chapter four
The Rose Maid Café is right in the middle of downtown, snuggled in between a bakery that sells different kinds of whoopie pies and a shop called Rosemary’s Wishes. The store has all sorts of things in the window, everything from lamps with a curvy mermaid as the base to sea rose candles and soap and room spray. Streetlights that look like old-fashioned gas lamps line the streets, and people mill around licking ice cream cones and holding hands and sipping on paper cups filled with steaming drinks. The air smells salty and herby, like the ocean wind picked up a bit of spearmint.
Mama and Peach are still ahead of me with Claire. Lemon’s up there now too, while I trudge behind them, which is just fine with me. The solitude gives me a second to check my Safety Pack supplies again, to think through how the rest of the night might go. We’re just eating in a restaurant, so it’s not like all that much can happen. Then again, you wouldn’t think picking a rose would end in skin lacerations, but it did.
I glance up at the sky. The clouds have started to clear off, the first stars blinking through, so it probably won’t rain or storm. One less thing to worry about. Still, I jog to catch up with Peach, who seems to have forgotten all about her wounded fingers, showing Nicholas the sights around us and whispering secrets no one else can hear into the spot on his faded purple head where I assume his ears would be if he had any.
When we reach the Rose Maid Café, Lemon pulls open the front door, which is a dark and heavy oak, a tarnished brass anchor for its handle.
“You’re going to love it so much in here, I just know it,” she says to me after Mama, Peach, and Claire pass through. “I can’t wait to see what you think. I’m so nervous.”
“Why? I thought you said I’d love it so much,” I say. I’m being snarky, I know, possibly bordering on mean, but it feels like there’s a snake coiled up in my belly and Lemon keeps poking at it, making it rear up and hiss.
Her smile dips, but only barely. “Yeah. Right. You will. But, I mean…” She shakes her head. “Never mind.”
I shrug and walk inside, which is all smooth driftwood booths and tables with glass orbs hanging from the ceilings, amber lights flickering inside. The walls are white wooden slats and are lined with different kinds of artwork in matching driftwood frames—sketches and paintings, watercolors and collages—every single one of them depicting a mermaid, in all sizes and shapes. They’re pretty amazing, actually. They look like the kind of drawings Mum would’ve done for me, or at least bought me if she’d spied them in some local shop. We would’ve hung them in my room, next to the other artwork she’d gotten for me over the years—watercolor sea turtles and moon jellies floating through a sea so dark blue it was almost black, a pod of narwhals against the white Antarctic ice.
Something almost happy springs into my chest as I look at these mermaid paintings. Just for a second, and then it’s gone. I’d never tell Lemon that, though. I gaze coolly at the art. Each piece is done only in shades of blue, from deep navy to the lightest sky, which gives the whole café a gauzy, underwater feel. Some of the art looks like little kids did it and some of it looks professional, which just makes it all that much more amazing.
“Hazey,” Peach says in a breathy voice as she takes my hand, so I know she agrees with me. Together we weave through people waiting for a table and gaze at the art hanging in the entryway.
Mum would’ve loved this, I think.
She taught college-level visual art, helping students paint their inner feelings or whatever, but she was an artist herself, too. If we weren’t out hiking or kayaking, she was working on some project at home. Acrylics were her specialty and she always, always created something to do with nature. But her pieces weren’t just boring old sunset pictures. They made you feel you were really there, out in the wild, and there was a bit of magic in her paintings too. Some dreamy quality, something only she could do that made you think that anything was possible out there on the flat plain or on a mountain or looking down on a river. She even sold some of her art at a local gallery. She kept the best pieces, though, and hung them all over our house. She’d display Peach’s art too. Peach loved to sit with her at the kitchen table and make what looked to me like a giant mess. But Mum would take two- and three-year-old Peach’s splotchy watercolor picture of a flower or the sun or a cat and let it dry. Then she’d put it in a white matted frame and hang it in the hallway, turning it into the prettiest picture in the house.
