The Mermaid's Mirror (16 page)

Shoving aside the shoeboxes, Lena looked deeper on the shelf. At the very end on the left side was a larger metal box, like something for holding files.
Now, that looks promising,
she thought, noting its lock. She couldn't reach it from her position on the chair, so she got down, closed the right side door, and opened the left. Then she moved the chair to the other side of the closet. She paused to look at the clock. Her dad had been gone for about half an hour.

She climbed up onto the chair again and reached for the metal box. Disappointed, she saw that the lock was too small for her key, and anyway, the box wasn't locked. The tabs on the folders inside read
Archive Bank Statements, Past Tax Returns,
Legal Documents,
and
Old.
Strange that her parents kept this in the closet instead of in Dad's office.

Lena climbed down off the chair and sat on the floor. She pulled out the file marked
Legal Documents.
There were the birth certificates for Lena and Cole, and the marriage certificate for her parents: Brian Wayne Whittaker and Allison Lee Briggs.

She glanced at the last legal document. It was a death certificate.

Lena stared at it in dismay. There was her mother's name, Lucy Whittaker, no middle initial. Under cause of death was typed:
Suicide by drowning.

Lena let the paper fall from her fingers.

After a long, airless moment, she lay down on the floor, pulling her knees to her chest.

Here was the truth that her father had been unable to tell her. Here was a piece of paper that explained years of "I'm not ready."

Suicide by drowning.

Lena closed her eyes, willing herself not to cry even as her heart cracked deep inside. Her mother had been dead for a dozen years. Yet the stab of pain Lena felt at this new knowledge melted the years away, and that chamber in her heart where she stored her mother's loss opened wide, stacking new grief upon the old.

"Why?" she whispered. "Was being my mom so awful?"

She could feel the ache of tears behind her eyes, and she took deep breaths to help her focus on
not
crying. She bit down hard on her lower lip. Finally she opened her eyes and sat up. Forty-five minutes had passed since her father had left. She still hadn't found the lock for this key. If she didn't find it today, she felt certain that she could never bring herself to look through her parents' room again.

Lena put the files back in the metal box, in the exact order she'd found them. She placed the metal box on the shelf. She put all the shoeboxes back where they belonged, then closed the sliding doors and put the chair back in the corner. While she worked, she kept her mind carefully blank.

Almost an hour now. Her father would be finished with the shopping and on his way to the sushi restaurant.

Lena looked around the room again. She pushed open the door to their bathroom, but it seemed too small a room to hold any secrets. She knew that her mom hid the few pieces of expensive jewelry she owned in a tissue box, but Lena was not interested in those.

Standing in the middle of the room, Lena closed her eyes and clutched the key hard in her fist, as if she could squeeze an answer out of it.
Where do you belong?
she thought angrily.
I need to know.

When she opened her eyes, the room seemed brighter than before. The sun had moved out from behind the clouds. But one corner of the room remained in shadow. Lena cocked her head, studying the antique chair in the corner. Why was it there? No one ever sat in it. There was no light nearby, so it wasn't a good place to read. It was hard and uncomfortable, and usually had piles of clothes on top of it.

Lena moved to the corner and picked up the chair. It was solid wood, but spindly, so she was able to move it out of the corner easily. She examined the wall behind the chair. It looked smooth and unblemished. She knelt on the carpet, feeling for bumps or irregularities, but there were none. She put her fingers to the edge of the carpet and tugged, but it was tacked down securely.

Baring her teeth, Lena tightened her grip on the edge of the carpet and wrenched upward with all the strength of her anger and frustration. The staples holding the carpet in place popped out of the floor. Lena pulled the carpet back.

The wooden floor beneath the edge of loose carpet had been cut into the shape of a rectangle.

In the tick of time between her heartbeats, Lena hesitated.

What could be so important—or dangerous—that her father would hide it this thoroughly? She was still holding up the edge of loose carpet; now she pulled harder, revealing the full size of the cut in the wooden floor. It was about two feet long and one foot wide. She bent the carpet back and knelt on it to hold it in place. Then she fit her fingers to the cracks between the wood, and lifted until one edge was raised. She fit her hands around the piece of wood, and lifted it out, revealing a neat rectangular hole.

