Seven Tears into the Sea (9 page)

Fear came raging back like the wave that had knocked me off my feet that night years ago. Echoes of old gossip screeched in my memory. In Siena Bay there'd be people who remembered.

“Nana, I really don't feel like it.” I tried to look pitiful and overworked.

“Rubbish,” Nana said. She tossed me a square of silver-and-black silk, another shawl, I guessed. I caught it. “Bring that, and we won't even have to stop at the cottage.”

She hustled me to the door, hands fluttering as if she were shooing gulls away from a picnic lunch.

I opened the front door and stopped before crossing the threshold. Nana's car had been moved around to the front of the Inn. It was a block-long white Cadillac.

“Totally foolish in terms of gas consumption,” Nana said, fondly. “But it's a classic, a relic of my midlife crisis, and I plan to be buried in it.”

“Nana,” I yelped. I didn't know which outrage to address first: her midlife crisis or her funeral plans, so I did neither. “Can you even drive with that cast?” I asked as she took a brass ring of keys from a hook by the door.

“No,” she said. “But you can.” Then she tossed the keys at me and said, “Catch!”

“I think I can walk to the curb from here,” Nana joked. She opened her car door and peered down. I was about a foot too far out in the street.

Parking this big boat of a car in a town crowded with tourists and partyers was almost impossible. Siena Bay's main street was blocked off with sawhorses draped with sparkly lights, so I cruised down side streets until I spotted the last parking space on a steep hill overlooking the bay.

Somehow, I maneuvered us into it, but I didn't do a very good job.

“I can make another pass through town,” I offered, reluctantly.

“No need, dear,” Nana said, releasing her seat belt and climbing out. “They start shutting down at midnight.”

Ha ha. It was only seven thirty.

“But do set the parking brake, please.”

I set it as hard as I could, then curbed the wheels like I did when I parked on the hills of San Francisco. If Nana's car started rolling from here, it wouldn't stop until it was headlight-deep in sea bottom.

Nana leaned on my arm a little as we walked uphill toward the gathering, which sounded a lot more like a street fair than a farmers' market.

We passed booths with avocados and artichokes; pyramids of kiwi; baskets of blackberries, strawberries, and cherries; but we also saw vendors selling blown glass figurines, hand-carved wooden toys, and pottery mugs in smooth, bulbous shapes.

Music pulsed through the aimless crowd.

“Hear the flute and bagpipe?” Nana asked. “That will be Red and Ian. You remember Red O'Malley, don't you?”

I didn't, but the same stiff breeze off the bay that brought the aroma of exotic food brought the sounds of a Scottish pipe band and the thudding of a drum which echoed my heartbeat.

“The food booths are down this way,” Nana said. I let her tug me along, but I was scanning the crowd, looking for a familiar face. One familiar face.

Strings of lights festooned the booths and crisscrossed overhead. Swaying in the wind, they flickered, creating an uncertain twilight.

“Siena Bay has changed a lot, hasn't it?” Nana asked, as if she'd noticed my head swinging around, taking it all in. “The Chamber of Commerce tries to keep the atmosphere of an old fishing village, but—”

I followed Nana's gesture and focused beyond the booths.

I remembered coming down to the docks at dawn with Mom. She'd buy me hot chocolate from Sal's Fish and Chips, which was the only thing open that early. We'd watch sun-browned men shout and sling around nets before putting off into the turquoise water.

Now, though the nautical decorations remained, they draped a dozen places I could find in the Valencia mall.

“Someone must still fish,” I insisted.

“They try,” Nana allowed. “In fact, most of them still put out to sea every morning, but they have to supplement.”

Supplement.
Was that a nice word for welfare? Or something shady? Nana had said the gang in town was made up of fishermen's sons with nothing to do.

“They say it's fished out and blame the sea lions and tourists,” Nana went on. “I blame it on pollution and the industrial fisheries, but not many listen to an old woman. I'm glad we're up the coast a ways.”

Somehow, this little talk didn't dampen our spirits.

Nana bought us savory meat on bamboo skewers and cups of Thai noodles. We drank lemonade, and I kept looking for him.

Nana reintroduced me to old friends of the family. Gina Leoni ran the Siena Bay grocery, Red O'Malley and his brother Ian owned the Buoy's Club bar. Sadie Linnet had been my second-grade teacher before she opened Village Books.

If any of them thought I was crazy before, they must have wondered if I was medicated now. I admit I was distracted. I nodded and smiled and kept scanning the crowd.

It took Red O'Malley's comment to catch my attention.

“Now that you're practically grown, I have a bit of advice for you, Gwendolyn,” he said. His gray-red beard and shaggy hair framed eyes that sparkled with a leprechaun's mischief, and I felt an instant warmth toward him. “If you should run into that young man again—”

Mrs. Leoni groaned and threw her hands heavenward. Sadie Linnet tsked her tongue. Nana shook her head, and their reactions told me he was recalling that night seven years ago.

“—you'll want to be checking between his fingers and toes for webbing.”

“Like a duck?” I blurted.

“Somewhat like,” he said seriously. “But I've known
from the start it wasn't some ordinary boy you saw. He was a selkie.”

“I've thought of that,” I said politely.

“They're devilish handsome, charmin', and great seducers of women. They don't mean anything by it, mind, it's just their nature, but a girl—”

“Enough, Red,” snapped Mrs. Linnet in her teacher's voice.

“Save your stories for Midsummer's Eve,” Nana said, “or Gwen might think you're serious.”

“Or senile,” Sadie Linnet added.

I laughed, but couldn't help noticing that Nana was edging me away from her friends.

“It was nice talking with you all again,” I said, and as Nana set out through the throng, I held tight to her. Partly, I was lending her my strong legs, but I didn't want to lose track of her either. When I found the boy from the cove, I wanted to ask her who he was.