My favorite art she did was the piece she painted for me when I was born. It wasn’t of my face or anything. It’s an abstract. She told me, years later when I could understand it and asked about the small rectangular canvas hanging over my toddler bed, that she had painted how I made her feel the first time she held me. My painting is turquoise and navy and sea green and aqua and sky. It’s peace and quiet. But sort of fierce, too, parts of the painting writhing up like an ocean wave before rolling back down into calm.
You feel like this to me, Mum had said. All the blues, calm and adventure at the same time. Like you’re the deepest, most beautiful, most mysterious sea.
Back when water was my whole life—posters of dolphins and blue whales and sea lions all over my room’s walls, swim practice every morning before school, websites for college marine biology programs bookmarked on our family’s computer even when I was an eight-year-old—Mum’s words, her art, meant everything to me.
She painted a picture for Peach, too, but my sister’s is brighter, bolder, a desert sunset with colors so vibrant you can almost taste them. Pinks and golds, red and orange and plum. And then, like a cool breeze on a hot day, a little river of kelly green right through the middle. Perfectly Peach.
My sister never got to ask Mum about her painting. I’m not even sure if she remembers it exists. Mama put most of Mum’s art in storage back in California, but she kept a few pieces, her favorites, and packed them away in a big trunk we take with us everywhere. Peach’s and my paintings are in there. I remember when Mama took them off our bedroom walls. She carried them both into the room she used to share with Mum and sat on the floor, staring at them for hours before she packed them into the trunk. Now Mama keeps that trunk locked and tucked away under her bed in whatever house we’re living in. I haven’t seen a single one of Mum’s paintings since the day we packed up our house, a few weeks after the memorial service.
I feel Mama come up behind me. I wonder—I hope—she’s thinking about Mum’s art too. I wait for her to put her arm around me, or at least touch my shoulder, but she doesn’t.
She never does.
Don’t they remind you of Mum?
The words gather on my tongue, but I can’t seem to get them to come out. We never talk about Mum. Not in two whole years. I don’t know who decided that talking about her was too hard, too sad. At first, it really was too painful, especially when I was still in the hospital and going through skin grafts to fix my face. But then the silence became a habit, and I’d be too scared to break it. Sometimes, I get so mad about Mama’s quiet I want to scream. But then, just when I think I’m going to talk to her about it, tell her how I need to talk about Mum, that Peach needs to hear about her, the guilt rushes in like the ocean filling up a tiny bucket, and I’ll remember that it was all my fault Mum died and I won’t be able to look at Mama again for hours.
“Hey, there you are,” Claire says, coming up next to Mama. “I got our best table. Lemon’s already over there.”
“Claire, this is amazing,” Mama says. Her voice sounds gauzy, awestruck. I turn to look at her. Her arms are folded, but her face is soft. The dim light glints off her wedding ring.
I’d seen all the pictures from my moms’ wedding. Mama wore a lacy lavender dress, and Mum had on an ivory suit that looked so amazing with her blond hair. It was in our backyard, and every single person who’d ever been important to Mum or Mama was there.
Claire wasn’t.
And she definitely wasn’t at Mum’s memorial service. How good of friends could Mama and Claire really have been if she wasn’t even at the two single most important moments in Mama’s life?
Not very good, in my opinion, even if she does have a cool café.
“Thank you,” Claire says, looking around and smiling. “I do like it. And now I’ve trained my sous chef well enough that I can have a night off here and there. I bought it about three years ago, right after…” She trails off, eyes all distant for a split second before she clears her throat and looks at Mama again and smiles. “Well, Lemon and I made it what it is. All the décor is one hundred percent Lemon—the colors, the driftwood.”
“Even the art?” I ask, then snap my mouth shut. Pesky question just slipped right out.
Claire nods and looks around at all the frames for a second. “She commissioned most of it. Went around the entire summer before we opened, getting people to draw their versions of the Rose Maid. Only one rule”—she sweeps her arm through the room—“shades of blue.”
