He turned the corner and smiled at her. “Ariel, my dear, how was your exercise this evening?”
“Fine.”
“Have you eaten?”
She nodded. “I ate earlier.” Her diet consisted of only vegetables, seeds, grains, fish and nuts.
“You’ve been taking longer than usual trips lately.” He adjusted his small glasses and smoothed his white doctor’s coat. He always wore his doctor’s coat.
“I like the beaches at Fort Fisher.”
He slowly closed his eyes. “Is that so?”
“Yes, they have big rocks that block me. It’s also a lot darker, not as many lights. And people leave there earlier than the other beaches.”
“Well, as long as you’re careful.”
“Of course, Father. I’m always careful.”
He smiled. He had a kind smile and kind eyes when he smiled. “Of course you are, dear. You know I just worry about you.”
“I know.”
He turned to walk away.
“Father?”
He slowly turned. “Yes?”
“Why does it have to be like this?”
“Like what, dear?”
“Why do I have to die so young?”
He frowned. “Ariel,” his voice firmed ever so slightly, “we’ve discussed this many times.”
“I know, but lately, I’ve been more scared. I don’t want to die.”
“I don’t want you to die, either. But there’s nothing we can do about it. It’s the cycle of life. When one is born, another must die.”
“But why can I never know friendship? Why can I never know the camaraderie that your kind knows?”
“That’s the way it has always been. The sea is yours.”
“Why can I never know love?”
He sighed into a slouch that seemed to overcome his entire being. “I love you.”
“Yes, I know. But you don’t love me like people love each other. I see them. Young love, old love, and all the love in between. I see them on the beaches and in the boats. I see love everywhere. But I will never know that love.”
“Ariel, don’t do—”
“I want to fall in love,” she interrupted.
He looked like tears were just micro measures away from coming. “I’m sorry, Ariel. I wish you could know it. I so very much wish. But it is what your kind has always done. I don’t make the rules. I am only your guardian.”
She rolled onto her back and looked up through the glass ceiling to the stars. “I just wish it could be different.”
“I do too, my dear. I do too.” He took a few steps toward the pool. “When your mother was your age, she went through the same things. It’s natural to fear your own mortality. We humans do it too.”
“But you get to enjoy so much more of it.”
“I wish you could too. We enjoy life in many different ways. But you will know things that people will never know. You have lived a life that many people would love to live. You only see a small complexity of the human experience. There are many unpleasant aspects of it. Trust me when I tell you that many of them would change places with you.”
“Yes, I know. But I feel like if I could love, then I could live with the hate and the cruelty that is your world. I want to experience everything life has to offer.”
“And if there was any way possible for me to give those things to you I would.”
She looked at him. “You’re a doctor, can’t you fix me? Why can’t you save me? Why can’t you make it so I can live to see my baby grow up? Why can’t I live to feel love?”
He tilted his head. “All this talk of love suddenly. Why do you feel like this?”
She looked away. “I don’t know. I guess it’s just the way it is. I feel sadder now than ever before.”
“Are you sure it’s not something else? Is there something you want to tell me?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
She shook her head. “I’m sure.”
“Well, okay, my Ariel, but you can always tell me anything. Just like you always have.”
“Please turn out my light.”
He turned away from her, flipping the switch as he walked by.
In the darkness, the stars really shined. Ariel didn’t fight her tears, she let them come. All she wanted was a friend. The loneliness was so hollow, it hurt so bad. The sadness never bothered her so much. She wasn’t even sure what feeling this was inside. But it all of a sudden made her long to be touched, held, loved.
For weeks now, all she could think about was Jake. She didn’t even know why. But ever since she’d seen him with a gun to his head, so sad, she hadn’t stopped thinking about him. Her only happy moments of the day were when he was sitting on those rocks. Before she’d even spoken a word to him, he was on her mind.
Maybe it was because his sadness was even more profound than hers. Sadness was the one thing she’d always sensed in others. It was so easy for her to see it, maybe because she’d been living it for so long. Knowing sadness and loneliness so well didn’t make them any easier to deal with. It just made them an all too familiar friend. Not a good friend, not the kind you call when you need something. But that friend that shows up when you really just want to be alone.
She longed for the days of her youth, when everything was fun and wonderful. She was never sad or lonely then. She loved her days and nights of frolicking in the ocean with not a care in the world. But now those days seemed so long ago. It was like those days were just wasted and lost forever.
Ariel reached across to the table near her bed and grabbed her flashlight. She shined the powerful beam across the pool to where the pictures of the other mermaids hung on the wall. It saddened her that she never got to know her mother. It saddened her that her baby would never get to know her. Having accepted that this was just the way things were didn’t make it easier. It bothered her that suddenly everything was bothering her. She wondered if she just swam away, if she wouldn’t have a baby. She knew the tradition, she knew how it was supposed to work, but she didn’t even care. She just wanted to be normal.
