by Lena North
I stared at him as he got up and pulled me to my feet.
“Mollycoddle?”
He grinned at me and said calmly, “Always wanted to use that word in an actual sentence.”
“And now you have,” I retorted, reached for my clothes, and added emphatically, “There’s no need to do it again.”
“Probably not,” he agreed.
I tried to judge his mood and decided he was still rattled by what had happened.
“We should talk about me not dying,” I said quietly.
“I’ll be fine, Charlie. We should talk about it, but right now? Can we just pretend everything is normal? Spend some time down on the beach, go for a swim? Then we’ll call your father. Last night was hard for him too, and he needs to see you.”
Yes, I decided. We could totally do that, and he was right, we needed a bit of ordinary. The dock had been a study of crazy that morning, and when Dupree had finally let go of me, Ban and Lippy held on until Joao had to tug their arms away. While he was busy convincing them to sit down before they fell over, Tina wrapped her arms around me. Thea came running, and then the cousins got out of the water, and I was passed around a whole group of wet men. There were some tears, but I smiled so widely it felt as if my face would split in two, and kept doing it until I saw Nicholas, Pauline, and Carrie.
“I voted against killing him, but I won’t next time. Might even shoot him myself,” Nicholas muttered into my hair, and I heard Pauline laugh on my other side. It was not a happy laugh, and I turned to stare into eyes which were hard as stone.
“Aunt Paulie,” I whispered, and her eyes softened but just barely. “He’ll go to prison for this.”
“There’s no need for anyone to kill him,” I heard a dolphin hiss angrily.
“Exactly,” I agreed.
“You have cousins and so do we.”
“What?”
There was no reply, so I repeated my question a few times but got only a resounding silence in return.
Then Carrie cried into my hair, promised she’d finish the job if her parents failed, and shared that Roark was at their house, polishing his gun. I laughed, but it faded away when she didn’t laugh with me, and I swallowed. Roark owned a gun? And was polishing it?
I didn’t ask about it because I really didn’t want to know. Then they started talking about taking me to the hospital, which I rejected vehemently, although I agreed to let Nicholas check me out at the house on the bluff. I’d been asleep before he was done.
“Come on,” Joao said, and I shrugged off the memories of how upset everyone had been. “I want to see your other shape.”
“My mermaid shape,” I clarified as we walked through the house.
“Water…” He trailed off and grinned as he finished it with, “person.”
“Or mermaid,” I said affably. “I’ll let my hair grow.”
“Huh?”
“Like in those animated movies for kids,” I explained and took hold of his hand when we started climbing down the stairs leading to the beach. “If you find a couple of huge shells, I could use them to complete the image.”
I gestured in front of my chest, and he started laughing.
“They’re not exactly huge,” he informed me of something I knew.
“Are you complaining?” I asked haughtily.
We’d reached the beach, and he tossed the towels on the sand and pulled me into his arms. Then his hands slid up under my tee.
“Nuh-uh,” he murmured into my neck. “I think they’re…” His hands went higher. “Perfect,” he breathed, and I felt his teeth nip my earlobe.
My hands moved over his back and slowly, he got us undressed.
“Joao,” I murmured. “Are we going to… you know what? Right here?”
“Private beach, Sunshine, so yeah. We are.”
Oh.
“Okay.”
***
We hadn’t spent nearly enough time in the water when Joao pulled us toward the shore. I protested, but when he told me he was tired, I closed my mouth and wiggled my fin to help him move us along. He’d rushed through the water for almost four hours straight, and in what must have been an incredible speed, going a distance I’d heard the others speak with awe about on the dock that morning. The general consensus seemed to be that he’d done the impossible, but he’d shrugged it off as if it was nothing. He’d be tired, though, and I wiggled a little harder.
This made Joao laugh again, like he had the first time he saw how I moved. It was not easy at all, and my jerks and twists were far from the graceful, economical movements he did.
“We’re gonna have to practice before you swim with the others, or they’ll choke from laughing.”
His voice slid through my mind, and I grinned at him. Just as I could speak silently to the dolphins, when we were in our watershapes, Joao and I could do it too.
“Okidoki,” I quipped and got another laugh.
When we reached the beach, I sank down on my towel, realizing that he seemed perfectly okay, and I was the one who was tired.
“Sit here for a while, Charlie. I’ll go on up and call the family. They’ll probably bring dinner for us, or else, I’ll sort something out.”
“I can –” I was going to say cook, but when I saw the look on his face I amended my statement to, “sit here for a while.”
“Nice catch,” he snorted and leaned down toward me. “I meant I’d order something from town.”
When he’d stopped kissing me and left, I turned to look at the ocean. I’d almost died out there, and it had been frightening. I wasn’t afraid, though. That first day when they brought me down to the beach, and I walked out in the shallow waves, holding Joao’s hand, it had felt like a memory of something I hadn’t recognized. I knew what it was now, I thought. It was home.
“Oh, Mother,” I whispered. “I wish you’d trusted him. Wish you hadn’t run away, scared out of your mind.”