“It’s beautiful. Right, Haze?” Mama says.
“Hopefully, you’ll feel the same way about the food,” Claire says.
“I have no doubt we will,” Mama says, a smile in her voice. Then she turns and walks off, following Claire through the crowd. I sway a little, feeling suddenly like a boat that just got pushed out to sea by a storm. My chest goes tight and I can feel it coming on—the Sadness. It happens every now and then. It’s like, I’ll be going along just fine, playing with Peach or cleaning or just lying in bed reading a book, and then, suddenly, it’s like I fall into the coldest water in all the world and I’m sinking, sinking, sinking. Now I squeeze my eyes shut, the crowd noise fading to a dull hum, and when I open them again, I’m staring right into the eyes of a watercolor mermaid in her driftwood frame.
She’s got white-blond hair like mine, except hers is long and flowy and slightly blue tinted. She’s got pale skin like mine. She’s got ice-blue eyes like mine, except you can only see one of them, because the other is covered up with her hair, only the tip of her dark eyebrow visible. In fact, the whole left side of her face is covered, just like I try to do all the time, and her other eye is big and wide and sad-looking, like she’s holding the whole weight of the ocean and all its mysteries and dangers inside her.
I look for a signature in the bottom left or right corner of the piece, like Mum used to put on her art, but there isn’t one.
“Come on, Hazey,” Peach says, tugging on my arm. I blink and let my sister pull me through the crowd, but I glance back at that mermaid, locking my eye with hers one more time.
I notice the same illustrated mermaid all over the restaurant.
I mean, yes, there are painted, sketched, collaged mermaids in frames on every single wall, but they’re all different faces, different styles, different bodies and skin colors, except this one with her white-blond hair and cool blue eyes. Her clothes are different from the others too. She’s still blue hued, turquoise and navy and aqua all swirling together, but she doesn’t have on a shell bra or anything like that. Instead, she’s wearing what looks like an old-fashioned dress. It has long sleeves with lace circling her wrists and a high-necked lace collar. But then, at her hips, instead of a smooth-scaled mermaid tail like the rest of the art pieces have, her dress continues flowing down. It’s in tatters, though, patches here and there and golf-ball-sized holes, through which you can see glimpses of those blue scales. Her mermaid tail flicks out of the bottom hem of the dress, big and beautiful and graceful.
That’s how I know whoever did these paintings is really good—you can feel that mermaid tail gliding through the water. Her hair, too. Fingers and arms. Mum used to say capturing movement was one of the hardest things to do in drawing or painting, and this mermaid is nothing but movement. Slow, sad, graceful movement.
She doesn’t look magical or mythical at all.
She looks like me.
“Do you like her?” Lemon asks me.
We’re sitting in the back of the restaurant, in a corner booth that curves around the table so we’re all able to see each other. I’m smooshed in between Lemon and Mama. Peach wanted to sit with her fruit friend, so she’s way over on Lemon’s other side. The same blond mermaid hangs on the wall right above Claire, who, of course, is sitting next to Mama.
“Who?” I say. My voice comes out all wispy, like the faintest cloud on a sunny day.
“The mermaid.”
I can’t help it. My gaze goes right back to the blond mermaid, and I feel myself nodding. I think my mouth might even be hanging open, and my nose feels a little tingly. I clear my throat and look down at the menu, which is full of fancy stuff like blackened harbor shrimp and mushroom risotto. Maine lobster bisque. Grilled free-range chicken with fresh rose crema. I really want to look at that mermaid again, though. Mum used to say one of the purposes of art was to make us feel things, sometimes things we didn’t even understand. I guess whoever drew that mermaid did a pretty good job fulfilling that purpose, because my chest is achy and my nose prickles, but there’s also this pressure in the back of my throat, like a scream is caught in there and wants out.
