Sea Change (18 page)

While Leo, looking as surprised as I felt, shook Mr. Illingworth’s hand, I saw Mom’s gaze land on the dress under Leo’s arm. Her eyes widened, and she looked at me.

“Isn’t that,” she began, a question in her voice, “one of Isadora’s? Why…”

“It fit,” I said, by way of explanation. I was too tired to say more.

Mom nodded dazedly and she accepted the dress from Leo. She studied the bunched material in her hands, then gave Leo a meaningful look.

“Thank you,” she said quietly.

Something—some inner reserve of strength—had been keeping me together during our interaction, but just then I felt myself weaken with relief. Mom, seeing this, announced that she was going to walk Mr. Illingworth out, and then she’d be back to tend to me. Mr. Illingworth told me he was glad I was all right, and then he and Mom stepped out the front door, murmuring together.

Leo and I turned to each other, and I caught my breath.

This was it—the briefest of windows in which we could say our good-byes. I no longer heard the whirring of the ceiling fans, and the dwindling night seemed to hold its breath as he and I stood in the dim foyer. An idea came to me.

“Maybe,” I began, my voice plaintive, “I can stay here on Selkie. With you.” I took his hand. “I’m sure there’s room for another intern at the marine center, right?” After all, I couldn’t see myself at the Museum of Natural History now, among the dinosaur bones and data charts, pretending I didn’t know deeper secrets. “And I could even—maybe—help you out on your dad’s fishing boat.”

I realized how ridiculous my offer sounded. But the thought of parting with Leo felt as impossible as what I’d seen underwater.

“Miranda,” he said tenderly. He reached out to stroke my
hair, his fingers getting tangled in my sandy curls. “You know that wouldn’t work. You have to go home.”

“I know,” I replied as tears blurred my vision. “A girl can dream, I guess.” Not that I’d ever been a dreamer before.

Leo’s own eyes were very bright, and he swallowed a few times before speaking again. “I wanted to thank you,” he said.

“Me?” I asked, shaking my head. “For what? I didn’t rescue you.”

“For giving me a chance,” Leo said, and the mischievous expression I’d come to love crossed his face. “I know I wasn’t always straightforward with you.” His cheeks colored a little.

I smiled through my tears. “It’s okay.”

Suddenly, I remembered a quotation of my own, one I had learned back at the beginning of the school year, in physics class. I decided to tell it to Leo then.

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious,” I said.

Leo raised one eyebrow, and his thumb traced my mouth in a way that made me shiver. “That’s true,” he replied. “Who said that?”

“Who else?” I smiled. “A scientist. Einstein.”

Leomaris Macleod and I leaned toward each other and kissed, soft and sweet. Then we hugged, and I breathed in his fresh smell, tried to memorize the warmth of his body, the
firmness of his chest against mine. When we parted, I gave him back his hoodie for the second time. I couldn’t believe I was letting him go. I watched, my heart racing, as he walked to the door. Before he opened it and stepped out into the night, he glanced over his shoulder and smiled at me.

“Hey, Miranda?” he said.

I waited for him to quote Shakespeare. To tell me that he was a merman. To actually say the word
good-bye.

“Remember, on the beach walk, when we talked about happy endings?” he asked.

“I do,” I said quietly. I wouldn’t forget anything about Leo.

“We’ll get ours,” Leo said. “Soon.”

And then he was gone.

I wiped my tears with the back of my hand, still feeling the ghost of Leo’s lips on my mouth, hearing his voice whisper in my ear. I wanted him to come back, but I also felt tired and achy, wrung out. Slowly I settled down on the staircase’s bottom step. I knew Mom would come back any minute, but before she did, I wanted to sit still and imagine Leo. I imagined him walking down the pebbly path and across the dock as the sun began to peer over the ocean. And I imagined him back on the beach, diving into the water, his body moving gracefully with the current. Returning home.

A
fter the bath and the cup of hot tea Mom insisted on, I crawled into bed and fell asleep instantly. And for the first time since arriving on Selkie, I slept without dreaming.

I awoke to bright daylight coming through the pink curtains and a delicious smell wafting under my door. The smell was both exotic and familiar—cinnamon and bay leaf and ginger and something else I couldn’t name—and it made my stomach growl.

