21. Chapter 21
For a moment, I couldn’t move or even breathe. My mind raced as it tried to convince me I was wrong, that it wasn’t her, that it was playing tricks on me. But the longer I looked, the less I could lie to myself. Every picture I had ever seen of her perfectly depicted her almost exactly as I saw her in that moment, bar the shock and horror etched onto her face.
She had one arm around her swollen belly, hugging it as if her life depended on it.
Holy marscapone. I was a foetus.
A wind whipped past me as Adrian sprinted toward Ben and the two pirates, and he launched himself at one, tackling him to the ground. The sharp crack that echoed around the trees as the pirate snapped a thick branch in half when his torso struck it jerked me out of my reverie. I had to help Ben. But all the potions were in Adrian’s pockets. Time to improvise.
I picked up a chunky stick and dashed toward Ben, who had toppled onto his back and jerked his head this way and that, slapping the pirate’s sloppy punches out of reach of his face. Raising the stick up behind me, I swung it at the pirate’s head. The stick snapped clean in two when it hit the man’s skull, and his eyes crossed for a split second before he slumped onto the ground, motionless.
“Did you ever think of a career in baseball?” Ben grabbed my offered hand, and I yanked him to his feet.
“Only on the days I get PMS,” I said. “Are you okay?”
“Fine. Stay with your mum. I’ve got Ade.” Ben squeezed my hand before sprinting toward the pirate that had Adrian in a headlock.
I might have found it funny under any other circumstances.
But I turned, with butterflies in my stomach to face my mum, only to find her slowly slipping down the tree trunk despite her firm grip on it.
“Okay, hang on,” I said and grabbed her arm to keep her on her feet.
Despite her small stature, Mum had more weight on her than I would have guessed, and I couldn’t stop her slithering onto the floor. She clutched her stomach with both hands, but her eyes never left me.
“Maeve,” she whispered, her eyes shining with tears.
I nearly choked on my spit. How did she know who I was?
“Eat potion, peg-leg!” Adrian’s war cry made Mum flinch as he dumped an entire bottle of groggy potion onto the pirate’s face.
For a long moment, Mum and I stared at each other, until she winced and her hand shot toward her lower back.
“What is it?” I held my hands out to her, ready to help with whatever the problem was. “What’s wrong?”
“Just a little kick in my kidney, that’s all,” Mum said, a tear trickling down her cheek toward her smile.
My throat constricted, and my eyes burned. “We need to get you somewhere safe. Come on.”
I offered Mum my hand, and without hesitation, she took it.
***
With two groggy pirates and a pregnant woman in our charge, we had to find somewhere we could lie low and collect ourselves. But given that tourist season was in full swing, finding anywhere without too many people wasn’t easy.
When a huge party of tourists filed out of a nearby ice cream parlour, I steered Mum toward it and found us a booth right at the back.
“Wait here,” I said once I’d sat her down.
I went to the counter, ordered a jug of ice water, and brought it back just as Ben and Adrian shuffled in with their pirates, looking a little sheepish as interested onlookers pointed and giggled at them.
“Here.” I poured Mum a glass of water and slid it across the table to her.
She took it and sipped, always keeping one hand on her stomach. My eyes burned again.
I sat down opposite her but frowned at Ben when he and Adrian deposited the pirates into another booth across the way. What were they doing over there when I had chosen seats already?
Ben jogged over and fumbled for his wallet in his back pocket. “Anyone want some ice cream? I was thinking of dosing those two idiots up with some ‘Feel-Good Fudge’ to keep them on the level. You know, while you guys talk.”
Oh. That’s why he had given us some space.
“‘Feel-Good Fudge’? Isn’t that for kids?” I asked, rubbing the salt that had crystallised on my cheek.
Dad used to order it for me when I was having a bad day as a child. The parlour infused all the ice cream with potions for different effects, and ‘Feel-Good Fudge’ calmed kids right down. Whether the potion was strong enough to chill out a pirate was another matter.
“Worth a shot,” Ben said. “I’ll get you something. Surprise you.”
I smiled at him. “Have you seen Kira and Bronwyn?”
Ben pursed his lips and shook his head. My stomach rolled. Suddenly I didn’t feel like ice cream. What if they were also in trouble with escaped pirates?
“Let’s just take a beat,” Ben said. “Then we’ll find them. Okay?”
“Sure.” I watched Ben walk away, and he threw a reassuring look over his shoulder.
“Is he your boyfriend?” Mum’s question had me turning back to her.
Her cheeks had turned cherry-red, and she beamed at me.
“Officially and unofficially,” I said, pouring myself a glass of water. “Um...”
What the hell was I supposed to say to my late mother, who was sitting right in front of me? All the conversations I dreamed of us having vanished in a pit of awkwardness and disbelief. But one question surfaced, too pressing for anything to suppress it.
“Mum... how did you know it was me?” I asked.
Mum sipped her water. “Well, the resemblance cinched it for me. But... I knew you were coming, my darling.”