I shake my head to try to clear it. The menu below me blurs and then sharpens. I need to read the kids’ section for something Peach will eat, but I can’t seem to get past coconut chicken tenders. I’ve finally moved on to noodles with rose cream butter when Lemon flips my menu to the back page. She doesn’t even say anything. When I start to flip it back—hello, rude—she holds down one corner with her finger and then tap-tap-taps with her turquoise fingernail. I sigh and look down to see that The Rose Maid is written at the top in curly script. Underneath it, a poem in five stanzas.
Deep in the ocean
where the current slips free,
there lives the Rose Maid,
our Rosemary Lee.
She’s beauty and sadness,
she’s love and she’s loss.
She’s a memory you hold dear,
she’s the treasure and the cost.
If you find her, beware.
If you find her, be keen.
She’ll sing you into madness
or grant you one dream.
Secrets she knows,
sorrow she sees,
alone under the waves,
our Rosemary Lee.
When I finish, I breathe out like I’ve been holding in all my air. Maybe I have been. Then I read it again, slower. The rhythm feels like ocean currents. The Sadness swells in my chest. I try to swallow it down, but it’s like there’s an itch deep inside me, and these words almost scratch it.
Almost.
“What do you think?” Lemon asks. Her gaze flicks to my scars, then down to my Safety Pack, then finally back up to my eyes. “It’s beautiful, right? Me and my best friends, Kiko and Jules? We’re obsessed with her.”
“With… who?”
“The Rose Maid. Her.” She points up at the pale blond mermaid above her mother’s head. “Don’t you think you sort of…” She trails off, head tilted as her eyes wander my face. I feel like a specimen in an aquarium. Still, though, my arms break out in goose bumps, and the hair on the back of my neck sticks straight up. I swear my scars even tingle.
Before Lemon can say anything else, the server comes to take our order. Claire chitchats with the guy—dark-haired with a lip piercing—before ordering for all five of us, which Mama doesn’t seem to have a problem with but I think is just plain rude. What if I was a vegetarian? Vegan? A sufferer from celiac disease and couldn’t touch even a pinch of wheat?
After the server leaves, I sip my water and try not to glance at the mermaid on the wall, and then Lemon starts asking Mama and Claire for stories from when they were growing up in California. I slink down into the booth as Claire babbles on about how they met when they were in kindergarten and Mama stole Claire’s aquamarine crayon on the first day.
“I needed it for my unicorn,” Mama says, laughing. “My pack of crayons only had sixteen boring colors. Yours had forty-eight.”
“Yeah, well. I never saw that crayon again.”
“Mama!” Peach says. “Stealing is wrong!”
Mama spreads her hands out. “I borrowed it.”
“Which meant I had to partner with you for every art activity, just to use my own aquamarine crayon,” Claire says, then holds up one finger. “Hang on. That was your plan all along, wasn’t it? To ensnare me into best-friendship.”
Mama throws her head back and laughs. “Yep, that was it. My diabolical plan.”
“Clearly it worked.”
Mama laughs even harder, her eyes gleaming and locked on Claire’s.
Our food comes, and the shrimp and grits Claire ordered for me actually smells really good, but my appetite curdles like old yogurt. I can’t remember the last time Mama laughed like this. Between her and Mum, she was always the quieter one, but, oh boy, could Mum make her laugh. One time, years ago, Mum made Mama laugh so hard she peed her pants a little. It was just a normal night. We were having vegetable pot pie. I don’t even remember what was so funny, but Peach was in her high chair clapping, with mashed sweet potato all over her chubby cheeks, and Mama’s face was red, her hands covering her mouth while Mum roared with laughter at the ceiling. Then suddenly, Mama shot out of her chair and ran for the bathroom, which only made Mum laugh harder. From then on, it was this running family joke, anytime Mama would release the tiniest giggle.
Watch out, Evelyn, better cross your legs!
She’d roll her eyes and smack Mum’s shoulder, but she’d be smiling. She’d be laughing, just like she’s laughing now.