I was still sore, which became painfully apparent as I turned my head to see the clock; it was two in the afternoon. But I no longer felt shaky and fragile, even though the prior night’s events seemed as close and as real as ever. I could still recall the terror I’d felt before sinking underwater. I could still feel Leo’s arms around me.

Thinking of Leo, wondering if he was already on his fishing trip, I carefully eased myself out of bed. Pulling up my pajama bottoms, I noted that the scratches on my legs were, thanks to Mom’s application of Neosporin, starting to heal. I hobbled downstairs, the mouthwatering scent growing stronger.

I found Mom in the kitchen, standing at the counter and surrounded by ingredients. There was a bowl containing scrubbed red potatoes sitting beside freshly shucked ears of corn and a cutting board laden with pink shrimp. A large silver pot full of water was bubbling away on the stove.

When I entered, Mom turned to me, and I saw that her eyes were red with tears. I felt a tremor of alarm, remembering how she’d told me the news of Isadora’s death. Then I noticed that she was in the process of chopping an onion.

“You’re up,” Mom said, setting her knife down and coming toward me. She wiped her hands on her apron and regarded me cautiously. “How are you feeling?”

“Much better,” I replied. “I needed the sleep.” I smiled cautiously at Mom; she didn’t seem angry now, and she hadn’t last night, when she’d returned from bidding farewell to Mr. Illingworth. But she hadn’t mentioned Leo. I nodded toward the pot, knowing that if my thoughts lingered on Leo,
I’d
start crying. “What are you making?”

“Low-country boil,” Mom replied, turning back to her
ingredients. “I thought you could use some hearty regional cuisine. This is an old classic. My mother used to make it, and so did my grandmother before her.”

“It smells amazing,” I said, joining my mother at the counter and surveying the various potions she had going at once. “What do you put in it?”

“Everything.” Mom laughed, and I realized what joy cooking brought her. “Potatoes, corn, sausage, shrimp. Oh, and Old Bay seasoning—that must be what you’re smelling. That gives the boil its extra kick.” Mom glanced at me sideways and said, casually, “Do you want to watch?”

“Actually,” I said, suddenly curious and eager to throw myself into an activity that felt real and solid, “can I…help?”

Within minutes, I was learning how to peel and devein shrimp and I was, to my surprise, not remotely grossed out. There was something satisfying about working with my hands, something almost scientific about the process. Mom and I worked side by side in perfect rhythm—like two surgeons, I thought—with Mom passing me a knife and me handing her an ear of corn at different intervals.

When all the ingredients were prepared and could be added to the pot, I watched in near awe as they cooked, each element breaking down, influencing the other. The potatoes grew
redder, the shrimp paler, the corn a bright sunshine yellow. Cooking, I realized, was not unlike chemistry. Both arts were, ultimately, about change.

By the time the boil was done and Mom and I could eat, I had almost forgotten about the animosity that had existed between us over the past few days. Cooking had bonded us again, and we smiled at each other as Mom cracked open a cold beer for herself (the first I’d ever seen her with) and I spooned our portions into Isadora’s china bowls. Then we sat down across from each other at the round kitchen table.

We began eating in friendly silence; the smoky boil, with its mix of flavors and textures, tasted as heavenly as it smelled. Between this and grits, I was taking quite a liking to Southern cuisine. When I complimented Mom on the dish, she grinned and said graciously, “I had an excellent sous-chef.”

“So you used to eat this growing up?” I asked around a mouthful of red potatoes. The steam rising from the food seemed to be the very breath of the past. In it, I could taste nostalgia and memory and history—both my mother’s and Selkie Island’s.

Mom nodded, nibbling on an ear of corn. “All the time. Isadora—well, I know I’m not one to lavish praise on her, but she made a mean low-country boil.” Mom got a far-off look in her gray eyes, and I flashed onto an image of her,
young and sitting at this table with Isadora, the two of them eating the mess of corn and sausage and shrimp. I felt the same chill I had felt yesterday when I’d discovered the letters in the black trunk.