“You did? How?”
“I received a strange letter from a Seer called Esther Everhart when I first became pregnant with you,” Mum said. “Which struck me as odd not only because she’s an Everhart, but because she died a long time ago. To be honest, I didn’t believe it at first. I thought it might have been some sort of trick, but I truly wanted it to be true. Especially because...”
“Because what?”
Mum’s gaze deviated to her water. “Because she told me I’m the one to die when you’re born.”
I didn’t feel it coming, but a tsunami of sorrow struck me and sucked me down into its depths. Tears spilled down my cheeks, and I pressed my hand to my mouth as my lips wavered.
“It’s true then?” Mum asked. She put down her glass and took my hand with her free one, the other still pressed to her stomach. “Don’t cry, my darling.”
“You’re crying,” I mumbled, squeezing her hand.
Mum chuckled, her cheeks shining with tears. “What a pair we are.”
A teenage server bustled his way between the tables with a glass bowl of ice cream in each hand, but he stopped dead when he caught sight of Mum and me. His eyes creased and his lips pursed, as if he wished the ground would swallow him up. Someone wasn’t comfortable with crying.
“Are those for us? Thank you, young man,” Mum said.
The server thrust the bowls onto the table and hurried back to the counter.
“This is surreal,” I said, wiping my eyes with the back of my hand. “I never thought I would even have a conversation with you, let alone... ice cream.”
“I hoped we’d have much more than that.” Mum let go of me to push the ice cream bowl in front of me. “Eat up before it melts. That boyfriend of yours must have picked out something you liked.”
I ate a small spoonful, unsure my stomach would allow for much more, but the moment the ice cream hit my tongue, a sense of sleepy calm enveloped me. I’d forgotten how effective this stuff was. Maybe because I hadn’t needed it in fifteen years or more.
“Maeve?” Mum didn’t touch her own ice cream but watched me eat mine. “I’m so grateful you’re here, especially if... this is the only time we spend together. But... why are you here?”
The memories of Dusk and of Dad and Allison’s illnesses resurfaced, waiting patiently just outside the borders of my new found euphoria for the magical ice cream to wear off.
“Did Esther not explain?” I asked.
“She only mentioned that you had business in this time.” Mum laughed humourlessly. “She made it sound as if you were just popping to the shop to get a newspaper.”
If only it were that easy.
“Dusk is in trouble in the future, Mum,” I said. “And Ben and I... we’re trying to fix it.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“It’s a long story, Mum.”
The last thing I wanted to do when I finally had a moment with my mum was to talk about the mayhem happening at home. Even though we were here for a reason, I wanted to have a selfish moment and finally spend some quality time with her. But despite that, a burning question fought its way to the forefront of my thoughts. One that I couldn’t have answered at any other time by anyone else.
“Mum?” I asked, after another spoonful of ice cream. With no liquid courage on hand, feel-good dessert would have to do. “Why didn’t you ever tell Dad you’re a mermaid?”
Mum smiled weakly. “You know, then, darling?”
“Found out the hard way.”
“I’m so sorry, Maeve. To begin with, I only kept it from Theo because his father would have thrown me back into the ocean himself. He wasn’t my biggest fan. But after he died, so much time had passed since we first met, and we were newly engaged... I worried he would think I betrayed him by keeping it from him. Surely he would have wondered if I had kept my mermaid a secret from him, what else I was hiding. I love your father ever so much and I couldn’t bear the idea of...”
She trailed off, but I understood. Dad had such a gentle and understanding nature that disappointing him felt unacceptable. That was the second most pressing reason I hadn’t told him about my relationship with Ben. The first being that the next family meeting that followed that revelation would cause the family to hurl me out of the manor from the highest window.
“I wish I could be there for you, so you wouldn’t feel alone in this,” Mum said. “Have you spoken with the merfolk coven on Magdora?”
“Janeira is trying to get me to move onto the island with them,” I said. “But... my life is on land, really.”
At least, most of the people I cared about were. Not that any of that mattered if we didn’t succeed at this.
I glanced over at Ben and Adrian, who were deep in discussion, only pausing to check on the pirates, who dug into their ice cream like little kids. Even the one I had whacked with a branch didn’t look the slightest bit perturbed by his bloodied, probably broken, nose.
“Are you happy, my darling?” Mum asked. “Is your dad happy?”
I didn’t want to tell her the ins and outs of what was happening on Dusk in our time. It would only depress her. But I had the perfect way to express to her exactly what our lives were like.
“There’s always been something missing without you,” I said. “For both of us.”
Mum’s face crumpled, and she took my hand again as tears streamed down her face. But the sight of her blurred behind my own tears.
“Maeve.” Ben’s voice had me wiping away my tears, and I blinked clarity back to my gaze. He pointed at the windows, through which I spied someone bent over a table outside, gasping for breath.
I craned my neck to get a better look, but then they abruptly stood, twigs and leaves sticking out of their wild hair. Bronwyn.