I knew my wish was impossible. She’d grown up in that group, taught all her life how water was the temptation of the devil. She’d performed one small act of rebellion when she snuck away to see my father, and she must have liked Dupree a lot since she’d agreed to meet him by the beach, but they wouldn’t have lasted as a couple. He hadn’t loved her, and she’d been sixteen. I would have grown up on the Islands, though. There was no doubt in my mind that Dupree would have brought me with him to his home. I would have grown up with Joao then, like cousins. Siblings in many ways. Would we still have fallen in love?
I shrugged because it didn’t matter. It was what it was, and most of my life hadn’t been fantastic, but I had amazing now.
“Charlie?”
“Hey,” I said and shielded my eyes from the low sun as two dolphins jumped, far out in the ocean.
“Are you okay?”
“Totally.”
“Will you swim with us tomorrow?”
“Totally,” I repeated and laughed with their giggles.
“You need practice,” one of them informed me cheekily. “Bossy can’t seem to teach you, so we will.”
“Bossy?” I asked, but I knew who they meant and laughed at the silence I got.
“Um, we might call him that,” one of them said after a while. “Sometimes.”
“Can I tell him?”
“Maybe not?”
“Okay,” I said. “I won’t. I might call him that too because he is.”
“Yes!” a chorus of voices called out. “And he’s almost always right too, which makes it even more annoying.”
I had more in common with my gray friends than I’d known, it seemed. We spoke for a while longer, about how I’d swam across the ocean, and what we’d do in the next days. They asked me again to tell Joao to look for the man called Jamie, and I promised I would. Then they called out their goodbyes, and I climbed the stairs up to the house. They were steep, and when I walked into the house, I was out of breath.
“Holy shit, tho
se stairs are steep,” I called out and sucked in air. “No wonder you have buns of steel –”
I stopped speaking, and I did this because the kitchen and living room were pretty much an open area, and it was also pretty much filled with everyone I knew. And I’d just shared the firmness of Joao’s butt with them.
The man himself closed his eyes briefly and murmured something which sounded like a combination of a crude word and his nickname for me. Everyone else was suddenly grinning.
“He-ey everyone,” I chirped, albeit a little bit shakily. “What are you doing here?”
The grins faded away, and I froze.
“What now?”
“They found Sebastian Lievens. Dead,” Joao said and came toward me.
I backed away and let my gaze move over the crowd until it hit Tina.
“You didn’t?” I gasped. “Please tell me you didn’t?”
She blinked and took a small step back.
“What? Why do you think –”
“Oh, please,” I interrupted her. “Joao was with me, so he didn’t do it. Papi can’t move without coughing his lungs out, and the two stooges next to him are barely able to lift their arms without rivers of morphine running through their systems.” I took a breath and waved my hand toward Nico, Pauline, and Carrie. “You said you would, but you are too danged nice, so you didn’t, and Roark,” I moved around until I found him. “You’re in the morphine crowd too, plus you’re just too sweet.”
He blinked and opened his mouth, likely to protest, but I was on a roll and turned back to Tina.
“You,” I said, and she took another step back. “Your girlfriend is a marshmallow, but you have a core stronger than anyone else. In this room, you are the only one except for Joao who would do it.”
Her face softened then, and she came to me.
“Thank you.”
“Uh,” I said when she put a hand on my cheek. “It wasn’t exactly a compliment.”
“Yes, it was,” Thea whispered from the side, but my eyes were on Tina.
“I didn’t do it,” she said.
“But –” I turned to look at my father. “Papi?”
He was laughing so hard he’d started coughing, but he shook his head.
“What the hell,” Roark barked out, and I turned.
“Stooges?” Ban grunted, but he was doing it pressing back laughter. “Jesus, Charlie.”
I felt Joao next to me, and his face showed no emotions, but I saw his tee moving, so I knew he was laughing too.
“I might have insulted part of our family a little bit,” I whispered.
“No might about it,” he said gravely, but with a decided twinkle in his eye. “Took their mind off my backside quicker than I could have hoped for, so I don’t mind.”
I sighed.
“How did he die?”
“His boat was found floating upside down with a hole in the hull. He must have been brought closer to the mainland shore, though. They found him on the beach south of Prosper earlier today. He drowned, Charlie… but he had bite marks.”
“Shark?”
“Orca.”
I stared at him.
“Killer whale,” he clarified with a tight smile and pulled me into his side.
“I know that,” I said. “But why –”
Then I remembered what the dolphins had told me that morning. You have cousins but so do we, they’d said. And orca were the same species as dolphins, so in a way, they would be their cousins.
Oh my God, the loyalty they felt for us.
***
Joao
Joao stared at the man in front of him and held back the words he wanted to roar in the older man’s face. Senator Lievens seemed to have aged twenty years in the week that had passed since his son was found dead on a beach half a mile away from where they’d watched him speed away to look for Charlie.
“Why do you want to meet her?” he asked calmly instead.
