Chapter 36 Wren
Thirty-Six
Wren
Dad is officially calling the time of death for the FeeJee mermaid in the taxidermy lab. He pulled out all his old tricks,
and even tried his hand at some new ones, but he finally has to admit there’s no salvaging it.
“You know my great-great-grandfather bought it from P. T. Barnum himself?”
“I thought he wrestled with it for two days, Old Man and the Sea style, off the coast of Japan and, you know, Fiji.” I helpfully lift the old piece of etched driftwood that used to be mounted
beside the mermaid. “Says so right here.”
He makes a dismissive sound in the back of his throat. “Gonna have to find something online for that display before next weekend.
I don’t have anything else that’s close to being ready and we are not having an empty exhibit when we introduce Nereus to
the world.”
I push back from his work bench. “Scouring the darkest corners of eBay for something worse than the FeeJee mermaid sounds
like nightmare fuel. I’m going to leave that to you.”
“Thought you wanted to have a say in things like this?”
I keep heading for the door. “Not when all we show around here is made-up.”
“Wren?”
I turn back to face him expectantly. He just looks at me at first. He’s been giving me space since the night we talked, which
I took to mean he’d said all he was going to on the subject of Mom and my relationships. I start to wonder if that’s about
to change. “Yeah?”
“What would you put out if we didn’t have all this?” He gestures to the shelves full of “specimens” in various stages of construction
and repairs, some inherited from his predecessors, some cobbled together by his own two hands.
It wasn’t so long ago that I would have just shrugged and said nothing. The idea of trying to feature anything real in this
place would be like trying to get ramps on all the buildings in Nantucket. In other words, a complete waste of energy.
“I don’t know, Dad. But we’ve got another back room in this museum, and those shelves are a lot fuller than the ones in here.”
Tate is restocking the Nerissa T-shirts in the center of the gift shop before we open. He doesn’t seem to be going out of
his way to keep his back to me, though it’s still early, so he might just be too tired to put up the effort. But in that moment,
with the morning sun streaming through the porthole windows like spotlights, I decide it doesn’t matter.
I’m not quiet as I push toward him. I’m not trying to be.
He doesn’t react when I stop on the other side of the table, just keeps stacking shirts. And I’m pretty sure I know why.
“Eryn told you about Paris?”
He cuts a glance at me, then reaches for another shirt.
“If it helps, I told her I wanted her to stay.”
“She said you told her to send the application.”
I scratch at the back of my neck. “Because it’s what she wants, not because I want it.”
“I know that.” A shirt fists in his hands before he relaxes it. “Now, I know that.” He looks down at the wrinkled shirt and smooths it out. “She told me about what you guys talked about and
realized, I guess.” He’s still smoothing the shirt when he adds under his breath, “Should’ve figured it out before you almost
kissed somebody else.”
There’s a hint of a familiar teasing note in his voice, a lightheartedness that I don’t at all feel like I deserve. “She never
told you either? About wanting to go to pastry school?”
“She did, but she never talked about it like it was real, you know? She’d come sit with me on the boat sometimes, and I’d
tell her about my charter company plans and she’d tell me about the bakery she was going to open. Do you know she already
has a menu planned out?”
I shake my head.
“It changed all the time, but I knew she wanted it. And I knew there aren’t any schools for her around here. Can’t take that
kind of stuff online either.” He sighs. “But Paris, damn, that’s far. I looked it up, and you want to know how much a round-trip
ticket to France is going to cost me when I go visit her?”
“Half a grand or more.” I’d looked it up too.
He nods. “She’s gonna be okay.” And this time I know he’s saying this solely for my benefit. “Maybe better than okay. She
thinks you are too. She wants that for you, so I guess I can again too.”
The tightness in my chest that I was beginning to think was permanent eases slightly. “Thanks, man.”
He nods but doesn’t look at me. “I need to eat something. You got any Sour Patch Kids on you?” He doesn’t wait for my answer,
just suddenly turns away and beelines for a shelf of mermaid-shaped neck pillows that have never sold well due to the scratchy
iridescent fabric on the scales. He shoves his arm in between a pile, reaching all the way to the back with an intense look
of concentration on his face until, with a triumphant grin, he pulls out a bag of candy. “Ha!”
“Didn’t you get in trouble for hiding food around here last month?”
He hops up on the table of T-shirts and stuffs a couple of Kids in his mouth. “Yeah, well, Bethany’s not around to rat me
out.” He holds out the bag to me.
I try to avoid candy since sugar isn’t a paraplegic’s best friend, but I take one anyway because he is, and this is the first
time he’s offered to share anything with me in what feels like a very long time. Sharing snacks is kind of his love language.
“Thanks. You know, you don’t have to waste your money on plane tickets. You could take the Siren’s Call, or whatever you decide to change her name to, and sail it straight across the Atlantic till you hit France.”
He lowers the gummy he’s about to drop in his mouth, then stares down at it. “Turns out the boat is a no go. My uncle got
back and basically told me he can’t afford to sell it to me for the price we agreed on, so.”
“That’s such a massive load of bull—” I shake my head and will my sudden temper back into check. “You’ve been deckhand and
captain of that boat for years and he pulls this on you now?”
Tate rolls the gummy between two fingers. “He knows I don’t have another option, so yeah.”
