“Oh,” Olive says, her eyes lighting up. “If you see a very beautiful mermaid with a big floppy ponytail and a baby boy, that’s my mom and my brother Malcolm.Hey, I wonder if they know your husband? I bet they do. What was his name?”
“Isaac,” I say, my voice wavering.
Olive looks up at me. “Don’t worry, Abby. He’s okay. They’re all happy down there under the water. It’s the most wonderful place ever. No one has to go to school or work, and there’s the most beautiful music because lots of them play harps and fiddles, and they all sing. And they dance, except it’s so much better than our dancing because they can twirl so fast without getting dizzy." She lets go of my hand and twirls around with her arms stretched out to the side. “Isaac is probably dancing right now.”
I press my lips together as hard as I can, but there’s no stopping it. My eyes sting and my vision blurs. His face appears in my mind’s eye—happy and young and free. A sudden sense of desperation comes over me. I need this to be true.
She stops twirling and puts her hand on my forearm. “Are you crying?”
“No, no,” I say, faking a smile. "I just…have allergies.”
“Oh yeah,” she says, “My dad gets those sometimes too when he’s sad.”
* * *
It’s evening now and I’m sitting outside at my new wrought-iron table sipping some chilled chardonnay. After Olive and Liam left today, I needed to get out of the house for a while, so I went for a drive to the liquor store. The table was waiting for me in front of McDavid’s Hardware with a thirty percent off sign on top of it. So I made a quick U-turn and an impulse buy to make me feel better.
The wine is kicking in as the last of the oranges and pinks disappear into the water, and the stars are lit one by one. A white salad plate sits in the center of the table. It has a handful of mermaid tears on it—or, as people who aren’t Olive call them, sea glass. Most of the pieces we found this afternoon are brown, a few are green, but there is one tiny blue one that catches my eye. Olive is sure it belongs to Malcolm because only the youngest merfolk cry blue tears. I pluck it off the plate, then hold the round, pleasing object in my palm.
I know it’s nothing more than a shard of a broken bottle, but somehow it seems like much more. I can see why Olive believes what she does. It seems almost magical that only time and the tide are required to smooth away all the sharp edges so we can safely hold broken glass in our hands. Maybe grief can be buffed in the same way, until our memories can’t hurt us anymore.
Without thinking, I pick up my phone and text Liam.
Hey, can you back out on Mrs. No Brien? Walt’s really choked up that Olive won’t be coming over anymore.
A minute later, my phone rings. “Hello, Abby’s Babysitting Service, where bread isn’t just for fat grown-ups. Abby speaking.”
“Abby, I know Olive was pulling out all the stops today,” Liam says in a quiet tone, “But I promise you she’ll be fine at the O’Brien’s. They’re nice people despite what that boy said.”
“Yeah, but Walt just won’t stop giving me the huge sad eyes. I can’t take it anymore,” I say. “What if it’s a business proposition? You take babysitting fees off my bill? At least then I’ll be making some money for a change.”
“Youdorealize what happens at the end of the month? Summer holidays. That means all day, five days a week for the entire summer. That’s a lot of days.”
I hear her voice in the background and it tugs at my cold heart.
Liam’s voice sounds far away when he says, “I’ll be right back inside. You get on with your reading.” Then he comes back to me. “It’s overtwo months.”
“I know how long summer holidays are. Please? I want to do this.”
He sighs, so I keep going. “Come on, you and I both know that No Brien hordes all the homemade bread. What kind of sadist does that?”
That finally breaks him because he starts to laugh. “And you’re sure about this?”
“Am I evernotsure?”
“Right. I keep forgetting.” He pauses, then says, “All right, then.”
“Really?” I ask, feeling almost giddy.
“Sure.”
“Walt will be thrilled.”
Chapter Seventeen
Life is really simple, but men insist on making it complicated.
~ Confucius