He wasn’t going to let the man see Charlie unless there was a good reason for it. A very good reason. Charlie had let go of Sebastian and what he’d tried to do and was ridiculously calm about almost drowning. Joao still went out on the terrace each night when she’d fallen asleep and stood there, watching the waves and the town beneath him. Looking for danger and trying to get over how close he’d been to losing her.
There had been a lot of talk about his swim across from the mainland, in hushed voices and within the families only. His cousins had tried to bring it up with him, and he got why they were curious and understood their need to tell him their feelings of awe about it. He didn’t want to talk about it at all. To him, there was no awe, no achievement, and no magic. It was a nightmare he didn’t want to relive. He’d closed down every emotion in his soul and focused only on pushing himself through the water as fast as he possibly could.
He’d seen them. Three huge black shapes, moving toward the side of the boat, pushing it around, and he hadn’t cared. He’d screamed out to Charlie in his mind, knowing the water was way too cold for her to stay floating, trying to hope but knowing he’d be too late. That he’d find her just as he’d found his cousin Tommy, at the bottom of the ocean, resting peacefully.
When the dolphins’ voices reached him from far away, he’d kept pushing, too afraid to believe them to slow down. He hadn’t exhaled until he walked out of the water and saw how she tried to smile at him. Sometimes when she smiled, he still felt a pressure across his chest.
So, he wasn’t going to let the broken man in front of him see Charlie unless he had a good reason because that man had raised a son who would have killed her if she hadn’t been who she was.
“I want –” The senator swallowed and restarted. “I need to apologize.”
“Stay away, and that’s good enough,” Joao grunted.
As far as he was concerned, the only one who needed to apologize was dead.
“I want to compensate her for what she’s been through. I was hoping it would help her heal. In private.”
He wanted to pay her? For wh –”
“You want her to keep what happened to herself and not talk to the press,” Joao stated.
He couldn’t believe the complete piece of shit he had in front of him.
“My son is dead. There’s no need to sully his memory.”
Sully his memory? Joao took a small step forward, prepared to tell the man exactly what he thought about that memory.
“A million.”
Dupree’s voice was a low, harsh rumble.
“What?”
“A million in her bank account and you resign as senator. If anyone asks, she’ll only tell them she offers her condolences to the family and that she and your son broke up several years ago.”
“Who are you?”
“Her father.”
The senator straightened and moved as if he wanted to shake the other man’s hand. When he didn’t get any response, he straightened and use the hand to adjust his tie instead. Dupree was already standing tall, watching the man calmly. Two men couldn’t have been more different.
“I’m sorr –”
“Not interested in what you have to say. Your son was a piece of shit, we all know it, and nothing you can say will change that fact. A million by the end of today and your resignation citing your grief or whatever excuse you come up with. Take it or leave it.”
Their eyes locked and Joao watched how Dupree stood there in his ratty old tee and flip-flops and stared down a senator. He felt an inappropriate urge to chuckle but bit it back.
“It’ll be in her account by the end of today,” Senator Lievens finally agreed.
“Right,” Dupree grunted and turned to Joao. “We’re done here.”
Then he walked away.
Joao laughed all the way back to the house. Dupree watched him in silence, and when they got out of the car, he smiled a crooked smile.
“She wasn’t going to talk anyway.”
; “I know,” Joao said.
“She’ll be less than happy we didn’t bring her to the meeting.”
“This is also something I know,” Joao said with a sigh. “Which is why you’re here with me now. You made the deal, so you get to be the one telling her about it.”
They laughed as they entered the house, and as expected, Charlie exploded when Dupree told her who they’d just met.
“Charl –”
“Shut up, Papi.”
“Sunsh –”
“You can shut up too.”
They did.
“You thought I was weak, and couldn’t handle it,” she whispered, finally.
“Don’t be a moron,” Dupree snapped before Joao could protest.
“Why then?”
“You almost fucking died,” Dupree bellowed. “You don’t think it haunts me? I wake up every night shivering like a goddamned girl and frightened out of my mind from nightmares about you drowning.” He made a throaty sound and looked away for a second. Then he went on, “And Charlie-girl, every time I walk outside to shake it off, I see your man standing on the terrace, staring out over the waves. And I know he feels what I feel.” His voice softened, and said gently, “We had to do something because we couldn’t do a goddamned thing for you in that moment when you almost died. It was high-handed and overprotective and to everyone’s surprise, including my own, it turns out that this is the kind of father I am. And you went straight ahead and picked a man exactly like me.”
Joao felt her hand move, searching for him and pulled her into his arms.
“Sunshine, he’s right. You’re going to have to accept what happened today, as well as the fact that we’re not going to change. I’ll try my best, but shit like this will likely happen again.”
She tilted her head back and looked up at him, eyes full of tears which made them sparkle in a way that went straight to his heart.
“Bossy,” she murmured, and for some reason, that suddenly made her smile.
“A little bit,” he agreed. “I also love you.”
She sighed, and he hoped the way she relaxed into his side meant she wasn’t angry anymore.
“What did he want?”
“Apologize and give you money so you wouldn’t talk to the press,” Dupree said. “Told him he had to resign as a senator and give you a million.”
