Sea Change Read online

  I called to Mom that I’d be back soon, then raced down the creaky stairs, through the living room, and onto the back porch. I rubbed my arms, shivering in the evening chill. The porch steps were cold beneath my feet, but the sandy slope that led to the water was warm—perfectly sun-toasted.

  And so was the ocean. I waded in up to my shins, my toes sending up small clouds of sand. Coils of seaweed brushed my ankles, and a sense of peace settled over me. I gazed around at the open expanse of dark turquoise. There was a sailboat in the distance, and if I squinted, I could see a fishing trawler chugging toward the island. Other than that, I had the sea all to myself.

  What was it Mom had said earlier? Water, water, every where / Nor any drop to drink. I’d never been in the position of dying of thirst, but I could relate to such longing. It was how I’d felt for years before I got a boyfriend, when my high school seemed to be a sea of guys, all of them kissable, all of them datable, but none of them wanting me.

  I shook my head, pushing away those memories. Then I eased farther into the Atlantic and, holding my breath, submerged completely.

  I loved the gray-blue shade of the world underwater, the way the sea grasses seemed to sway in slow motion. As I came up for air, I stretched out my body and slowly began scissoring my legs. Only swimming afforded me such grace and freedom; not even acing a science test felt as good. And there was something thrilling about floating in the ocean, something primal and natural about the warm caress of water.

  For most of my life, I’d had to make do with pools; Mom didn’t like seaside vacations, so when she was able to get off work, we’d travel to cities like Chicago, or to the upstate New York mountains. My father was always up for taking me to the beach in L.A., but I didn’t see him often. Now, I wondered if Mom avoided the ocean because it reminded her of her childhood, of Isadora.

  When I felt something slimy brush my leg, my heart skipped a beat. I no longer felt so alone in the water, and, to my annoyance, Sailor Hat’s words about dangerous creatures resounded in my head. Ridiculous. Still, I began paddling back to shore, telling myself that it was time to go inside anyway. The sky was morphing from orange to purple to navy blue.

  I toweled off, my ponytail sopping and water running down my arms. It was funny how a swim could transform one so much; I knew I looked very different from the dry Miranda I’d been minutes before. My teeth chattering, I rushed up the porch steps and slipped into the house. The living room was dim, the foyer enveloped in blackness. Save for the constant shushing sound of the ocean and the whir of the ceiling fans, The Mariner was silent. Mom had told me she might go to bed early, so I took care to tiptoe. Unlike me, Mom was a light sleeper; she said that becoming a mother had made her that way.

  I wasn’t ready for bed; the swim had refreshed me, made me just shy of restless, and also thirsty. I began creeping toward the kitchen to see if there was any sweet tea left over. I remembered the kitchen as being behind the stairs, but I navigated incorrectly in the darkness. Somehow I found myself in a tight corridor—and face-to-face with a haggard old man.

  I clapped my hand over my mouth to stifle my scream an instant before I realized I was looking at a painting. It was a portrait of a white-maned, wild-eyed man in a tattered sailor’s uniform, tattoos on both his arms and a bottle in his fist. He was hideous. Slung around his neck was a thick rope, and from the knot at its end swung an enormous white bird—an albatross, I realized, shudders running down my back.

  So this was the mariner of the poem, the presiding spirit of the house. Maybe Mom was right; had I been at all familiar with literature, I might have recognized the portrait right away and spared myself my minor coronary.

  As though the house had read my mind, a draft in the hallway caused the door next to the painting to open slightly. I pushed the knob and peeked into what looked like a small study. Flicking on the light, I walked inside. There was an antique wooden writing desk with a high-backed chair, a crimson love seat, and mahogany bookshelves lining the walls. The single slice of wall not covered in books showed off another watercolor portrait, but this one did not scare me.

  It was of Isadora, resplendent in a silky green gown. She was posed on the staircase of The Mariner, her bearing regal. The portraitist had added whimsical flourishes: peach blossoms dangled above her head, and she held a fur-lined wrap in her arms that no one south of the Mason-Dixon Line would ever need. The whole look was sort of hilarious, and screamed Scarlett O’Hara. Not coincidentally, the bookshelf beneath the portrait held a copy of Gone with the Wind.

