Chapter 13
ANNIE
“Why the fuck are we doing this again?”
Cori is hunched over a puddle of shimmery purple spandex like she’s performing open-heart surgery on a Muppet.
She winces, squinting at a seam. I can hear the rhythmic thrum-thrum-thrum of the sewing machine under my palms, a vibration that travels all the way up my elbows as I guide a river of teal sequins under the needle, my tongue poked out just a fraction because if this line isn’t straight, the scales are going to look more ‘molting fish’ than ‘magical sea-creature.’
“Because,” I say, not daring to look up even though my neck is starting to ache.
“Emma deserves a Halloween costume that doesn’t involve her father panic-buying a plastic smock at Party City on October thirtieth.
He was literally going to buy her something with the character’s face printed on the chest, Cori. I couldn’t let it happen.”
“Right. God forbid.” Cori jabs her needle through the purple fabric, then winces, probably pricking her finger. “And here I thought it’s because you were trying to impress her hot father.”
I don’t even flinch. I’m a professional. “And because you love me. Don’t forget that part.”
“Yeah, yeah. For you. And the children. Mostly the glitter-obsessed children.”
Outside, the Manhattan sky is a flat, indecisive gray.
The temperature plummeted overnight—proper coat weather, finally.
It’s technically my day off. I could be a normal human.
I could be nursing a latte in Central Park or at the matinee or staring at a painting at the Met.
Instead, I am slowly becoming one with the sequins.
By the time I’m done, I’ll be exfoliating glitter out of my pores until New Year’s.
Leo had been the one to break the news. He’d reached his breaking point with the red wigs and the clamshell bras after two consecutive years of Emma being Ariel for Halloween. They’d compromised—she could be a mermaid, but she had to mix it up.
“How am I supposed to find a costume for a hybrid sea-feline?” Leo had asked me, leaning against the doorframe of the kitchen, looking genuinely distressed.
He had that little crease between his eyebrows—the one that makes me want to reach out and smooth it over with my thumb, which is a very ‘just the nanny’ thought to have.
“You aren’t,” I’d told him, already sketching ears on my grocery receipt. “Leave it to me.”
“Annie—”
“I said leave it to me.”
He’d agreed, probably because he had no other viable options.
I grew up in a house where everything came in a Neiman Marcus shopping bag, but it was Eileen who gave me the real keys to the kingdom. She used to sit me down in the sunroom when I was seven, ignoring my pouting while she made me stitch straight lines until my fingers cramped.
“You should know how to make your own clothes, Annie,” she’d say, the words punctuated by the snip of her shears or the clack of her knitting needles. “You’ll feel more confident in the clothes you make yourself than in anything else, I promise.”
She was right. I love it—the way a flat, lifeless bolt of fabric becomes a shape, a mood, a reason to walk a little taller.
Most of my favorite pieces came from my own two hands.
The floral midi skirt that makes me feel like I’m in a Mazzy Star music video?
Made it. The black slip dress that makes me feel like I could give Kate Moss a run for her money?
Made it. I even made my own high-waisted trousers—the ones that actually made Marcus Silva stop mid-sentence, and he doesn’t offer empty flattery; to Marcus, a compliment on your clothes is a rare, hard-earned certification of quality.
So when he paused, tilted his head, and asked, “Where did you find those?” with that sharp, genuine curiosity in his eyes—well, I lived off that high for at least a month.
If I can meet the standards of a man who views a perfectly draped silhouette as a moral imperative, I can certainly handle a glitter cat mermaid.
I guide the final inch of teal under the foot, the machine giving a satisfied little snip. I hold up the tail, the sequins catching the gray afternoon light and shattering it into a thousand tiny dancing diamonds across the living room.
“Look at that,” I whisper, feeling that spark of I-made-this pride. It’s beautiful. It’s ridiculous, and it’s beautiful.
Cori looks up, her eyes softening despite her best efforts to remain a grumpy sewing assistant. “Okay, fine. It’s magnificent. Emma’s going to lose her mind.”
I can picture it already—Emma’s face when she sees this thing.
