The Mermaid Collector (31 page)

“They fight.”

Startled, Tess glanced up and found a woman in the doorway, her shiny hair falling over one shoulder like black taffy, a red-haired infant resting against the other. The woman made a sweeping gesture with her hand, rolling her dark eyes. “One goes that way; one goes another way. Horrible. Like little lions. Growling and snarling. Dumb.”

Tess stared at the woman, confused. But there was no confusion in the color of the baby’s hair, a familiar shade of cherrywood.

“Who are you?” Tess asked.

“Who are
you
?”

“I’m Tess.”

“I’m Petra. She’s Mia.” Petra paused, sizing Tess up before she said, “So, which one you want?”

“Excuse me?”

“Dean or Thomas, which one you want?”

Tess smiled, liking the woman at once. It was as if
they’d met at a clearance rack and both eyed the same pile of jeans, only to realize they needed different sizes.

“I want Tom,” Tess said firmly.

Petra smiled slightly. “Good.”

“Your daughter’s beautiful.”

“I think too,” Petra said, bouncing Mia gently in her arms. “You have babies?”

“No. No babies.”

“You want babies with Thomas?”

“Oh God, I only just met him.”

Petra shrugged. “So what?”

So what, indeed,
Tess thought, smiling too.

Mia stretched out a tiny fist, like a little apricot; Tess reached for it, the baby’s pink fingers curling over her thumb. Why hadn’t Dean told her he had a child?

Tess recalled her complicity in their earlier battle, the weight of guilt heavy again, flattening her smile. Whatever had happened here was her fault too.

“Where’s Tom?” she asked.

Petra pointed down the road, to the lighthouse. “There.”

TESS COULD SEE THE TOWER
door was cracked from the far end of the walkway as she sprinted down the wooden planks. She stuck her head inside, smelling the cold, wet brick, and called up into the darkness, seeing the trapdoor closed.

“Tom?”

She waited, hearing nothing.

“Tom, please. I need to see you.”

After a long moment, there was a creak, then a loud bang as the trapdoor opened, bathing the steps in light. Tess advanced, moving quickly up the curved metal stairs and poking her head into the bright expanse of the lantern room. The half door to the gallery had been opened, letting in soft bursts of sea air and the insistent clang of the chimes.

Tom sat on the other side of the circle crouched against the curved wall, his legs drawn up and his hands drooping over his knees.

Tess came all the way in and closed the trapdoor behind her. When she came around to see Tom fully, she gasped at the stain of color trimming his right eye. He wouldn’t look at her; his stare remained fixed on the gallery and the sea beyond.

She dropped down to her knees.

“I can’t do it anymore.” His voice was flat, faraway. “I can’t fix it. I kept thinking I could, but I can’t.” Tom swerved his gaze to hers then, his pained eyes pooling with regret. “I hit him, Tess. I hit him hard.”

She scooted over to him, taking his hands into hers. “You were upset.”

“I never should have brought us here.”

“Don’t say that.”

Dropping his head back against the metal wall, Tom closed his eyes, forgetting his swelling, and winced at the immediate jolt of pain. Tess winced too.

“I know I could make it right if he’d just let me, but he won’t let me,” Tom said. “All I want to do is save him from himself, and he won’t
let me
.”

“Who ever said he needed saving?” Tess reached up to stroke Tom’s brow, just above the maroon crescent of skin.

“I didn’t mean that about your mother,” he said. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“You were right,” she said.

“Don’t be so sure.”

“I am.”

Tom took her face into his hands; her eyes filled at once.

“He wants to leave,” Tom said.

“So maybe he will.” Tess saw panic flash in Tom’s battered eyes. She drew closer, arching up against him, his hands lowering to hold her.

“I can’t go back there, Tess. I don’t know what to say to him.”

She combed her fingers through his hair, dropping gentle kisses along his hairline and down the middle of his brow.

“Say good-bye.”

WHEN THEY WERE YOUNG, SEVEN
and eight, Dean had found an injured luna moth in the backyard. It had been covered in ants, and Dean had flicked them off, only to find the insect’s pale green wings streaked with its own blood. Still, Tom had been certain they could save it.

“You can’t hold him like that; you’ll crush him,” Tom had chastised when Dean had arrived, the failing moth cupped tightly in one hand.

“Just let me do it,” Dean had said, shoving Tom’s hand away. “I’m gonna put him in my bug box with some fruit.”