  I scanned the rest of the shelf, curious as to what else my grandmother had considered good reading material. The books weren’t arranged alphabetically, or by subject; the lack of order made my head hurt. There was Marion Brown’s Southern Cook Book beside Romeo and Juliet, which was nestled next to the Collected Poems of T. S. Eliot and a book of Andersen’s fairy tales. Nothing called to me. But when I saw the phrase Selkie Island on the lower half of a torn, dark blue spine, I pulled the book out.

  The cover nearly came off in my hands, and I did a double take when I saw it bore a reproduction of the warning sign that hung above the Selkie dock. The book’s title, A Primer on the Legend and Lore of Selkie Island, was emblazoned across the top, and the author’s name, Llewellyn Thorpe, was written out in script across the bottom. Turning the book over, I wiped the film of dust off its back cover and read the paragraph that was written in gold leaf:

  Many are drawn to Selkie Island. Few know why. Selkie’s essence of mystery surrounds the isle like its famous shroud of fog. But the island’s varied legends—of beasts, of freaks, of shipwrecked sailors—have an undeniable lure. The tome you hold in your hands, gentle reader, is a compendium of these legends. Proceed with care.

  I smiled. More tall tales? Maybe Sailor Hat was Llewellyn Thorpe.

  I cracked the book’s flimsy spine, and a musty scent rose up toward me. The frontispiece was a grainy map showing Selkie’s location in the Atlantic, but the island was surrounded by drawings of winged fish, krakens, and mermaids. I turned the slippery, yellowed pages until I reached the back of the book. There, I found a pen-and-ink drawing of a reed-thin man wearing spectacles and a suit. Beneath this image it said:

  Llewellyn Thorpe was born in 1873 in Savannah, Georgia, and died in 1913, shortly before the publication of this volume. A professor of anthropology, he devoted his life to researching the folklore of Selkie Island.

  Okay. So not Sailor Hat.

  Holding the book open, I walked backward to the writing desk. I spread my towel on the high-backed chair and sat, thumbing through the book more slowly now. Why was I hooked? Why did I care?

  I flipped past chapters entitled “Side-Shows and Cabinets of Curiosity,” “The Sharp-Toothed Serpents of Siren Beach,” “Stories of the Gullah People,” and “Cryptozoology.” Finally, I came upon a chapter called “A Brief Historie of Selkie Island,” and I paused, wondering if this might offer something resembling solid fact. I set the book down on the desk, moving aside a pad of paper and a black oblong box to make room. Then I began to read.

  It was the high summer of 1650 when Captain William McCloud, a Scottish pirate sailing to the Caribbean, discovered what is today known as Selkie Island.

  The book went on to explain that Captain McCloud’s crew had mutinied and dropped him in a dinghy off the coast of Georgia. The pirate was half mad from starvation when a beautiful green-eyed mermaid with a red-gold tail steered him to land. There, the mermaid, named Caya, shape-shifted into a woman. Captain McCloud promptly fell in love with her, married her, and named the island Selkie—the Scottish word for a creature capable of transforming from a seal into a human. Captain McCloud and Caya had several children, who, like their mother, became merfolk when they submerged themselves in the ocean, but lived as humans on land. And, according to Llewellyn Thorpe, these merfolk descendants still populated the island.

  I laughed to myself, amused, but I kept on reading.

  Merfolk such as Ca
ya have been a universal element of lore. The ancient Assyrians told of Atargatis: half-woman, half-fish. And in his Metamorphoses, Ovid gave us Glaucus, the lovelorn merman. Many dismiss mermaid sightings as a sailor’s misinterpretation of a manatee or a dugong swimming beneath the waves. But in his journals, Christopher Columbus wrote of spotting Sirens off the coast of Hispaniola, and Henry Hudson swore he witnessed a woman with the tail of a porpoise swimming by the side of his ship. It is on and around Selkie, however, that the greatest evidence of merfolk life exists. The native Selkie merfolk are as much a part of the island as the Spanish moss and the marshes.

  Selkie merfolk are usually recognizable by a few key features, such as: a lush, sensitive beauty; a predilection for the colors red and gold; kindness toward visitors and explorers; and homes close to the shore. They can sometimes be spotted at night, when venturing out to—

  A sudden, shrill scream came from outside the house. I jumped in my chair, knocking the book off the desk, and leapt to my feet, my pulse thudding in my ears, louder than the ocean. Every inch of my skin was awake, my nerve endings on alert.