In the hole lay a dusty, brown leather sea chest.

Lena set aside the piece of wood and reached for the trunk. As her hands touched the cracked leather, she hesitated once more. Whatever was inside this trunk was something her father had clearly never wanted her to see.
Suicide by drowning
...the blunt, black words on crisp, official paper floated into her mind.

Then a vision of the mermaid replaced the image of the death certificate. There had to be a connection between the mermaid's key and this dusty old trunk. She couldn't stop now.

Trembling, Lena lifted the sea chest out of the hole in the floor and set it beside her. She took the key from around her neck. Taking a deep breath, she fit the key in the lock. She turned it, and felt a click as the lock released.

Lifting the lid of the trunk, the scent of salt air drifted into her nostrils. It was as if she had stepped outside. There were photos and letters lying on top. Lena thought she had seen all the photos of her mother that existed. Now she realized that her father had saved some and hidden them away in this trunk. Lucy looked impossibly young, hardly older than Lena was now. She was laughing in some photos, looking serious in others. More beautiful than anyone Lena had ever seen, with her long hair rippling over her shoulders and her emerald eyes shining with love. Then there were photos of her father with her mother, hugging and kissing and acting silly for the camera. Her father looked very young, too, in these photos. His hair was longer and shaggier, and he had a blond goatee. There were even a few photos of the two of them in the ocean, her father sitting astride his surfboard, and her mother treading water near him.

She doesn't have on a wetsuit,
mused Lena.
She must not have minded the cold water.

Here was one of Lucy, her dad ... and Allie! They were all three smiling into the camera, sitting at a table in a restaurant. Her dad's arm was around Lucy, and Allie leaned close to them, as young and pretty as they were.

The last few photos were stuffed in a too-small envelope. Lena slid them out. The first one was a photo of a small shop—the sign read,
BAY AREA BODY ART
, in large black letters, with a smaller line below:
TATTOOS, PIERCINGS, AND SPECIAL-OCCASION BODY PAINT
. The photos documented her parents getting tattoos. First they took pictures of each other making pretend-scared faces for the camera, then her dad took a couple of shots of the artist working on her mother's tattoo. When it was finished, a small dolphin adorned the skin just above her left ankle. Then her mother must have taken the photos of her dad getting the tattoo on his left arm.

But it wasn't the Chinese dragon tattoo Lena had seen all her life.

It was a tattoo of a mermaid.

"What. Is. Going. On," she whispered.

Her dad had had the tattoo altered at some point. But why?

She glanced over at the clock. She knew it couldn't be long now before her dad came home.

She set the photos next to her on the carpet, intending to hide them in her room, where she could take her time looking at them.

Next was a manila envelope full of yellowed newspaper clippings. Lena slid one out and saw the headline:
Local Woman Missing.
The one below that read,
Missing Woman Presumed Dead from Suicide.
She shoved them back in the envelope.

The letters and envelopes that came next were addressed to her dad in unfamiliar writing—i t must be Lucy's. Lena wanted more than anything to read them, but she set them aside for later as well. Her hands felt clumsy and numb as she gathered the pages together. Her name jumped out at her: Selena.

Lena pulled the envelope out of the pile and stared at it—a cream-colored envelope with no other adornment, just her name. It was sealed.

Her heart thudded painfully. Her mother must have written a goodbye letter before she killed herself.

Lena's hand began to crumple the envelope, almost without her volition. Then she flung the balled-up letter across the room.
I wish I'd never found it,
she thought.

She fought down an urge to slam shut the lid of the chest.
I can't go back,
she thought.
I can't go back to not knowing.

A large piece of heavy folded paper was the next thing she pulled out of the chest.