“Are you still writing, Evie?” Claire says when her infernal laughter finally dies down.
Mama’s smile dips a little, but she nods. “I am. Though I’m between projects right now.”
Mama writes romance novels, a few of which have done really well and none of which I’m allowed to read yet. When Mum died, though, Mama missed a deadline and then decided to scrap the whole project she’d been working on. She hasn’t finished a story in two years, and her editor wants a new book pretty much yesterday. I guess it’s hard to write romance, about people being all happy and in love, when your wife is gone forever.
“You’re a real published author,” Claire says, stirring her risotto. “I’m so impressed.”
“You’ve read my books?”
Claire tilts her head at Mama. “Every one. I love them. And I’m completely unsurprised by your success. You were always writing stories in that notebook of yours.”
“With your aquamarine crayon.”
Claire laughs so hard she slaps the table. I notice that Lemon’s eyes follow her mom with a kind of awe, a little smile lifting the corners of her mouth.
“You’re an author?” she asks Mama.
“Romance,” Claire says. “And no, you’re not old enough to read them.”
Mama grins. “I tell Hazel the same thing.”
“K-I-S-S-I-N-G!” Peach chants, and everyone laughs except me and Lemon, who elbows me so hard I have to glance at her. She widens her eyes and purses her lips, and I feel like she’s trying to communicate some message, but whatever it is, I’m not getting it. Nor do I care to.
“So tell me,” Claire says, “how long are you three staying in Rose Harbor?”
“Oh, just for the summer,” Mama says. “We’ve been traveling around for a while now.”
“Really?” Lemon says. “That sounds so adventurous.”
“It does,” Claire says. Then she glances at Mama and back down to her food, super quick. “So you’re not… I mean, I don’t want to assume…” She takes a deep breath, and I feel it coming before it does, like that electric zip in the air right before lightning strikes.
Claire lets out this nervous little laugh and runs a hand through her short hair. “I’m trying to ask whether or not you’re married, or with a partner, or…”
I go very still.
I think Peach does too.
Even Lemon is a statue next to me.
I stare down at my shrimp. I don’t want to see Mama’s expression, see her smile and shake her head and say no. I hold my breath, wishing I could stuff cotton into my ears, but when I don’t hear Mama say anything, I finally look up.
She’s very still too. Her mouth is open a little, like she’s trying to answer Claire’s nosy question but it’s stuck on her tongue. Claire’s eyebrows dip in the middle. I see realization spill over her face—not the truth about Mum, necessarily, but something. Something horrible and sad. I don’t even dare look at Lemon.
“Evie,” Claire says, then word-vomits everywhere, talking so fast I can barely keep up. “I’m sorry. We don’t have to talk about it. Look, I get it. I really do. And I—”
“Mama, I’m really tired,” I say, way louder than I should, probably. But someone has to put an end to this horrendous night, and it looks like it’s going to be me.
Mama finally closes her mouth and nods. “It’s been a long day.” Then she picks up her bag and digs around inside. “This has been lovely, Claire, but if you don’t mind, I think we’ll call it a night.”
“Of course,” Claire says, a frown still puckering her forehead. “Are you okay?”
Mama pulls three twenties from her wallet, handing them to Claire. “Yeah. Move-in is always exhausting. Is this enough to cover our meals?”
Claire waves away the money, and while Mama protests, I scoot my hip against Lemon’s. At first she doesn’t get it and I’m worried I’m going to have to literally bump her out of the booth, but then Peach scurries out and Lemon finally follows. As soon as I’m free, I grab Peach’s hand and start walking. She comes with me without protest, which means she’s ready to go too.
“We’ll see you soon, right?” I hear Claire say behind me.
“Hazel, wait,” Lemon says, but I don’t.
I don’t hear what Mama says to Claire, either. I don’t let my eyes go back to that blond mermaid in her driftwood frames. I just keep walking until I’m out the door.