I cleared my throat and wiped my hands on a napkin. I simply had to tell Mom what I’d found in Isadora’s closet—she’d discover it anyway once we started packing everything up.

“Mom?” I began, a little nervous. “Speaking of Isadora…”

Mom sighed, putting down her demolished corncob. “Miranda. I know what you’re going to ask me,” she said.

My stomach jumped. “You do?” Once again, I thought of Wade’s psychic-mom theory.

Mom nodded and gazed at me solemnly. “And it’s high time I told you why your grandmother and I were estranged.”

Oh.

I nodded, new curiosity flaring up in me.

Mom took a sip of beer, then looked at me. “It’s a long story,” she warned.

“That’s fine,” I said. I had nowhere to go, and stories were starting to grow on me.

“It all started before my eighteenth birthday,” Mom began. “My seventeenth year was tumultuous. My father passed away from a heart attack, and Isadora decided that we shouldn’t come to Selkie Island anymore. She threw all her energies into planning my debutante ball. And my wedding.”

“You were a debutante?” I asked Mom, smiling.

Mom rolled her eyes, her cheeks coloring slightly. “I never quite made it that far, but yes, that was the plan. In Savannah society—high society—when a girl turns seventeen or eighteen, she has her ’coming out’ at a ball, or a cotillion. Cotillions are very lavish affairs, almost akin to weddings. And long ago, the debutante tradition had much to do with a girl being of marrying age. Of course, Isadora made sure that I had the double whammy. Once I turned eighteen in April, Theodore Illingworth and I were to be married that summer. There would be no college for me, and Teddy and I would move into the carriage house on the Illingworths’ Savannah property.”

“How did you even meet Mr. Illingworth?” I asked, wanting to fill in the holes. I thought of him in our foyer last night, how different he had seemed to me in that moment. “How long did you date?”

Mom shrugged, fussing with the label on her beer bottle. “We grew up in the same neighborhood in Savannah, Ardsley Park, and we both summered here on Selkie. We were both the youngest in our families. As far as our mothers were concerned, it was a no-brainer that we’d end up together.” Mom was quiet for a moment, studying her beer bottle, and then glanced up at me. “But I didn’t love him,” she said softly.

What about now?
I wanted to ask. Still, I kept the question to myself, knowing Mom had more to say.

“Don’t get me wrong,” she sighed. “For a time, I
was
happy with Teddy. He was a true gentleman, and he treated me very well. But he didn’t quite understand my interest in science and medicine. I think he found me a little strange.” She smiled knowingly at me. “And by my eighteenth birthday, I was fed up. I hated how my whole life had been mapped out for me, every last detail. I hated how predictable everything had become, how all my friends dated all my other friends, how all the girls wore the same sandals every summer, attended the same parties on the boardwalk. I began to resent the rigid structures of my life—the rules that were to be followed at all times.”

The way Mom was speaking made me think of how I had unleashed my story on Leo yesterday—again, a faucet, a shower spout, came to mind. The memories and old truths were pouring out of my mother at last.

“I had other interests and desires,” Mom said, meeting my gaze. “I had told Isadora, at an early age, that I wanted to be a doctor and she had chucked me under my chin and told me I could marry one. That was Isadora to a tee—she was whip smart, you see, but she had long ago made peace with her station in life. And she saw no reason why I shouldn’t follow her lead. Isadora always played by the rules.”

No, she didn’t,
I thought, but I didn’t speak.

“Without telling my mother, I had applied to college—and not just any college, but to a college up north,” Mom continued.

“Yale,” I filled in for her, and she nodded.

“
Y
is for Yankee,” she said with a smile. “Isadora had very little regard for Yankees. She was one of those Southern women who referred to the Civil War as the War of Northern Aggression. Her youngest daughter going off to study in the wilds of Connecticut—there couldn’t be a worse fate.

“So I told her. I received my acceptance letter from Yale on the day before the cotillion, and I marched over to my mother and told her. I told her I was sick of it all, the closed-mindedness, the lack of opportunities. I had my acceptance letter in one hand, and in the other I held my debutante ball gown. And I handed the gown to Isadora. I told her I had no use for it anymore. I told her to call off the ball. And the wedding.”

