“Okay, but how much are you willing to give up for it? Do you really want to spend the rest of your summer in a mermaid museum, wasting all your free time with me, staring at an old diary that we may never fully understand? Or worse, we will, and it’ll confirm what everybody but your dad already believes?”
“Whoa.” I laugh a little and push my bangs back off my forehead. “Look, it’s late and we’re tired, and I think we both need a break from the past.”
He doesn’t let it go. “It’s a fair question.”
“We have different opinions on that.”
“We usually do.” He pauses. “So?”
I think about the path my dad wore down in his rug and shake my head. “I don’t feel like I’m giving up all that much. I like the museum and trying to read this diary with you. Maybe I’m not getting to spend as much time with my mom and sister as I thought I would, but they understand.” Mom does, sort of, and Goldie will too once I get to share everything we find with her. “And I’m not obsessed in the same way he was. Don’t get me wrong, I want to know, but I wouldn’t sacrifice everything else in my life to find out.” Then, something slips out—something I’ve never admitted to myself before. “Like he did.”
I glance at Wren, gauging if he really wants to hear this. He’s looking right back at me, brows furrowed slightly, waiting for me to continue.
Finally, I say, “My dad was adopted. Did I ever tell you that? His parents died when he was a baby, and it was actually friends of theirs who adopted him. Really nice people, but he never thought of them as his family. They took him away from the island and he spent the rest of his life trying to get back a piece of what he lost.I won’t pretend it wasn’t an obsession; it was. He wanted to learn everything he could about his parents, and his grandparents, and everyone that came before them.” I stare down at the notebook in my lap, running my fingers over the worn leather. “And when I started showing an interest in our family history, I became interesting to him, too.” There’s a note of surprise in my voice that even I hear. I’ve never thought about it that way before, but I know instantly that it’s true. “His obsession ruined our family, I know that. I used to blame my mom when I was younger, but he was the one who wouldn’t stay. This is where he wanted to be, even if we couldn’t afford to uproot and be here with him.” I shift to face Wren, tucking my legs under me. “And now I’m here, because... I don’t know, it makes me feel like I’m closer to him somehow.” My voice falters slightly. “Is that pathetic?”
I feel Wren’s gaze on me, intense, and for a moment, I can’t help wishing it was his hand instead. “Patheticisn’t a word I’d use to describe you.”
Heat pulses through my chest, not just from his words, but from the way he says them—deep yet soft, almost like a caress. At least, that’s how they feel.
Actually, I’m feeling a lot of things right now, and I’m not sure I should be feeling any of them. I know I shouldn’t be encouraging either one of us to open up like this, but I can’t seem to stop that either.
“Will you tell me about your mom?”
“What, I owe you now because you told me about your dad?” His gaze trails over my face, and I shiver.
“No,” I say quickly, “but you’re not the only one who wonders sometimes.”
He takes a long breath. “What do you want to know?”
“Is she still alive?”
His answer is immediate. “I don’t know.”
“When was the last time you saw her?”
“She left when I was three.”
He’s not offering any additional information or elaborating at all. He’s making me ask for every detail.
“Has she tried to reach out at all, or have you tried to talk to her?”
“No.”
“What about your dad?”
He doesn’t answer, and I realize he probably wouldn’t even know.
“You know you could just tell me what happened instead of making me drag it out of you.”
He stares at me, a slight smile curling at the edges of his mouth. “I could.”
I inhale through my nose. Even now, he’s pushing my buttons. But before I can ask another question, he starts speaking.
“She was a tourist visiting the island with her family during the summers until she met the boy who made her want to stay.”
A tourist. No wonder he wasn’t warm and friendly when he met me.
“My dad, he was gone from the start, would have followed her halfway around the world if she’d let him,” he says quietly, almost distant. His fingers tap once on the steering wheel, then still. “But then my grandfather died and the museum became his responsibility. By then I was already on the way and I guess she felt trapped. Trapped by this island, trapped by a man whose novelty quicklywore off, and then trapped by a baby that would forever tie her to both of them.
