Deep Betrayal Page 0,15

family with three shrieking children arrived at the pool. The oldest did a cannonball, drenching his dad, who shook the water from his magazine.

I pressed on. “The way I understand it, Grandpa was supposed to give you back to Nadia when you turned one, but he refused.”

“Stop it, Lily,” Dad said.

“Think about it. He kept you from the water. He refused to ever go back to the lake. Didn’t you yourself say that you always felt the pull?”

Dad stood up fast, and his chair toppled over behind him. “I’ve been losing my mind. You have no idea what I’ve been suffering.”

He was pacing now. “You have no idea. I’ve been insane with worry, thinking I’m going crazy just like him. Seeing mermaids. My God, what next? And what about your mother? If I lose it, how am I supposed to take care of her? How can I take care of her when I’m falling apart?”

I glanced over at the other father at the pool and caught him watching us. He quickly looked away and turned back to his magazine.

“Dad, sit.”

“Gah!” He righted his chair and sat down, his head dropping to his chest. His face, pale with exhaustion. “What am I supposed to tell your mother?”

“Nothing! Don’t tell her a thing. She couldn’t handle this.”

The next time he spoke, his voice was barely a whisper. “Why is it so much worse for me now?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. I turned around, hoping Calder would come help—he had to be able to hear everything being said—but the landscaped shrubs surrounding the pool were too thick for me to see him. “I have a theory.”

“What?”

“When you jumped in after me that day. That day you saw the mermaid. And Calder. You started to change. I saw the first sign. A silver ring. Right there.” I touched my finger gingerly to his throat. “But you didn’t make the full transformation. I think your body has tasted a bit of it. You’re craving the water. Your body wants it.”

“It’s always been like that. It’s only worse now.”

“That’s what I’m saying,” I said.

“Why are you telling me this?”

Again, the doubt weighed down on me, crushing me. “The mermaid, Dad. The one Jack shot? She washed up onshore. If Calder’s other sisters find out she’s dead, he thinks they’ll come after you.”

“Me? Why—? Wait, have you been in contact with that … that …? You know I told you to—”

“Calm down, Dad. Focus on what’s important here.” I launched into the rest of the story: How Nadia had grieved for him after he was taken from her. How she suffered when he didn’t return. How she died. How Maris and Pavati blamed him for her death.

“I was a baby!” he protested.

I went on to explain how Calder had come to join the mermaid family and how my attempt to save my family had all gone terribly wrong, though Dad had been there for that part.

“You’re saying that … that was my sister in the water with you,” he said, slowly accepting the truth. “It wasn’t me. I didn’t kill her.”

“No,” I said. “But Maris and Pavati don’t know the truth, and they won’t believe Calder if he tells them.”

“Why not?”

“That’s a longer story, Dad.”

He stared straight ahead at the motel swimming pool, and I could guess where his thoughts were going.

Dad opened his mouth, then closed it. Then opened it again and asked, “If I dove into that pool, would I turn into a mermaid?”

“Merman,” Calder said, coming up behind me.

I spun around in my chair.

“And you don’t want to do that in chlorine. It’s a nasty business.”

7

NEGOTIATION

“You!” Dad exclaimed, rising from his chair. He recoiled in disgust, and a vein popped down the center of his forehead. “What are you doing here?” Dad threw out an arm as if to shield me from Calder, and the other father at the pool gathered his children closer to his lounge chair.

“I’m here to help Lily,” Calder said. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do.”

“Help,” Dad sneered. “You weren’t much help when she was nearly drowned by that … that …” It looked like it was going to be a long time before Dad was comfortable with the word.

Calder ground his teeth and looked sideways at me. If that look was meant to remind me that he thought this conversation was a bad idea, and that he wasn’t pleased about being dragged into it, well, yeah, I figured that much out for myself, thank you.

“I know how you