Chapter 17
Jake
Jake typed the keywords into the search engine. He hoped he’d be able to find something about Bruce Shepard. He wasn’t filled with high hopes, since it was probably a common name.
As suspected, the Internet was mostly unhelpful. There was nothing on a local Bruce Shepard whatsoever. He must have remembered the name incorrectly or something. But he was usually good with that stuff. He tried a bunch of alternate spellings. There was nothing.
“Anything?” Ashley asked as she sat down next to him.
“Negative.”
“Did you try different spellings?”
“Sort of,” he lied.
“Did you try just searching Shepard, with one P and two Ps?”
Just searching the last name, the double-P version retrieved no results, but the single-P search did bring up a Belden Shepard in Wilmington. “There’s a Belden Shepard, one P, listed off of River Road. He’s a doctor, out of a small office called Intercoastal Medical Associates.”
“Maybe that’s your guy.”
“Maybe.” He did some more searching and came up with another thing. There was an article mentioning a Bruce Shepard, a doctor. “Here’s something interesting, there’s a Bruce Shepard listed in this article on local businesses, he’s also a doctor.
“Gotta be the same guy.”
“Maybe Bruce is Belden.”
“Let’s drive by the house.”
Jake nodded and grabbed his keys.
* * *
They pulled up to the private gated community and drove down to the house. It wasn’t right on the water, but the property had a small inlet river that led right along the rear of the structure. There were only three other houses down this private road and they were all equally large.
Ashley eyed the house. “That could definitely be a doctor’s house.”
“It’s someone who has money
, that’s for sure.”
“That’s a lot of house.” She leaned back. “What’s that big thing in the back? Is that all glass?”
He nodded. “It must be a greenhouse or pool or something.”
“Must be a pool, why would you tint a greenhouse?”
“True.”
“That’s a big pool.”
“Huge.” He stopped the car. “Should we knock?”
Ashley made a face at him. “And say what? Excuse me, sir, can we see your mermaid?”
“I hadn’t thought about it.”
“Well, you better come up with something if you plan on knocking on the guy’s door.”
Jake sighed and started to drive slowly past the house.
“You’re giving up?” Ashley asked.
“I don’t know what else to do.”
“Stop the car.”
“Why?”
“I don’t give up that easily. I have an idea.”
Ashley got out and started toward the white iron fence that surrounded the house. Jake turned off the car and followed. They came up to the gate at the sidewalk. Ashley tried to open it but it was locked. There was an intercom on a pole. She thumbed the button.
“What are you going to say?”
“Sshh…don’t worry.”
They waited a long time but there was no answer. Jake was about to turn back about ten times but Ashley was persistent and refused to give up. She rang the bell again, and again, and again.
“I don’t think anyone is going to answer.”
“Maybe not, but I’m giving them every chance to get pissed off enough to do something stupid.”
“You have a knack for making people do stupid things.”
“It’s my gift.”
After another minute, even Ashley was about to give up, but the speaker box cracked and a man said, “How can I help you?”
“Is this Dr. Shepard?”
“Who’s calling?”
Ashley turned a devious smile. “My name is Jessica Finch. I’m here from the UNCW Marine Biology special studies team. We wanted to ask you a few questions about a research paper.”
There was a long pause until he replied, “I think you have the wrong house.”
“I’m looking for Dr. Shepard.”
“I don’t see how I can help you. Good day.”
“Wait, sir? Sir, it will only take a moment of your time. Please, sir?” Ashley pleaded but there was no response. Finally, she turned away and headed back to the car.
Jake shut his door and turned the key. “Guess that didn’t go over well.”
“Not so much.”
He spun the car around and headed back down the street. As they drove slowly past an older woman at her mailbox, giving them the evil eye, Ashley said, “Stop, I want to talk to her.”
Jake slowed the car until Ashley’s window was next to the woman. “Hi.”
The old woman’s wrinkled face scrunched up even more. Facial tics carried from her cheeks to her lips. “You’re not welcome there.”
“Huh?” Ashley replied.
The old woman thrust her bony-elbowed arm up and pointed at the Shepard house. “There. You’re not welcome there.”
“No, we weren’t.”
“No one’s welcome there. No one’s ever been welcome there.”
“Why’s that?”
She waved her hand. “Who knows? I’ve lived here twenty-eight years and that bastard has never spoken a word to me. ‘Who in the hell, I wonder,’ I said, ‘who lives across the street from someone for nearly three decades and never says a word to them?’”
“I don’t know.”
“No one, that’s who. No one! He’s a horrible little man, a sniveling weakling, and he’s not a very good doctor, either.”
“No?”
“Hell no. My sister went to see him once and he flubbed her care terribly. He said she had a cold and she had pneumonia so bad she nearly died. It was a catastrophe. I swear he’s incompetent.”
“Sorry to hear.”