  The scream came again, and I pressed a hand to my damp collarbone, taking a deep breath. Calm down. I recalled the Sea Islands Wildlife website I’d skimmed before leaving New York. I was probably hearing the call of an American oystercatcher, a bird native to the area. That was all.

  What is with you, Miranda?

  I glanced at where Llewellyn Thorpe’s book lay, several of its pages loose and scattered. It was the silly book that was spooking me. I looked up at the portrait of Isadora, who stared back at me—her foolish granddaughter, shivering in a swimsuit. Who else, besides me, had come into the study late at night only to find A Primer on the Legend and Lore of Selkie Island? Had Mom? Had her siblings? Had Isadora herself? Had any of them fallen for Llewellyn Thorpe’s words?

  There was an irrational part of me that wanted to continue reading, to find out more. But I knew that was a bad idea, that there was nothing useful to be learned from the book. And I needed to get some sleep; Mom had said we’d have a big day of cleaning and sorting tomorrow, and there was that Heirs party.

  I stuffed the pages back into the book and returned it to its place on the shelf, feeling my usual rationale return as well. As I shut off the light and left the study, I felt my heartbeat slowing down. Even the mariner seemed benign as I hurried past him now. I made my way to the kitchen, got a glass of water, and carried it upstairs, hoping the moaning of the steps wouldn’t wake Mom.

  In my room, I drew the drapes and quickly changed into a blue tank top and my favorite pajama bottoms: They were white and printed with miniature blue whales. I’d purchased them at the Museum of Natural History when I’d interviewed there back in March. My friend Linda, who’d been with me at the time, had laughed at the pajamas and called them “absolutely adorkable.”

  I glanced at my cell phone, which I’d placed on the dresser earlier, and I almost reached for it, the muscle memory of my fingers wanting to text Linda, to tell her about The Mariner and Llewellyn Thorpe’s book. But I couldn’t. I shouldn’t. Things weren’t the same anymore. At all.

  With a sigh, I slid into bed, my head full from everything that had happened that evening. I thought of the night deepening outside, of my swim in the ocean, of lost pirates and helpful mermaids. Then I burrowed my head into the pillow and hoped I’d dream about sensible things, like in which box tomorrow I’d pack away A Primer on the Legend and Lore of Selkie Island.

  Four

  HEIRS

  I slept like a stone last night,” Mom remarked the next morning as we struggled onto the front porch, carrying heavy cardboard boxes. “I haven’t done that in ages. It must be the fresh sea air.”

  “Too bad it didn’t work its spell on me,” I said through a yawn. I’d slept fitfully in the narrow twin bed. And now the sea air felt soupy and sticky—not ideal weather for manual labor.

  For the past half hour, Mom and I had been lugging broken lamps, threadbare throw rugs, and cracked vases out onto the street. According to Mom, on Thursday afternoons, garbage collectors came by in golf carts to sweep people’s junk away.

  “Probably because you saw that mariner painting,” Mom huffed, setting her box down on the corner. “He used to give me nightmares as a child.”

  Over breakfast, I’d filled Mom in on my run-in with the old seafarer in the hall. But I hadn’t mentioned my discovery of the study, or of Llewellyn Thorpe’s tome. The experience seemed even more embarrassing in the light of day, and I figured I’d feign ignorance whenever Mom and I tackled Isadora’s book collection.

  As Mom took a box of cutlery from my aching arms, I heard a female voice cry out behind us.

  “Amelia? Amelia Blue Hawkins! As I live and breathe!”

  I whirled around to see a skinny woman about Mom’s age trotting up the road and waving. She wore gigantic sunglasses, a purple head scarf, a tight sundress, and high-heeled sandals.

  I glanced back at Mom, whose expression was both stricken and resigned. I felt a sympathetic twinge of dread, but my curiosity was definitely piqued.

  “Speaking of nightmares…” Mom muttered under her breath. Then she pasted on a smile, waved, and called back, “Hello, Delilah!”

  “Well, well, well!” Delilah sang, snapping off her sunglasses as she neared. “Felice Cunningham said she spied the lights on in The Mariner, and Teddy Illingworth swore he spotted you by the docks yesterday, so I had to come see for myself!”

