't crack ourselves up by sneaking chunks of coal into Sheriff's stocking. The birthday Kay would have turned twenty-four. These are days that are best left ignored. And people understand. By the second year, though, the world has moved on, and expects you to move along with it. Only, I haven't. And neither has Sheriff.