I don’t tell Lyn I sort of met Hope before our time at Fathoms. The second time she tried to take her life in the bathtub of Nigel’s beach house. Instead, I tell her what a good friend her daughter was and how she impacted my life. I say everything I didn’t say the day of the memorial. All the things I should have said and more.
“Bless your heart.” Lyn turns her attention to Mee-Maw. “I don’t know if you remember me, Vivi.”
“Of course I do. How are you, Lyn?”
“Wait . . . You two . . . know each other?” I’m flabbergasted but somehow not surprised. My grandmother has been in this town longer than a few spells and knows almost everyone.
“Vivi gave me my first job in high school.” Lyn closes her eyes a moment as if pausing in reminiscence. “Do you still have an attic full of everyone’s junk?”
“I like to refer to my things as treasures, thank you. When did you move back to town?”
Lyn studies a painting by the door, avoiding the question in my grandmother’s eyes. “Almost two years now.” She doesn’t elaborate. Doesn’t explain about the husband and two children she left behind. She waves us toward the cottage gallery. “Come on in. We have some wonderful pieces on display.”
Her purposeful change of subject does not elude me.
Still, we follow her lead. Inside the gallery, rich mahogany walls make the space feel grander than it is. Individual lamps cast a warm glow over each painting, bringing out the lively hues and playing on the use of positive and negative space.
“This one’s a favorite.” Lyn pauses beside a scene depicting a lighthouse on a hill. “It’s a duplicate, but as lovely as the first the artist painted.”
The lighthouse reminds me of the one Merrick found in the coffee table book. The one that led him to the woman standing before me now.
She moves on, giving us brief spiels about each painting in turn. When she rounds the last corner of the miniature gallery, time slows. The painting ahead is a rendering of a mermaid sitting on a rock, human prince at her side. The scene is one I’ve imagined in my mind—my heart—oh so many times before.
“Here we have one of the artist’s final creations prior to his death. He loved the Danish author’s tragic fairy tale but was also partial to the more modern, animated retelling.” Lyn’s fingers linger on the painting’s frame. “He believed in the innocence that comes with first love and how true love overcomes even the most impossible things.”
She couldn’t possibly know how deeply those words sink. How hard they hit home. I spent so much time looking for the worst. The deceptive Sorceress I saw in my grandmother. And Lyn—the witch who left Hope and Merrick behind. Even Jake and Miss Brandes played villains for a time, only to be revealed later as heroes. Mentors. Friends.
Now I see them for who they are.
Mee-Maw who loves me so much, she walked with me through darkness.
And Lyn. A lonely and lost woman who still searches for the best way to stand on her own two legs.
Jake, who checks in every week, and Miss Brandes, who still encourages me to write an ending to the story I never finished.
Hope and River, who live on in my memory.
And Merrick. Does he understand the change he induced by accepting me as I am?
When I look at Lyn again, I watch as a single tear travels from the corner of her right eye to the tip of her chin. In that tear every preconceived judgment I have harbored falls away. It’s in this tear I am reminded she is human.
We all are.
I pull a Kleenex from my tote bag and offer it to the mother of two of my favorite people. Has Merrick been here? Has he seen her since that day at the forest chapel?
“You should call him,” I say.
She blinks and smoothes the tissue over her open palm. “Who?”
“Merrick.”
“He doesn’t want to talk to me. I messed up. Wasted my last chance. It’s too late now.”
“It’s never too late to let someone know you love them.” This time it is Mee-Maw who offers her wisdom.
Is she talking to Lyn alone? Or are her words meant for both of us?
More tears spill from Lyn’s eyelids. They form streams down her freckled cheeks. Sing a song of mourning splashed with ripples of hope.
My gaze finds the mermaid painting again, so full of color and promise. The tune it plays is one I’d long forgotten. One I want to remember again.
“Here.” Lyn thumbs through a basket of postcards. “I want you to have this.” She hands me a postcard with a copy of the mermaid painting printed on it. “Maybe this will inspire your own love story someday.”
I take it, tracing the image with my fingertips. “I think it already has.”
Mee-Maw remains quiet until we’re outside. When our eyes find one another, she’s beaming. “That’s your ending.” She nods toward the postcard. “All you have to do is choose it.”
I glance over my shoulder. I don’t tell Lyn I forgive her for abandoning my friends. It’s not my forgiveness she needs or wants. It’s her own.
She nods at me through the window. She will call Merrick. Maybe not today, but soon.
Mee-Maw and I walk back through the gallery’s garden, following the path away from the hidden enchantment and out to the street once more.
When we reach a nearby bench and Mee-Maw sits to rest, I don’t join her.
“Go on, get out of here.” She shoos me with her hands. “Write that ending.”
I bite my lower lip, then give her a quick kiss on the cheek. When I pull away she catches my eye. Do I sense a little magic in her after all?
Yes. Of course I do. There’s nothing more incredible than unconditional love.
I head for the pier then. When I reach the sand, I’m already kicking off my boots and pulling out my notebook. I always keep one on hand and this one is brand new. Never been written in. Well . . . almost.
This is the last gift Hope ever gave me.
A golden mermaid silhouette decks the teal-and-white-striped cover. “I saw this on our beach field trip in the spring and thought of you,” she said on her last day at Fathoms. “I held on to it for when you returned.”
I open the cover to reveal an inscription written on the first page. As was her way, Hope penned a quote that seems written for me. For now.
“When we are at the end of the story, we shall know more than we know now . . .”
—Hans Christian Andersen
I sit, dig through my bag, and withdraw the only writing tool I can find—my red editing pen. It’ll have to do.
At last I dive in. My hand flies across the pages, the words spilling out faster than I can capture them in ink. With each new curve of an s or loop of a y I hear a new sound, each note lovelier than the one before it.
Red doesn’t have to be poison. It doesn’t always mean pain.
Red can also show warmth and passion. And maybe even . . .
Yes. I see it now. Hear it. Red is a symphony blossoming before me.
The color of light.
The song of love.
I stare at the red words at the bottom of the last page.
The End.
I can’t speak or control the elation tingling to my toes. Because I finished it.
I only wish Hope were here to read how it all turned out. Would she be proud? Would she have chosen to stay?