“That’s butterflies. Luna moths don’t eat fruit. They don’t eat anything.”

“Just let me do it my way, Tommy, okay?” Dean’s face had scrunched up like the knot of a balloon, and Tom had stayed back, watching from the doorway as Dean had raided the refrigerator, tearing the peel off an orange and stuffing wedges into the mesh container. But that night while Dean slept, Tom rose to examine the moth. Finding it still clinging to life, he carefully replaced the orange pieces with bark and dried leaves and watched it for almost an hour, sure it would now recover.

In the morning, the luna moth lay unmoving at the bottom of the box.

“Why couldn’t you just let me do it my way?” Dean had sulked at breakfast.

Because he’d been so sure he knew better, Tom thought now as he strode through the hedges, bound for the beach, the memory returning to him sharp and clear. Because he’d been so sure Dean didn’t know anything. Because it should have been easy to make it all right. Was that how it was for all siblings? Tom wondered as he walked. Was the order of things laid down in the womb, or was it built in pieces over time, brick by pathological brick?

Tom would never know, and what did it matter? He’d worked too hard to bend something that would never yield. Tess had helped him to see that. They’d spent the afternoon together, exploring the rocks, the boathouse, each other. They’d made love in the old skiff, its bottom gritty with sand, that the lighthouse keepers had used to check the channel markers. Then Tom had told her about the party, and about Frank. Tess had told him about her mother, the man named Pete she’d made the cheesecake for, about the first time she had laid eyes on Buzz and why the smell of bonfire smoke could always make her cry.

Now the sun was falling at last. Tom found Dean leaned against the rocks, bobbing Mia gently on his knees, the baby savagely gumming her own tiny fist.

Tom approached Dean slowly.

“I can’t believe Petra let you bring her down here,” Tom said.

“She doesn’t know. She’s sleeping.” Dean motioned to the pebbled sand. “You can sit down, you know.”

“All right.” Tom dropped beside Dean, seeing his brother’s lip was still swollen. Tom frowned at his handiwork and looked away.

“You look worse, you know,” Dean said, catching his brother’s study and his shifting gaze.

“Does it hurt?” Tom asked.

“Does yours?”

“Like a son of a bitch,” Tom admitted.

“No shit.” The brothers looked a moment at each other.
Mia burst into a fit of gurgling cries, twisting madly in Dean’s arms.

“She wants to check you out,” Dean said, shifting her around.

Tom watched the infant, riveted. The skin of her cheeks reminded him of a new mushroom, unblemished, barely touched. The wrinkled soles of her feet were so unbelievably clean, like blank sheets of paper. She knew nothing of what had gone on between him and Dean, nothing of the event they’d endured on that frozen, empty road—the loss, the disappointments, the useless rage. It was amazing to him, seeing someone so unaware, so blissful, so unfettered. No wonder people adored babies. They were the best proof of hope, the most potent reminders of innocence.

“Christ,” Tom whispered. “She’s perfect.”

“You can hold her if you want,” Dean said. “She’s really light. It’s crazy how light.”

“How do I…?”

“Just like this.” Dean guided Mia into Tom’s cupped arms. “You want to help her hold her head up. She’s still kinda weak up there.”

God, she
was
light, Tom thought, letting Mia settle against him. He’d expected something much heavier, more cumbersome, like a bag of groceries.

“She’s your niece, you know.”

Niece
. In all the chaos and the worry, Tom hadn’t let that one simple truth sink in. Mia stared up at him, a lacquer of drool glistening on her lips. He smiled at once, helpless.

“You’re right, you know,” Tom said, his eyes pained as he turned his gaze to Dean. “Everything you said about me is true.”

“No, it’s not. I’m an asshole of the highest order. I’m a fuckup and a piece of shit, and if I were my brother, I would have put a pillow over my face years ago.”

“Shut up.” Tom reached over and pulled Dean to him, hugging him fiercely and squeezing his eyes shut as the tears seeped out.

Dean gently pushed him off. “Watch it—you’ll smother her.”

“I won’t,” Tom said, sitting back. Mia looked up at him with continued delight.

“It looks like your mermaid and Petra are best friends.”

Tom turned to see Tess and Dean’s girlfriend making their way down the beach. Petra’s outrage was audible in an instant, a breathless stream of Greek. Tess just smiled at Tom; he smiled back.

