Lies Beneath (23 page)

235

the metal rod. “Too dark, too pleated, too old man– ish . . .” I had my back turned to her selection process, keeping watch. I didn’t really have an eye for fashion. I was better suited as a lookout.

She pushed me into a dressing room with a pair of black pants. A few seconds later I tossed my shorts and the shoe box over the door at her. When I came out of the dressing room, she’d already stashed my discards somewhere for some unsuspecting clerk to find.

I held my arms out and waited for her opinion. She swirled her finger in a circle, and I turned around to model the pants.
“Nice legs,” she said, ripping off the tags.
“Shut up, Lulah.” I finished my last rotation and caught a glimpse of her dragging the back of her hand across the corner of her eye.
Pavati came up fast. “Ready?”
“Ready.”
Jo- Ellen was trailing far behind. “I’m so sorry we have no Dior, Ms. Vanderbilt.”
“Vanderbilt?” I asked.
Pavati winked, and we walked quickly toward the front of the store. The girls rubbed their hands together in a circular motion as we closed in on the doors. I snagged a pair of shorts off the rack and threw them in Tallulah’s bag.
Several curious salesclerks watched us coming, but as we walked through the security gate, the girls pressed their electrified palms to the sensors, scrambling the system. No one stopped us.

236

31

DINNER

W hen I knocked on the Hancocks’ door at six o’clock, Lily answered, her smile nearly reaching her ears. She’d pulled her hair back into a loose knot and covered her body in a high- necked lace blouse and a long black corduroy skirt. I missed all the skin and her pink glow from the day before. Tonight she was nervous.

Behind her, the house shone with wax and polish. A lightly stained pine plank floor replaced the old carpet and linoleum. Mrs. Hancock’s paintings hung on the walls. The windows reflected the light from a dozen candles.

237

Lily noticed my new appearance, and her eyebrows rose in amusement.
“Shut up,” I whispered. “It’s called dinner with the parents.”
“No. You look good. Very . . . normal.”
“Perfect.” I winked and folded my hand around hers. “That’s exactly the look I was going for.”
She pulled her hand out, and this time I was the one to be surprised.
“Don’t overwhelm them,” she said. “I’ve never brought a boy home for dinner before.”
“It’s not my first time here.”
“This is different. They don’t need to freak out prematurely.”
“Got it.” I yanked her close to me and kissed her quickly. “No freaking them out.”
She laughed and led me into the living room. Hancock, Mrs. Hancock, and Sophie were standing in the room, as if they were posed and placed on marks.
“Good evening, Calder,” Mrs. Hancock said. “Nice of you to join us for dinner. Sorry your folks couldn’t make it.”
“They said to pass on their regrets.” I locked my teeth together and forced a smile.
“I hope you like chicken.”
“Chicken,” I repeated. I’d never tried it before. “Sounds great.”
“Can we get you something to drink?” Hancock asked.
“Coke?”
“Coming right up. Sophie?”
“Got it, Dad.”
We went further into the room and took our seats on two small sofas. I couldn’t relax. My muscles constricted, and I sat

238

ramrod straight and still, ready to bolt. Lily kept an anxious watch on my face. Sophie returned and set the Coke down on a cocktail napkin on the coffee table. The glass was sweating in the humidity. I wiped my index finger around its edge, calming myself with the moisture.

“Do you golf, Calder?” Hancock reached forward and scooped a handful of peanuts out of a bowl. He tossed them into his mouth one at a time.

“No, sir.”
“Play some football in high school?”
“Not really.”
“That’s too bad. You know what you’re made of after

playing some football. I was a running back in my day. Number sixteen.”

“Calder was on the swim team, Dad,” Lily said, putting a coaster under my glass.
“Uh- huh. Going to give that Michael Phelps a run for his money?”
I smiled imagining the matchup. “Oh, I think I could hold my own.”
“That’s right. It’s all in the attitude.”
Lily sat next to her dad and pecked his cheek. I flinched and looked away. Sophie sat in a chair across from me. I hadn’t been paying attention to her, but she was watching me intently. I smiled and raised my eyebrows at her. Her expression didn’t change.
Hancock reached forward for another handful of peanuts.
Lily fiddled with a loose string on her cuff.
The only sound was the crunching of peanuts. I shook the ice in my glass.