“Oh look.” Nana gestured with her lemonade cup. “There's Jack Cates. I know you'll want to say ‘hi' to him.”

That got my attention, big time.

“Nana,
no
.”

Whatever questions that man had asked me after “the incident,” they had cut to the heart of my fears. You never forgive someone for that. I'm pretty sure the sheriff brought him in to determine my mental state. Was I hiding something? Repressing some trauma? He must
have asked about my dreams, too, because I remember blubbering about sleepwalking and people believing Thelma instead of me. I wonder what he ended up telling the sheriff.

Dr. Jack Cates stood at a fruit stand, a living stereotype.

Rumpled psychologist with salt-and-pepper gray beard and glasses, he considered a sample slice of peach as if he were deciding whether he should buy the entire orchard. That analytical attitude chilled me.

He'd invaded my poor little kid brain. Imagine how fascinating he'd find the fact that I hadn't returned to Mirage Beach for seven years, that I'd dropped out of diving just short of making regional champion (my parents had gone off about that so much, even I was beginning to wonder what it
meant
), and, oh yeah, maybe I could tell him about the guy from the cove who communicated his presence telepathically.

On the other hand, he might know more than anyone else what had really happened that night. And I wanted to know.

I tried to pull myself together, gathering energy like I would for a dive, but it didn't work. Instead of feeling powerful, I felt weak and light-headed.

“Nana, I can't talk to him.”

“He's seen us now, dear.” Nana raised a hand in greeting.

“Well, I'm—” This time when I scanned the crowd, I
looked for an escape. “I'm going to go shop. I'll meet you at the—”

“Ice cream court?” Nana suggested. She nodded toward an area with tables and a blue and white striped awning.

“Right,” I said. “In about ten minutes.”

“That'll be fine, Gwennie,” she said.

I could have kissed her. I should have kissed her. But I bolted instead.

If I'd been with my parents, there's no way I would have escaped.

Turning left, I moved down a side street. I noticed the yuppie stuff giving way to funkier wares. Then I turned right and kept going.

Looking over my shoulder to make sure I was out of Dr. Cates's sight, I realized it was darker on this street. Slowing my strides to a normal walk, I looked up and saw fog coming in, haloing the streetlight.

Here, the booths were less formal, and there were fewer shoppers. Tie-dyed tank tops hung from tent poles pounded into a city-maintained flowerbed. On a rickety card table good-luck bamboo plants had been tortured into weird shapes and stuck in mayonnaise jar “vases.”

I spotted what looked like some very cool earrings and headed for them.

“Get outta here, a customer,” ordered a girl wearing
more eye makeup tonight than I'd worn in my entire seventeen years.

She wasn't talking to me, but to a group of sleazy-looking guys.

A brass stud pierced her nostril, and spiky hair the color of strawberry soda gave her the look of a scrappy rooster.

“Jade, you promised,” one of the guys whined, but she made a motion as if to backhand him, and the guys scattered.

A woman in charge,
I thought, smiling. As I got closer I realized she was about my age.

Pinned to a big piece of cardboard, the earrings she had on display were made of beach glass, shells, and twisted wire.

“Hi,” I said, bending to look.

She made no response, just lifted her chin as if she were too cool to talk, but maybe she was shy.

I examined a pair of abalone shell ovals, then some loops that looked like hammered silver. Best of all were some dangles with moss green beads that would match a blouse I'd brought to wear while working at Nana's. I was about to ask how much they were when she finally said something.

“That kid has puppies for sale.” She pointed at a boy squatting on a blanket beside a weary-looking mother dog and her brood. “Maybe you'll find something you like over there.”

“Oh, thanks, but I have a cat who'd—” When I met her eyes, she was smirking.

If that had been a hint that Jade didn't welcome people who window shopped for too long, fine. I straightened up and went on my way.

It was already time to go meet Nana. I walked fast, then glanced back the way I'd come. I was a little turned around, but I didn't ask for help. Jade was watching, smug as if she knew I was lost.

Which I wasn't. I heard Red O'Malley's bagpipes, and I was pretty sure I could take a shortcut to the main street, through an alley that looked like the old Siena Bay.

Nana's silver-and-black shawl had been resting in the bends of my elbows, but now I pulled it up over my shoulders. The heels on my sandals clacked as I entered the alley.

Rotten fish is a smell you don't forget. I clapped my hand over my nose and tried not to breathe. Maybe the low-hanging fog magnified the stench. I hurried toward the music and the dim light at the end of the alley.

The alley narrowed.

I squeaked as a cat battered his way free of a dumpster lid. A skeletal fish, head intact, was clamped in his teeth. A quarreling knot of more cats, three or four at least, erupted from the same dumpster and scattered in yowling pursuit of the lucky one.

“Somebody's catching fish,” I muttered, but I
didn't have time to enjoy my own sarcasm.

Dark figures stood between me and the alley's end.

Turn back.
My city instincts told me not to worry about how silly and scared I'd look. If I ran, the worst thing that could happen was I'd be laughed at. If I didn't run …

But then I took a good look at the three guys. One was too far back to see, but the closest boy was short. I'm five-foot-two, and he looked shorter than me. Plus, his pants were so baggy, he'd lose them in a sprint.

“Looky what we got here,” he growled, and suddenly I wasn't scared.

Valencia was a middle-class suburb of San Francisco. It had its share of gang members and thugs. As these boys jostled for a closer look at me, I knew they wouldn't qualify for either group.

Wannabes,
I thought. And that was just fine with me.

“Where do you think you're going, little lady?”

“Oh, shut up,” I said, and when he stopped in surprise, I strode toward the open space to his right.