Lena unfolded the heavy paper and saw that it was a print of a painting called
The Land Baby,
by an artist named John Collier. The painting showed a small naked girl, about four years old, standing on a yellow sand beach while a mermaid gazed at her from the edge of the water. The mermaid was shown from the back, hands placed in front of her on the sand, her slim hips melting into a long, curving tail. The expression on her face was not visible, but her posture and demeanor suggested longing. The child's expression was unafraid. Lena stared at the print for a moment, then refolded it and set it aside.

A comb and a mirror lay inside the trunk. Lena picked up the comb, which was heavy, carved of coral. The handle was studded with brilliant gems, blue and green and red ... she had never seen anything like it. She held the comb for a long time, running the tips of her fingers over the delicate teeth and the brilliant facets of the jewels. It must have belonged to Lucy.

The mirror in the trunk glinted up at Lena. There was not a speck of dust on it.

Lena picked up the mirror and gazed into it. Her eyes were wide and amazed, as gray as a stormy sea—like her dad always said. For the first time, Lena could see that she was going to be beautiful someday, just like her mother. Her skin was not as pale as Lucy's had been, and she had her father's thick blond hair, but something in the structure of her cheekbones and pointed chin was evocative of Lucy.

As she continued to stare, mesmerized, she became aware of a shadow behind her in the mirror. She whirled around.

There was no one there.

Lena turned back to the mirror and looked deeper. There
was
a shadow behind her. But it was
in the mirror.

Goose bumps rose on her arms, and her heart hammered. Lena watched as the shadow grew bigger and began to darken her reflection in the mirror. It shimmered and swirled, and Lena's own face in the mirror began to dissolve. As Lena watched in disbelief, her eyes were the last features to disappear, melting into the gray mist. She saw that what appeared to be a vaporous mist was swirling into a more liquid form. The depths of the mirror were filled with an underwater murkiness.

This is it,
she thought, gripping the mirror harder.
This is why the mermaid gave me the key. She wanted me to see this.

Even as Lena continued to stare, she began to make out objects in the water. Silvery shapes flashed by. Strands of kelp and seaweed drifted past.

The murkiness in the water lightened. Lena peered deeper into the mirror, able to make out figures. They seemed to be spinning slowly in a circle.

Lena's hands began to shake. As the mirror quivered in her grasp, she saw that by moving it in different directions, she could see different perspectives under water. Now she was able to look more clearly at the figures in the circle. There was no question: they were mer-people. Their chests rose and fell, breathing in the salt water. Their lower bodies consisted of glimmering tails instead of legs.

Lena twisted the mirror in her hands again, trying to see even closer. They revolved slowly in their graceful dance. There was one mermaid in the center of the circle.

Is it my mermaid?
wondered Lena.
Did she want me to see her world?

Lena's eyes were fixed intently on the images in the mirror. She no longer saw or heard anything around her. She was no longer even aware of being in her parents' bedroom. Her whole being was concentrated on the underwater scene unfolding before her eyes. It was like watching a live-action camera. The mer-people turned in their unbroken circle, swaying gently, hands joined to enclose the solitary mermaid in the center.

Now Lena could hear sounds, too. She could hear a mournful, sweet song reaching up to her ears from the depths of the sea. It was like no human song she had ever heard, sounding more like a thousand violins and flutes all playing at once. And now she could make out speech. It certainly was not English, yet somehow, Lena could understand it. The sounds whirled into her mind, and she knew their meanings: "child," "alone" "heart" "life."

The mermaid within the circle lifted her hands to her face, head tilted back, eyes open in silent supplication. Lena moved the mirror in her hand, trying to get a closer glimpse of"her" mermaid. The mirror, as if it could divine her wishes, as if sensing her destination, began to zoom in slowly on the solitary mermaid.

Long, floating hair ... a sinuous, silver tail ... slim white arms ... delicate hands covering her face, as if grief-stricken.
What's wrong with her?
thought Lena.
What could make her look that way? Maybe this is how they have funerals.

The mermaid's hands came away from her face, and she stared mutely around at the circle of her people. Green eyes ... heart-shaped face with a delicately pointed chin.