No, I realize, Tate’s uncle may not have another option, but Tate does, and it’s so clear and obvious to me that I can’t believe
I haven’t thought of it before now. “You know what I think? I think you should go to your uncle one last time and tell him
either he sells you his boat now or he can find someone else to captain and take care of it for him.”
Tate starts shaking his head. “I can’t do that. What about you guys and the mermaid tour? McCleave’s needs that boat as much
as I do.”
“No,” I say. “We don’t. We’re putting a pause on the mermaid tour.”
Tate’s brows climb halfway up his forehead. “Since when?”
“Since right now. I can’t make Eryn do the Nerissa act for me anymore, and, no offense, but I don’t want to give up leading
the tour. If we lose the Siren’s Call too, then my dad won’t have a choice but to start over with it from the ground up. And this time, I won’t let him do it alone.”
Slowly, Tate nods. “Yeah, I mean, that makes sense for you guys.” He looks up at me. “You know I was never going to take the
tour from you. And I’ll help however I can with the new one.”
“I know, and thanks. But you’re still going to get your boat.”
Tate’s smile is forced. “Yeah. Someday.”
“No, today. If he won’t sell you the Siren’s Call, then go buy a different one, a better one. And don’t tell me they’re too expensive, because I am officially offering to
be the first investor in your charter company.”
He’s already shaking his head. “Wren, man. I can’t let you—”
I cut him off. “Tate, man, yes, you can. I’m not saving for anything in particular, so let me invest in something I already know is going to be a win.”
He stares at me; I stare right back.
Finally, he stands up, suddenly energized. “Yeah, maybe I will go see my uncle. Tell him it’s now or never because I’m done
waiting for him.” His voice is low, determined, and then he half tackles me in a hug, his fist thudding against my back until
I grunt in surprise. He pulls away, grinning wide. “Hell yeah, we’re going to be a win, you and me and the Salty Snack.”
I can’t help but grin as he punches the air. “Of course you’d name it after food.”
“You don’t like? I could always go with the SS Crumbs or maybe the Confectioner. No wait, Cheddar Buoy!”
I laugh.
“It’s going to be so great. And you will have a permanent spot right by the captain’s seat anytime you want it. I’ll even
get you a skipper’s cap.”
“Yeah, I’m not going to wear that.”
His excitement is still radiating off him in waves but he sobers as he looks at me.
“Maybe you’ll even come with me to Paris sometime.”
“That depends,” I say, matching his tone. “You coming back?”
He looks offended that I have to ask. “Always and forever.”
That, at least, is one good thing I still have. “Then maybe I will.”
Tate upends the rest of the Sour Patch Kids into his mouth, shaking the bag to make sure he doesn’t miss any of the sugar
crystals at the bottom. Then he takes a deep breath and looks at me. “So what are we gonna do about you?”
“I have to finish clearing out the FeeJee mermaid exhibit, then figure out the rest of Nereus’s discovery story and run that by my dad, then I get to work on the copy for the website.” My voice grows wearier with every word.
He makes a face. “Do you actually want to do any of that?”
Not really, but I don’t have a choice. “I’ll catch up with you later. And thanks for—” For talking to me again, for making me feel like I have my friend back when I really haven’t done anything to deserve that. “—you know, for sharing your Sour Patch Kids with me.”
I start to head back to the FeeJee exhibit.
“Wait, that’s it?” Tate lunges around in front of me. “We haven’t talked for over a week, and you think you can just help
me buy my dream boat and forget the fact that you haven’t said a thing about what you’re going to do about your tourist girl?”
I don’t think I’m ever going to like him calling her that. “She doesn’t want to work here anymore, and I can’t make her. Her
family is leaving soon anyway.”
“She told you that?”
I squeeze my push rims reflexively. “Last time she was here.”
“Well, damn.”
“Yeah.”
“She know that you and Eryn are over?”
“Eryn and I only talked last night.”
He nods, but I can tell he’s thinking. “You think she’d want to know?”
“I was a jerk last time I saw her.”
“Well, she’s used to that, and it didn’t send her running before.”
“Yeah, but this time I was trying to be.” I meet his eye so he understands the difference. She’d killed me when she told me she couldn’t come back to the museum, and I was willing to say almost anything to get her to stay, willing to fight with her if it meant she didn’t leave, but I went too far.
“I drove her away and I don’t know how to get her back or what it would even mean if I could. She’s supposed to go off to
college in the fall, earn a history degree so that she can work somewhere like the Whaling Museum or the damn Smithsonian,
places like that. I may not like everything about Nantucket, but leaving would feel like losing a limb.” I lift my arm. “I
don’t have enough working ones left to give up another.” I take a breath. “Even for her.”
Tate whistles. “I know you liked her, maybe more than liked her, but damn.”
I look around the gift shop “It doesn’t matter. What could I possibly offer her here?”
“A lot,” he says. “From where I’m standing.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not standing. And I know what happens when you try and make people stay.”
Tate refuses to even acknowledge the first part of what I said. “She’s not your mom. And you’re not your dad.”
“I know.”
“Do you? Because from what you’ve told me, your mom never wanted to be part of this place, and Lili clearly does. She might
even want something else too.” He reaches out and claps his hands down on my shoulders like he’s done a million times before,
but this time he gives me a shake. “So stop sitting here and feeling sorry for yourself and figure out a way to fight for
your girl.”