“They should’ve pulled his license by now. I can’t believe he has any patients left the way he treats people. He’s not even…I think he’s a snake oil salesman. He prescribed my sister the wrong…he never washes his house. It just looks dirty all the time. And one time he got my mail by mistake and he just threw it out. I know it was him. I just know it was. I was waiting for that check for weeks. I had to call the Social Security office, and I was on hold for two hours, and he threw it away.” She pointed to the house again. “What’d you want over there, anyway?”
“Umm, we’re part of a UNCW research team, and someone told us he has some…marine life in captivity.”
The old woman narrowed her eyes. “Wouldn’t surprise me. He’s probably got all kinds of stuff going on in there. He’s always up all hours of the night.” She moved closer to the car. “You should talk to his old partner. I bet he could tell you some stories.”
“Who’s that?”
“Roger Pender. He was a great doctor but Shepard pushed him out, made him retire early.”
“How come?”
“Meh, who the heck knows what went on, but Roger probably should have sued him, I bet.”
Without another word, the old woman turned away and headed up her sidewalk.
Jake slowly pulled away. “What do you make of that?”
Ashley leaned back into her seat. “Clearly she’s delusional.”
“That’s obvious.”
“But she did say something that made me think that maybe he’s hiding something.”
“Well, I think we know what he’s hiding.”
“Yeah.”
“What we need to know is who the heck he really is and if the wild gunman is his.”
Ashley brought her hand to her face to wipe away the tears that started coming.
“Ashley, I’m sorry.”
She laughed. “This is stupid. I shouldn’t even be sad. I hated him.”
“You didn’t hate him.”
“No, I really had grown to hate him.”
“But you loved him at one time.”
She nodded. “Yeah. I mean, I think I did. Sometimes I wonder if I even know what love really is. You know?”
Jake shrugged.
Ashley touched his arm. “Hey, that’s just me. I don’t doubt you loved Cassie.”
“That’s the reality of it. Love is a twisted game. It’s ephemeral, it’s not forever no matter how hard we try. Unless both people want it to last forever, and the Universe wants it to last forever. You’ve suffered a loss. Even if you stopped loving him a while ago, that loss is going to hurt.”
“Is that when it hit you?”
He pulled to a stop at the end of the rural road intersection. “I loved Cassie, but I had my doubts about marriage. I think everyone does.”
Ashley nodded. “She loved you a lot. She loved everyone.”
“She loved hard. She used to say that all the time.”
“I guess we all should. We should all wear our heart on our sleeve like Cassie did. It made people want to be near her, it made her the center of every gathering.”
Jake pursed his lips. “I guess that was part of the reason it hurt so much to lose her. I didn’t just lose her, I lost everything. All my friends were her friends. All my hobbies were her hobbies. We shared a life and when she was gone, it felt like everything was gone.”
“I know—I saw it happening. When you stopped hanging with your friends for her. I knew it wasn’t going to be good for your soul.”
“Other than my bike shop, everything was all about her. She and my friends, they didn’t really jive. It wasn’t so much that I wanted to stop hanging out with them, or she asked me to. It was just I wanted to be with her all the time.”
“That’s what love does. I only know because the same thing happened with Mike. I stopped hanging out with all my friends, but it was because he didn’t like them. He didn’t like anyone that was in my life before we were married. He wanted me
to be all his. At first I was flattered, but later it seemed like a way of controlling me.”
“Of course it was.”
“I was stupid and in love. Or what I thought was love.”
Jake shook his head. “Love makes everyone stupid…even if it’s not quite real or not quite right.”
Ashley sighed. “Make no mistake. Love is a drug. It’s every bit as addicting, confusing, dangerous, and beautiful as any drug on this planet. Love gives you the ability to both move mountains and lose everything in the next moment. It’s a struggle for survival against something we can’t control. Yet we judge each other for making the same mistakes we ourselves have either made before or are guaranteed to make at some point.”
“Geez, when you put it like that it makes love seem like an evil monster.”
“It is, Jake. Love is an evil monster. But at the same time it’s the most beautiful and amazing thing on Earth. And that’s why we keep chasing the demon. We’re willing to plow through terrible relationships and experiences in hopes that that one amazing love is out there waiting for us. It’s hardwired into our DNA. We want that feeling; we crave that high.”
When a car behind them blared its horn, Jake realized they were still sitting at the intersection. He met her eyes briefly, and then checked the traffic before pulling out onto the main road. “I want to find Roger Pender.”
Ashley nodded. “Me too.”
Chapter 18
Castro
Castro picked up his phone and waited for the call to connect. “It’s me. The scare tactics didn’t work. He’s still seeing her.”
“Scare tactics? Scare tactics! Is that what you call it?”
“It was collateral damage.”
“You do realize your mistake took an innocent man?”
“That was unfortunate. I had to defend myself.”
“I thought you were some kind of professional?”
Castro chewed the inside of his lip and took a deep breath. “I do what I have to.”
The man on the other end of the phone grunted in frustration. “Fine, what’s done is done. But it’s time we up the stakes.”
The Mermaid Page 10
