Fifteen minutes later she found him just where she’d known he would be. It was the same spot where Ben Ellison had brought him when he was mad and vacant. He smiled calmly as he saw her head break through the surface. “Hi there, baby doll. Don’t know why, but I figured you’d be showing up soon.”
Apart from the two of them the shore was deserted. Without the continual allurement of mermaid song thrumming from under the bridge the crowds had finally gone home to sleep. “It’s a good time,” Luce whispered. “It’s finally quiet. How are you feeling now?”
She could see for herself that he was more or less fine, though. He brushed the question away. “We’ve gotta talk.” His cinnamon eyes had a troubled look.
“I know,” Luce said. “I saw you yesterday, and I know you saw me. But I guess . . .”
“I wasn’t ready to talk to you yet. I had to think it over. About this business of you girls turning human again. You know Dorian’s got it all figured out, right? He’s already calling people he knows from the Twice Lost Humans, trying to get me a job in Chicago. He’s a couple days late getting back to school, and he’s planning on you enrolling with him. I’ve been telling him to slow down.”
Luce felt a cold fluttering as she pulled in a long breath. “I’m ready to do it. He can go ahead and plan. I mean, as long as you don’t mind moving to Chicago.”
“Why?” His eyes were hard. It wasn’t like him, Luce thought. He almost seemed angry. “Why are you choosing this?”
Luce couldn’t lie to him. “I think . . . you might need me to take care of you. That’s a big enough reason.”
He stood up abruptly, his hands squeezing into fists, and twisted a little while he stared off at the hills. He was definitely angry, but Luce wasn’t sure why. The dawn had brightened now and thousands of gleaming copper shards jangled on the water. Then he gave a drawn-out sigh and bent over the rocks to ruffle her hair. “That’s just what I was afraid you were thinking, baby doll. Sweet of you and everything. But I don’t accept.”
“But—”
“I am the parent here, Lucette. It’s one thing if you wanna be human again because you’re in love with Dorian. He’s a good kid, smart enough for you, loves you like crazy. Okay, I’d be down with that. And it’s fine if you need me to take care of you. That’s what I’ve been hoping for, that I could finally do right by you and help you grow up. Then I started realizing: maybe you’ve already done that. I’ve been out of the picture too long, and you’ve gone and grown up without me.”
“You couldn’t help being out of the picture! Dad, so much happened . . .” Luce had never been able to stand hearing her father blame himself for anything. She still couldn’t.
“Got nothing to do with it, if I could help it or not. Lucette, I might not have been much of a dad, but I’m enough of one to want you to go beyond me. Go further in yourself than I ever could. You know there are people saying it’s got to be a lie about you being my daughter, because there’s no way the great mermaid hero could’ve come from a schmuck like me? How do you think that makes me feel?”
The idea of anyone saying that enraged her. “Horrible.”
“No.” His hand was still tangled in her short hair, but his gaze was confrontational and fierce. “It makes me feel so proud I want to scream.”
Luce felt as if her eyes were melting. Tears flooded her vision, crystalline and wild. “Maybe I could still make you proud. If I was human.”
“I don’t doubt you would, doll.” His voice was softening and he brushed the tears from her lashes with his thumbs. “Don’t do it for me, is all I’m saying. If you give up what you really want because of me it’ll hurt me worse than I can stand. But if you don’t know what you want, then, you know, there’s no reason why you have to decide yet.”
From here Luce could see the open ocean. Not too far in the distance there was a small patch where the light vaporized, blending into eternity; where the waves pitched to a rhythm that was somehow beyond the here and now.
He followed her gaze. “That’s kind of what I thought.” He paused. “So Dorian’s too late?”
“I still love him,” Luce said. “I love him a lot.” She was searching her own heart, trying to understand what she was feeling. “But it’s like he thinks turning me human again would fix me.”
She was surprised to hear the tone of complaint in her voice. Now she was the one who sounded angry.
“I can see that,” Andrew Korchak agreed. He grinned. “He does kind of talk that way. And why fix it when it ain’t broken?”
“Maybe I am broken, but it’s not because I’m a mermaid. It’s because of things I’ve done, and I can’t take them back by just having a different body!”
“You’ve done a lot more good than harm, Lucette.” He was still stroking her hair. “But I guess I can understand you feeling that way. I mean, God knows I’ve been there!” He nodded toward the deepening ocean. “You feel like this is where you belong now, don’t you?”
It’s not that I belong in the sea. I am the sea. My voice is the sea.
“What about Seb?” Luce asked. “Seb Grassley. Our ambassador.”
“Ben Ellison’s starting up a program for ex-mermaids. You know I got poor old Ben fired from the FBI, mouthing off the way I did? Anyhow Ben said he was giving Seb a job. Offered me one, too, but somehow—I don’t think that’s what I’m going to be doing next. Don’t you worry, though. We’ll be okay.” He paused. “I left Dorian a note to get down here as soon as he wakes up. I figured, one way or the other, you’d have something to say to him.”
“I do.”
Luce sang to her father for the last time, smoothing the remaining traces of damage from his mind. As it turned out they didn’t have to wait too long. The sun was just gleaming above the distant hills when they heard the rhythm of running steps and Dorian came darting through the bunker at her father’s back. Luce fell silent and stared at him, suddenly pierced by doubt. His bronze-blond hair flurried in the breeze, and his ochre eyes showed such passionate intelligence that Luce’s heart skipped to see it. She still adored him, in fact. More than she’d realized.
Andrew Korchak got up and climbed a nearby staircase, giving them some privacy. He stood half-concealed by the roof’s edge, facing the sea. He seemed to be watching the same patch of light Luce had noticed earlier: a place where the waves seemed to beat beyond the confines of time, where the light glimmered all the way to always. The forever world.
“Luce!”
No matter how confidently Dorian had been explaining his plans to her father, Luce could see that he was actually worried. He knew the conversation might not go his way. “Hi, Dorian.” She caught his hand as he scrambled onto the rock above her. “I . . .” She didn’t know if she could say it; she didn’t even know if she would say it. “I wanted to say goodbye.”
“Don’t, Luce. Don’t say that.” Dorian paused. “You know how much I love you now, right? I’ve done everything I can think of to get you to forgive me. I really—”
“That’s not why. I forgive you and I . . . I love you more now than I ever have. I wish everything was different. But you need a human girlfriend.”
“You can be now. Luce, we can be together forever. We should.”
He was crying, and Luce knew that she would give anything to comfort him. Anything except for who she truly was.