False Mermaid

She nodded. “Be right back.”

While Sarah was gone, Cordova stayed put and took the opportunity to observe Miranda Staunton. She must have known Natalie Russo—they were on the same rowing team. He watched her, one foot up on the bench, tying a strange-looking shoe. Must attach somehow to the boats they used. Unaware that he was watching her, she slipped a wad of gum from her mouth and pressed it to the undersurface of the bench. Frank had always wondered what sort of person did a thing like that. Now he knew. He averted his gaze as Miranda stood up and headed out the locker room door.

When he was finished clearing out the locker, Sarah Cates walked him out to the driveway. He gestured over at Miranda, preparing a solo scull for practice. “Know her?”

“Miranda Staunton? Sure. Joined the club out of college. I heard she was living out in Seattle, but she just moved back and rejoined a couple of weeks ago.”

“Good rower?”

“Great—”

Cordova sensed hesitation. “But?”

Sarah leaned forward slightly. “You know those cranky lightweights I mentioned the other day?”

The phone on his belt began to vibrate, and Sarah Cates signaled a silent good-bye as she backed down the driveway to the boathouse.

He expected to hear Karin Bledsoe’s voice when he answered, but it was his sister Veronica, upset and out of breath. “Oh Frank, he just stopped breathing. I didn’t know what to do—”

There was no reason to ask; he knew Veronica was talking about Chago. Frank and his brother had been born only minutes apart, but they were nothing alike. Twisted in his own umbilical cord, Chago had grown misshapen in the womb. His mind remained that of a child, ever joyful despite a halting gait and withered arm, his lopsided face perpetually split by a broad smile. Veronica, the eldest of his three sisters, had always been like a mother to them, looking after them ever since Frank could remember.

“Luis called the ambulance, and they took him away, to Regions Emergency. They said we should call the priest—” She broke off and began to sob.

“Go now. I’ll meet you there,” he told Veronica. “Get Luis to drive you.”

Frank’s tires sent gravel flying as he peeled out of the parking area above the boathouse.

8

Eleanor Gavin stood at her bedroom window, watching her husband deadhead flowers in the backyard. He’d been at it since they’d finished their supper this evening in awkward silence. Ever since her conversation with Nora, she’d debated telling him everything. But she wasn’t at all sure he could take the news. He already felt like a failure as a father—not that he’d ever admitted as much, even to her—but she could see it, in his posture as he stooped over the rosebushes, in every word and every gesture for the past five years. She watched him bend and snip, bend and snip, dropping each spent bloom into a canvas sack he wore slung around him like a sower of seeds.

And suddenly she felt a flash of affection so fierce it took her breath away. All the years of their history together cascaded over her, including the very first time she’d laid eyes on him, a hurling game with his pals on the lawn at Belfield. His ease with the hurley was the first thing she noticed, along with his physical beauty, the pleasing proportions of his frame. Good bones. There were no questions at all, really, about the choices you made then. Things happened, and you went along with them. That’s how she’d ended up here, in America, more than three decades gone, staring out the window at the man she loved and respected more than any other in the world, and making plans to deceive him.

She had to remind herself that he didn’t have all the facts, all that she had come to know only last night. If he did have those facts, perhaps he wouldn’t be out there, calmly snipping dead blossoms. He knew about Peter’s impending marriage, of course. The whole world seemed to know about it, and for the first time, Eleanor wondered exactly how that coupling came to be. In some ways, Peter’s choice hadn’t surprised her. Miranda Staunton had been on the periphery of all their lives, for as long as Nora had known Marc—always there, inserting herself next to Peter at every opportunity. He’d always seemed rather indifferent. But Miranda happened to get a job in Seattle only a month after Peter went there, starting fresh with his million-dollar insurance settlement. As if she hadn’t given a thought to Peter Hallett’s guilt or innocence. Did she have any idea what she was letting herself in for?