“What did she say?” I asked, trying to envision the showdown.

“She was horrified, of course,” Mom said, looking a little pleased and regretful. “We had a terrible argument. She told me I was going through a rebellious phase, that I’d come to my senses. I didn’t, obviously.”

“Is that when you stopped speaking?” I asked, leaning toward my mother.

“That was the beginning of the end,” Mom said, tracing a circle on her icy beer bottle. “When I went on to Yale, and met your father, and eventually married him—that’s when the real rupture happened.” Mom smiled, her expression suddenly fond. “Your father,” she added, looking at me, “was unlike anyone I had ever met. He was brash and loud and he broke rules all the time. Of course, that’s probably what led to our divorce. If I’d been speaking to Isadora at the time, I’m sure she would haven’t been able to resist chortling,
I told you so.
”

“Isadora didn’t approve of Dad, huh?” I asked, smiling, too. Just thinking of my father—my funny, blunt, Yankee father, not a merman at all—filled me with a comforting sense of normalcy.

“Are you kidding?” Mom laughed. “My senior year, I dared to bring him home for winter break, and the fights Isadora and I had about him are legendary.”

Mom paused, eying me, and I wondered if she was thinking—as I was—of our recent fights. I remembered how, yesterday, she’d cut herself off in the middle of scolding me about Leo. How she’d glanced at the photos on the mantel. Had she been thinking of herself and Isadora having a similar argument about an inappropriate boy?

Had Mom realized—the most frightening realization—that she was turning into her own mother?

“I think,” Mom went on, putting her chin in her hand, “that Isadora just couldn’t accept how far I’d strayed from her and from everything she believed in.” Mom chuckled, shaking her head. “You know, Coral told me that Isadora even hung on to my debutante gown for safekeeping, as if I was going to change my mind someday.”

Something stirred in me, a lightninglike realization.

“What did your dress look like?” I asked, and Mom raised her eyebrows, understandably thrown by my question. “CeeCee’s influence,” I deadpanned, hoping that explanation would be enough.

“It was quite pretty,” Mom replied, her eyes misting over again. “It was cream colored, with these small pink roses trailing down the side. It actually broke my heart to give the dress up, but I knew I had to stand strong.” Mom shrugged, not aware of the way I was gaping at her.

My heart and my mind were racing. The dress in the trunk was Mom’s debutante ball gown. Isadora
had
hung on to it for all these years. But why had she hidden it? And why did it share a hiding place with her letters from Henry Williams?

Mom was saying something else about Isadora’s reaction, but my thoughts were on those letters. Even though so much had happened since I’d read them yesterday, they were still
fresh in my mind. And, as I had done with the passages in Llewellyn Thorpe’s book, I started piecing fragments together, fragments that I had seen but hadn’t quite absorbed.

Like the fact that Isadora had written those letters about a year before Mom had been born.

Like the fact that—
oh, my God
—Henry Williams was, according to the address on the envelopes, and to Daryl Phelps’s letter, Henry
B.
Williams.

Henry
Blue
Williams.

Mom’s name was Amelia Blue. That was what people had always called her until she got to college, she’d said. Before she’d decided that just plain
Amelia
was easier. That was what people on Selkie Island called her now.

I could barely catch my breath. Had Isadora named her youngest daughter Amelia Blue as a tribute to the man she’d loved? Or had she given her that name because Henry Blue Williams had been Mom’s…

“Miranda?” Mom asked, and I realized that she’d stopped talking—and that I had pushed back my chair and was hugging myself. I could feel how huge my eyes were, and there was gooseflesh on my arms. Mom stared at me with naked concern, and repeated my name.

“Mom,” I burst out. “Isadora kept your debutante gown. It’s in a trunk in her closet upstairs. Along with these—
letters. Letters that Isadora wrote to a man named Henry Blue Williams.”

I waited for my mother to ask me what on earth I was talking about. But instead, her face grew pale and her eyebrows came together.

“They wrote letters?” she asked softly.

“You know about him?” I asked, a shiver going down my back.

Mom nodded slowly, pressing her fingers to her temples. Then she looked at me, fear and hesitation in her eyes.