  She stopped in front of Mom and gave her a peck on each cheek as I backed up a few paces, crossing my arms over my chest. “Amelia Blue Hawkins,” Delilah repeated, shaking her head from side to side.

  “Actually, it’s Merchant,” Mom corrected gently. “Amelia Merchant. I kept my married name after I got divorced. For professional purposes.”

  “Oh,” Delilah replied, looking flustered. “Of course. Anyway.” She patted Mom’s arm. “You’re as gorgeous as you were at eighteen. I thought being a big-city doctor would have shriveled you up by now!” Delilah let out a high laugh, then swung around to observe me. “And this must be your daughter. Why, she’s the spitting image of Isadora—may she rest in peace,” she added hastily, lowering her head.

  I wasn’t prepared for the quick rush of pleasure I felt at the comparison. “Thanks,” I mumbled, shifting from one foot to the other.

  “Amen, darling,” Delilah instructed, widening her heavily lined blue eyes at me. “You say ’amen.’”

  “Yes, this is Miranda,” Mom spoke up, coming to my rescue. “Miranda, this is Delilah LeBlanc Cooper of Atlanta.” I recognized the last name LeBlanc; Mom had said that family had started the Heirs party. “Her summer home is just down the road.”

  “Has been for generations,” Delilah drawled, draping an arm around Mom’s shoulder; her long crimson-painted nails resembled talons. “Growing up, your mother and I were inseparable. It’s such a shame we drifted apart.” I did my best not to meet my mother’s eye; I doubted she mourned this loss.

  “You have a son, too, don’t you?” Delilah asked Mom, who quickly explained that Wade was in Los Angeles with his father.

  “Well, it’s more fun for mothers and daughters to spend time together, anyway,” Delilah said, grinning first at Mom and then me. “You can swap lipstick and jewelry, and shop together.”

  This time, Mom and I couldn’t help but exchange a glance. Neither of us wore much makeup or jewelry, and Mom never had time to go shopping. In the Mother and Daughter Olympics, it seemed, we would have finished last.

  “Oh, speaking of which!” Delilah exclaimed, clearly capable of keeping a conversation going all on her own. “Miranda, I have to introduce you to my daughter, Cecile. Everyone calls her CeeCee. She’s fifteen and absolutely precious, and the two of you will get along like a house afire.”

  Once again, Mom and I looked at each other, and Mom appeared to be holding back a laugh. We both knew that if CeeCee was anything like her mother, our friendship prospects
were very slim.

  “And,” Delilah was saying, “y’all can meet CeeCee this afternoon at the Heirs party. I assume you got an invitation?” When Mom nodded, pursing her lips, Delilah grinned at me again. “Every summer, Amelia and I got dressed up together for the Heirs party. And how the boys would stare when we entered the restaurant! It was no wonder that your mother won the affections of the most eligible—”

  “Is it almost noon already?” Mom interrupted, taking my wrist and studying my watch. Her face was suddenly flushed. “Miranda and I still have a lot of work to do in the house…” Mom trailed off, looking at Delilah pointedly.

  No! I almost cried, my heart thumping with delayed suspense. I wanted Delilah to keep going. I’d never thought of my mother as having had a love life; she hadn’t really dated anyone since she and Dad split up.

  But the moment had changed, had taken on a charged quality. Delilah looked miffed as she removed her arm from Mom’s shoulder and slid her sunglasses back on.

  “I need to pick out my outfit, anyway,” she sniffed, glancing disdainfully at our cleanup gear: Both Mom and I wore cutoffs, ratty T-shirts, and sneakers. “I’ll see you ladies later.” She waggled her fingers at us, but before walking off, added in a teasing tone, “And there are others who will be pleased to see you, Amelia.”

  I wanted to ask Mom what Delilah had meant—and also how the two of them had ever been close—but I felt dazed by the human hurricane that had just swept over us.

  “It’s amazing,” Mom said once Delilah was out of earshot. Her face had returned to its normal shade. “That woman hasn’t changed a bit. I’m exhausted just thinking about spending time with her at the Heirs party.”

  “Should we skip it?” I asked reluctantly. Delilah was crazy-making, but I wondered what else she knew about my mother, or even about Isadora.