There is nothing laughable about the six-foot skeleton standing eerily upright, its form suspended by a thin metal wire that runs from the skull down through a narrow ribcage, past flared fin bones at the hips, and along an extended vertebral column that tapers into a sweeping, curved tail. Delicate, spindly bones fan from the tail’s edges, resembling skeletal fingers stretching a couple dozen inches on either side.
“They come for the fantastical, Wren, so that’s what we gotta give them,” Dad says every time he sets up a new display. “We need them to be so wowed that they have to tell everyone they know how much they love McCleave’s.”
Personally, I find the whole thing to be rather grotesque. Not just the skeleton’s wide eye sockets and sharp teeth, but the waywe’ve accessorized her over the years. A crudely carved whale bone knife, a shark tooth cuff, and a seashell necklace, all conveniently available for purchase in the gift shop.
Tourists eat it up.
Usually.
But this tourist girl doesn’t walk straight toward the display like most people do. Instead, she turns back to me.
“What else can you tell me about how the museum started and the kind of early exhibits it had?” Before I can do more than blink at a question literally no one else has ever asked me, she glances past me. “Oh, is that him, Captain McCleave?”
I follow her gaze, and my stomach tightens.
She’s looking at the McCleave’s History display wall.
I keep my expression neutral, but I really don’t want to be here while she studies it.
She scans the display, skipping over the daguerreotype photo of Captain Lawrence McCleave himself on his schooner, theGreasy Luck, in favor of an early copy of the 1889 Ewer Map of Nantucket Island (now sporting a few colorful mermaid additions not included in the reverend’s meticulously detailed original). She barely glances at the artist’s rendition of a living Nerissa—just long enough to read the caption declaring her a member of theHydronymphuspescispecies, a supposed Asian lineage of merfolk.
And then—just as I expect—her attention turns back to the photograph of Captain McCleave.
Then to me.
Then back to him.
Her lips twitch. “Your name is Wren? As in Lawrence? Are you related to Captain McCleave?”
I brace.
Then, right on cue, a grin spreads across her face. “You are.” She gestures between me and the photo. “The dark wavy hair, the eyes, and that jawline—” A splash of pink colors her cheeks as she realizes what she just said.
I grip the edge of the counter, fighting not to react.
Fortunately, a little girl of around six is pawing through a bin of stuffed starfish at that moment and has angled herself just far enough around to see that I’m not sitting on a regular chair behind the counter.
“Hey, you’re in a wheelchair.”
Observant kid. And by far the observation I prefer over anyone telling me I look like the good captain there. I avoid looking at Tourist Girl as I unlock my wheels and turn to face the kid. “I am.”
“Did you get hurt?”
Gotta love the bluntness of children. I’m used to it though. “I broke my back four years ago. Don’t try jumping off Sunset Cliffs, okay?”
She bobs her pigtailed head, moving to study me. “You look like you can walk, but you can’t?”
“Nope, no walking for me. My chair gets me everywhere I need to go though.” I pop into a quick wheelie to demonstrate while I cast a glance around for the mom in case this turns into full-on interrogation. She’s hunched over a stroller trying to keep a toddler from grabbing at a row of blown-glass siren figurines.
“You should get a bright blue chair or maybe a yellow one,” the kid says, unimpressed with my solid black frame when I set the casters back down. “Or lights!” She kicks up her sneakered footthen brings it down hard on the ground to show me the way it lights up. “See how mine do?”
I can’t not smile at that. “I’ll look into it.”
“Is that why you work here? Because they don’t have any stairs?”
My smile turns tightlipped. “Uh-huh.”
The kid runs off, sneaker lights flashing when her mom calls her over, and I’m left with just Tourist Girl again. She’s moved right up to the museum’s history wall to read the rest of it, while casting increasingly frequent glances my way.