239

Lily looked at me and crossed her eyes with a comic expression. Salvation came when Mrs. Hancock called us all for dinner. “Here we go,” Hancock announced, slapping his hands down on his knees to propel himself off the couch. “ ‘Bout time.”

Lily gave him a swat as he passed in front of her.

I sat where Hancock indicated, and Lily sat between me and her father.
“That’s my chair,” Sophie said as she shot dagger eyes at Lily. Mrs. Hancock redirected Sophie to the other side of the table while she wheeled her chair into her own spot.
Lily served.
The plate in front of me was covered with something I’d never seen. The large white piece of flesh, I presumed, was chicken. But it was covered in a gelatinous soup concoction that spilled over the edges and pooled on the plate. I smiled weakly across the table at Mrs. Hancock and tried to be inconspicuous as I scraped the sauce off the meat. I took a bite. The chicken was warm and chewy. I choked it down and drained my water glass.
Lily scooped some spinach salad onto my plate and passed me the salt shaker. I looked at her gratefully and shook it liberally over everything. The rest of the food was in constant motion, being passed from father to mother to child and back again. Hancock poured Sophie a glass of milk and handed it down to her. Mrs. Hancock ladled a yellow noodle dish onto Sophie’s plate. It was all so . . .
normal,
exactly the way I imagined a real family to be. All that was missing was a dog lying under the table.
For a moment, I believed I could be part of this. I was born

240

to this kind of life: the parents, the home, the meal. Maybe my human parents ate chicken, too. They were out there somewhere. They might have even loved me. Did they search for me still, all these years later? I couldn’t imagine it.

Hancock asked, “You enjoy being up here for the summer, Calder?”
I passed the bread basket to Lily. “Very much so.”
“My whole life,” he said, “as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to be here. It just kept gnawing at me. I’ve been to Erie, Michigan, Huron, Ontario.” He ticked off the names of the Great Lakes while waving his fork in the air. “But up until this spring, I’d never been to Lake Superior. Hard to believe, isn’t it?”
“Very. But Lily told me about that, sir. About your promise to your dad.”
Hancock chewed, then swallowed. He leaned onto the table toward me. “One thing I’ve always stood for: When you make a promise, Calder, you keep it. No matter how bad it hurts.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” I said. Best get this over with. “Get out on the lake much, Mr. Hancock?”
He looked at me, startled; then he lowered his lids to study me anew. “We have a couple kayaks. And there’s a small fishing boat. But I never learned to swim, and I’m not a boater.” He paused. “You seem shocked.”
“Oh, no, sir, it’s just that— ”
“The Great Lakes can be dangerous— fascinating, too— but dangerous, particularly when you don’t know what you’re doing. I suppose you heard about those three college kids whose boat was found without them?” He shook his head

241

and scraped his fork on the china plate. “I’ll be surprised if they ever turn up.” Then he pointed his fork at Lily and stabbed at the air with each word: “Lake Superior does not give up its dead.”

Hancock grimaced and cleared his throat. “Anyway, I’d rather study the history of the lake than float on it all day. Did you know they discovered an underwater roadway? I’ve seen pictures. It looks like a paved Roman road. Now,
that’s
a fascinating discovery. A real Atlantis of sorts.”

I was aware of it. I didn’t know any humans had found it. “A man- made road? Underwater? I’d like to see that.”
Hancock nodded, chewing. “The theory is that it’s part of an ancient copper mine.”
“There are a lot of mysteries about the lake,” I said. Lily squeezed my knee under the table.
“There’s hundreds of sunken ships, too,” Mrs. Hancock added.
I nodded. “Total ship graveyard. I’ve seen a couple of those. Some are in shallow enough water you can see them from your boat. Maybe I could show you sometime, Mr. Hancock.”
“I’d like— ” Sophie started, but Mrs. Hancock interrupted her.
“Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you, Jason? Get out there for once.” She reached over and touched Hancock’s forearm.
Sophie pushed her chair back quickly and stood up to clear her plate.
Mrs. Hancock looked up at her youngest daughter. “You all done, hon?”
“I’m not hungry.” There was a strange expression on

242

Sophie’s face. It reminded me of Pavati when she wasn’t getting her way. She sulked into the kitchen, and Mrs. Hancock picked up the conversation.

