Liam sighs and shakes his head. “We’ll talk about this later. I have to get back on the roof.”
With that, he walks out the front door. A minute later, the thumping starts up again.
“Can I get you a snack?” I ask Olive.
“No, thank you. I’m too sad to eat,” she says.
And I don’t know if I’m just a total sucker, but I believe her.
I stand and watch her scratching Walt behind his ears with both of her little hands. His eyes are closed and he’s clearly in cat heaven. A loud bang shakes the house and Walt darts off her lap and under my new armchair, leaving Olive with her arms stretched out and empty.
I’m suddenly desperate to fix things for her. “Do you think your dad would mind if we go for a walk? I can’t take another minute of that awful racket. Plus, I haven’t tried the ice cream at the Eighty-One Flavors Shack down on the beach.”
She springs up onto her feet, a wide grin spread across her face. “He’ll definitely say yes.”
A few minutes later, we’ve obtained permission from Liam and are on our way through the backyard to the beach. Olive skips ahead of me, revived by the thought of a bubble gum ice cream cone. We’re almost out of the yard when Liam hollers, “Olive! You stay away from the cliffs!”
She spins around and shouts, “Okay, Dad!”
“I’m serious, Olive. If you fall in, I won’t be there to fish you out.”
“I know!” she calls, then she reaches for my hand as we continue on down the dirt path to the beachfront.
I feel a bit awkward and don’t quite know how tightly to hold on, but she grips hard enough for both of us. “You’d save me, wouldn’t you, Abby? If I fell in?”
I make a little clicking sound with my tongue. “Don’t think so, kiddo. I’m not exactly hero material. I’m also not exactly a strong swimmer.”
She looks up at me with her face scrunched up. “What? I thought you had to learn to swim before you could be a grown-up.”
“Who said I’m a grown-up?”
She purses her lips together and stares at me over her glasses.
“All right, fine. I do know how to swim. But it’s been about a hundred years since I’ve done it,” I say, giving her hand a light squeeze. “So let’s promise each other to steer clear of the cliffs, okay?”
“Okay. That’s not where you find the mermaid tears anyway.”
“Mermaid tears?”
“Yup, they’re on the sand part of the beach. Not the rocky part.” She points farther inland, away from where Bras d’Or Lake meets the Atlantic. “Can we go there after we get our ice cream? I want to see if my mom left me some of her tears today.”
“Is that something she does often?” I ask, wondering if Liam would mind me entertaining this notion.
Olive nods. “Uh-huh. All the time. ‘Cept in the winter because it’s too cold, so all the merfolks have to stay down at the deep part of the lake. Otherwise, their fins would freeze off.”
“Oh, I didn’t know that.”
“It’s true,” she says. “Hey! I bet your husband left you some too.”
Her words are jarring to me and, although it’s against my better judgment, part of me needs to find out more. “Were all the mermaids humans before?”
“Yup. Well, they’re notallmermaids. Some are mermen,” she says, skipping while she holds my hand.
“Oh, I see.”
“That’s why they leave their tears on the shore—so the humans they love know they’re thinking of them.”
I will not cry. This is all just nonsense.