“She will freeze!” Petra scooped Mia out of Tom’s arms and held her close, rubbing gentle circles on her tiny back, glaring between the brothers as if they had been feeding the baby sand.

“Just wait till I get her swimming, Pet,” Dean said, climbing to his feet. “She’ll turn into a mermaid, she’ll love it so much. Just ask
her
.” Dean nodded toward Tess and winked. “The water’s full of ’em here.”

There was another surge of Greek, but this time when she’d finished her tirade, Petra gave Dean a soft, curious
look. Tom had never seen her so soft. Her eyes seemed almost liquid on Dean, her lips plump and inching toward a smile. Dean grabbed her at the waist, giving her a deep and hungry kiss until she fussed at him to release her, but when he did, she was smiling and blushing a fierce pink that made her eyes look nearly purple.

Tom felt Tess’s fingers slip between his. She tugged. “Come on.”

“Where are we going?” he asked.

“To the Dash,” Tess said. “Petra and I agreed on it.”

Tom blinked at her. “You did?”

Dean appeared between them, swinging an arm over each. “So you wanna do it?”

“I’m not dressed,” Tom contested.

“Well, no shit.” Dean laughed. “That’s the point! You go in as you are.”

Tom frowned, certain he didn’t want to. He
couldn’t
.

Dean pulled Tom to his feet. “Come on. We’re going in together. All of us.”

“I’m too tired to swim, Dean.”

“That’s the beautiful thing, Tommy.” Dean smiled. “You don’t have to swim,” he said. “You just have to
float
.”

PEARL KNEW WHILE SHE SLEPT
. She blinked awake in the darkness, as if someone had shaken her. That was how it was with sisters.

The news came in anguishing pieces. Linus and three others had drowned themselves. Lydia had gone out on the gallery to hang a set of wind chimes in tribute to her lost husband and, in her grief, had jumped to her death. The baby, Pearl’s beloved nephew, Henry, was with neighbors, a man and his wife.

Pearl traveled north in a state of numbness, the landscape from her train window a never-ending blur of sea and sky and balding pines. She’d come alone, Rachel’s husband claiming he didn’t dare let his wife go. “The doctor has given her a sedative,” he’d told Pearl that morning. “She’s barely come to since the news.”

How barren the property looked to Pearl when she stepped out of the carriage. She hadn’t thought it could look any lonelier than it had that first time she’d come to visit, her heart sinking in her chest when she thought of her beautiful baby sister, left to blow away on this grim and bleak point of land. Knowing there’d be a baby, a tiny fire of life to warm them all, had been tremendous comfort.

She didn’t bother going inside the house; there was no point in it. There was nothing in it to keep. Even the pieces Pearl had recognized from their youth, the wall hangings, the love seat, the table with the chipped corner their father had accidentally snapped off trying to carry into the house only days after finishing it. None of it seemed to belong to her anymore. It belonged instead to the house, and so she would leave it all. All that could be saved now, all that mattered, was Henry.

The Keenes’ cottage seemed to Pearl to be sunken deep into the earth as she walked toward it, the perimeter trimmed in wild hedges of white and pink sea roses.

I’ll be fine; I promise. You’ll come after the baby’s born. Really, you’ll see. I won’t let you leave.…

Sarah Keene had already opened the door, having been watching the window frantically all that morning. She’d not put Henry down, not once, not even when she’d had to use the privy. She knew how babies felt things. Henry wasn’t so small that he didn’t know his mother was gone. Sarah was certain if she set him down, if she left him alone for even an instant, the child would never recover.

“It’s so awful.” Sarah wept as soon as Pearl stepped inside. The woman’s sleeves and apron hem were damp. She’d been crying for so long, blowing her nose and wiping her eyes on anything she could. “I never should have let her go up there alone. She had made the strangest mobile. She meant to hang it, she said. God only knows why. I should have known then that something was wrong. Your sister barely ever set foot in that lighthouse, and then she went out on the gallery like that? Please believe me, if I’d known, I never would have…” Sarah clapped a hand to her mouth to quiet a sob. Pearl touched the woman on the arm.

“It’s not your fault. You must never think that.”

It was then that Pearl glanced to the window and saw Angus Keene step out of the shed. She recognized the man at once, the one who’d been such a help to Lydia and Linus, before things had gone so terribly wrong.