“Lily was telling me your family stays on your sailboat during the summer?”
“That’s right. We keep things simple. It’s sort of like an extended camping trip.” I chewed a second bite of chicken slowly. The more I chewed, the bigger it seemed to get. Forks and knives scraped across plates while I reveled in the civility of the meal. Silverware, real cloth napkins . . . no sand in my food. I could get used to this.
“Sophie?” Mrs. Hancock called into the kitchen. “Are you going to rejoin us?” Then she turned back to me. “Six of you on one boat. I can’t imagine living like that for much longer than a weekend. But I understand why your mother does it. It’s hard to be separated from your family for even a short period. I don’t know what we’d do if we weren’t together.”
“Not that you have to worry about that with a house
this
small,” said Lily.
“You know what I mean,” Mrs. Hancock said. “Calder, I’m sure you can understand. Your family must be close if you’re able to live in such tight quarters. Take away one member . . . I just can’t imagine the toll that would take on a family.”
I dropped my fork, and it clattered onto my plate. I gripped the edge of the table. Mrs. Hancock’s gentle voice, the memory of my mother, the way Lily looked at her father, “the toll that would take on a family,” Pavati’s warning . . . Pavati was right even before there was anything to be
right
about. I couldn’t

243
love Lily and kill Hancock, because I couldn’t kill Hancock without destroying Lily.

I had to get out of here. I had to get out fast. My world was tumbling like pebbles over a dam.
“Excuse me,” I said. Heat rushed into my face, and I bolted for the door.

244

32

CONFESSIONS

“C alder, are you okay?” Lily asked, following me away from the table.
“I’m sorry. I’m not feeling well.”
Mrs. Hancock said, “Oh dear, I hope it’s not the chicken.”
Lily’s bare feet followed closely behind me on the pine plank floor. “What’s wrong?” she asked as the screen door slammed behind her. I was already over the porch steps and halfway to the car. Lily grabbed my shoulder as she caught up, and I could feel the electricity spinning out of me and into her palm. It must have been painful, but she didn’t let go.

245

“I’ve got to get out of here,” I said.
“What?”
“My sisters, Lily. I can’t be here. I can’t do this. This is so

completely messed up.”
“What are you talking about? What do your sisters have
to do with anything?” She slapped her hand across her mouth.
“They know? They know
I
know?”
“No, no. That’s not it.”
“Then what”
“If that were all it was, I’d take you and we’d run. We’d
go to the Abacos. We’d get a little beach house on one of the
cays. You could write poetry . . . I could protect you.” “Would that make everything better? If it would, we
should go.”
“No! You don’t understand. Even if I took you away, it
wouldn’t change anything. They’ll still kill him.”
“Kill him? Who’s ‘him’?”
I was pacing, my fingers clenched in my hair, pulling at
the roots. My teeth ground together as I wrestled with the
dueling loyalties. “Do you think any of this is an accident?” I
asked. “A family of merpeople show up on the doorstep of a
family who’s heard of a monster in the lake. More than heard
of, tangled with.”
“There are no monsters in the lake.” Her voice was flat. “I appreciate the vote of confidence, but you are seriously
misguided.”
“Calder, it’s not your fault what happened to my
grand father.”
“Of course it’s not. Don’t you see? My only regret in regard to your
grandfather,
” the last word spit from my teeth, “is
that he died before we had the chance to kill him ourselves.”

246

Lily’s brow furrowed. “What are you saying?” I recounted the whole story, ending with my mother’s last strangled breath; with each word, the blood drained from Lily’s face.
“He promised to sacrifice your father.”
“But Dad was a baby!”
“Age is irrelevant. And to a mermaid, a promise is a sacred thing.”
“You were going to kill a baby?”
“Technically, my mother was, but that’s beside the point. He promised his son in exchange for his life. It was a promise. They had a
contract.
Merpeople never break their promises. We expect the same in return. And your grandfather’s broken promise killed my mother.”
“He didn’t know that.”
“He caused that.”
“So now what? What can I do to save my dad?”
“You? Nothing. I want you as far away from this situation as possible.” I tried to wrap my arms around her, but she slapped at me and stepped back.
“And what exactly is
this situation
?” Her eyes practically glowed with fury.
“Lily, my sisters want to kill your father. They asked me to get close to you so I could get close to him. They want me to get him out on the lake so they can claim what is rightfully theirs.”
“You got close to me on your sisters’
orders
?”
“What? Yes. At first. You’re focusing on all the wrong things.”
Lily’s chin trembled. Her bottom lids filled with tears.
“But it’s not like that now.” I put my hands on her