False Mermaid

“Only the best natural rower I’ve ever seen. Flawless mechanics. I remember something she said once, that winning a race was the best high. She told me she’d grown up sort of uncomfortable in her own skin. Rowing had turned her from this awkward, chubby kid into someone who actually knew what she was doing, what she wanted. The way she said it—just made me think she’d overcome some difficult things in her past, you know? Most people float along, but Natalie never did. She definitely had that fire in the belly, a competitive spirit, but not the kind that made her hard to live with. There’s always a certain amount of backbiting in any place like this, ego and temper and all that goes along with competition, but Natalie seemed above all that. She’d go out of her way to cheer on teammates, try to lift everybody’s game—unlike most of the lightweights I’ve known.” She lowered her voice. “They have to be cutting weight all the time, so they’re usually hungry. Makes ’em cranky.”

“Did any of Natalie’s teammates resent her ability?”

“Why should they? It wasn’t like she went around rubbing people’s faces in how great she was. We all like winning. And we had a much better chance of winning when she was with us.”

“What about friends, anybody in particular she hung out with?”

“Not that I recall. She did things with the team, but nobody in particular stood out.”

“You know that you were her emergency contact?”

“Yeah, they told me when she disappeared. I thought it was kind of sad. She didn’t seem to have any family—no one she wanted to stay in touch with, anyway.”

“What do you remember about the time she disappeared?”

“She didn’t show up for practice. That was totally out of character, especially with the trials coming up. I called her cell phone, but there was no answer. So I tried the messenger service, but they said she hadn’t been to work either.”

“So you reported her missing—”

“I wasn’t sure anybody else would do it. Then somebody spotted her bike behind the boathouse. I remember having such a bad feeling, right here.” She pointed to a place just below her sternum. “I’m constantly reminding people—novices, especially—what a dangerous place the river can be.” She gestured to the top of the bluffs. “It’s still wild down here, not like the world up there. We’re dealing with weird stuff all the time—currents, hypothermia, deadheads, floaters—and don’t even get me started on the wackos who think it’s funny to drop things from bridges. We have to be constantly on our guard. I was always telling Natalie not to run alone, but she said she didn’t need a bodyguard just to go for a run. I totally got what she was saying—it’s not fair. But whenever I run down here by myself, I always come home feeling like I’ve dodged a bullet.” She eyed him curiously. “It must be strange, doing what you do every day. Getting to know people only after they’re dead, I mean.”

“Guess I never looked at it that way,” Frank said. “It’s like any other line of work; some days are better than others.” His eyes suddenly focused on the delicate sprinkling of freckles across Sarah Cates’s face. All the time they’d been talking, and he had never noticed that detail until this moment. And her eyes, such an unusual hue—pale green, the same color as the river in the bright sunlight. “I could wonder about what you do every day, too. Cold, currents, deadheads, dead bodies—that’s enough to keep most people in bed. And yet you’re out here on the water every day.”

“I can’t really explain.” She looked away for a few seconds. “When the wind is calm, and your cadence is just right—it’s hard to put into words. If you really want to understand, I could take you out for a beginner’s lesson some evening—we do it all the time. No charge.”

15

The reunion with her parents was going somewhat better than Nora had expected. There were no recriminations about not calling, no questions about her plans. As if they all realized that the elaborate pas de trois they had been engaged in for the past five years had become necessary.

Going about the everyday rituals of preparing a meal, Nora felt two discussions going on at once—on their lips the mundane details of the flight home, her work in Dublin, the small permutations of her parents’ daily lives, while the larger questions lurked beneath the surface, unasked and unanswered. She had already imagined most of the conversation: her father’s inquiries about her work at Trinity, her mother asking after people they had known in Dublin, even the occasional awkward silences. They never spoke Tríona’s name. Still, as the three of them ranged around the kitchen, opening drawers and cupboards, Nora felt how good it was to have her bearings, to know precisely where everything was. But for some reason, she was filled with a distant ache as well.