Her eyes going wide, her little squeal she does when she’s genuinely surprised by something.
She’s going to want to sleep in this thing, and I’m going to have to explain that sequins are essentially tiny plastic knives when they’re pressed against your skin at 2 AM.
The costume itself is a feat of engineering I’m frankly proud of and deserves its own wing at the Met.
The tail is teal sequins that fade to purple at the fins, with enough give in the hem that Emma can actually walk in it—none of that deranged-penguin-shuffling that usually plagues the mermaid community.
Cori’s been working on the purple velvet bolero jacket—cat-themed, with little paw prints I stenciled on in silver fabric paint.
I sewed cat ears onto a headband last night, covering them in the same teal sequins as the tail, with pink felt for the insides.
The whole thing is held together by a bodysuit I found at a thrift store on Bleecker—black, long-sleeved, perfect for October weather—that I’ve covered in strategically placed patches of iridescent glitter that, in the right light, look like scales.
It’s taken me a week. A full week of my life has gone into making a five-year-old look like a rejected character from The Little Mermaid meets Cats, and I regret nothing.
It’s Emma’s first birthday without her mom, which is something Leo hasn’t said out loud but I can see it in the careful way he’s been planning today, like if the cake is high enough and the balloons are bright enough, the giant, mom-shaped hole in the room might stay in the shadows.
I can’t fix that. But I can make sure she has the best damn fins on the Upper West Side.
I also got her another disposable camera and a bracelet-making kit I found at Pearl Paint that came with about seven thousand tiny beads in every color imaginable.
The teenager at the register had looked at me like I was purchasing supplies for a nightmare, but Emma’s going to be in bead-stringing heaven.
The apartment door opens and Marcus walks in, sorting through a small stack of mail. He’s wearing his gallery clothes—black on black on black, naturally—and has paint under his fingernails that he probably doesn’t realize is there.
“This is for you,” he says, handing me an envelope without looking up.
I take it and my heart does a clumsy little skip.
It’s a postcard with a glossy photo on one side, and there’s an envelope behind it with Eileen’s handwriting across the front.
We’ve been writing back and forth since September because calling Ireland means I have to choose between talking to her and eating for a week.
Letters are cheaper—a stamp to Ireland costs fifty cents, which is manageable even on my salary.
Finding Eileen after we’d both left California had been a little bit of a scavenger hunt, but still easier than I’d expected, mostly because I’d known exactly where she was going.
Back to Kinvara, the little town in County Galway where she’d grown up, where her daughters still lived.
I’d been there twice as a kid—once when I was ten and once when I was fourteen, trips my parents had allowed because it meant I’d be out of their hair for two weeks and Eileen had promised to keep me “out of trouble.” I’d spent those visits running around with her kids, learning to fish in Galway Bay, eating soda bread that tasted better than anything we had in California.
I’d written to her the day after I got to New York, but I’d had to track down the actual address first. I remembered the blue door and the garden that always smelled like roses and rain.
I remembered the view of Galway Bay from the kitchen window, but I’d been fourteen the last time I was there and couldn’t remember the house number to save my life.
I’d spent two hours at the library with a very patient reference librarian and a directory the size of a microwave until we found it: 77 Seaview Terrace in Kinvara, County Galway.
There was only one E. Murphy listed. I’d written to that address, hoping it was right.
Eileen had written back within two weeks and we’ve been writing to each other ever since.
Marcus looks over my shoulder at the costume spread across my lap. “What is that monstrosity?”
I swat at his arm. “It’s for a five-year-old, you snob. It’s art.”
“That child is going to glow in the dark. You know that, right? She’s going to be visible from the moon.”
“That’s the point.”
“Is it though?”
I turn my attention back to the envelope, trying not to seem too eager, but I can’t help it. I always love Eileen’s letters. They smell like her—like Dove soap and lavender sachets and chamomile tea.
I rip open the envelope. Inside there’s a postcard from Scotland—Edinburgh Castle at sunset, all dramatic and gothic against a purple sky—and tucked behind it, a photograph.