Chapter 34

When I go back to Mother's apartment—my apartment now, Chaz says—the roses are still blooming redly under her windows. Her door is still flanked with spiky, pretty plants. Wipe Your Paws it says on the welcome mat, the lettering faded. Anjelica is wriggling in my arms as we approach. Home, I can feel her thinking.

I'll admit I'm afraid to go in. What will I find? Evidence of my insanity? Evidence of hers? Evidence of all the thorns between us?

When I open the door, it looks both the same and different. Cleaner and brighter, more open somehow. Filled with air and light. There are two mannequins sitting at the dining room table by the window like they're having tea by the sea. I flash to the moment when I took them from the shop, believing they were my sisters. Didn't I have three?

And then I hear a voice from the kitchen. "Hey."

He's standing by the table. Wearing an actual shirt. His hair is tucked neatly behind his ears. No squeegee in sight.

"Tad." I can't believe how happy I am to see him. "You're still here."

He smiles a little. "I just stayed so I could say goodbye," he says.

"You're leaving?"

"I should get out of your hair. Let you get your bearings. Anyway, it's all done."

"Done?"

"Everything's fixed. Patched it all up, too. Pipes, walls. Even cleaned the windows again."

I look around the place. Now the difference, the openness, the new quality of light and air, makes sense. "I don't know what to say. Thank you."

He shrugs like it was nothing. "It's in the best shape it can be now. Whatever you decide to do with it." He doesn't ask what I'll decide to do with it.

"What do I owe you?"

"Just take care of yourself, okay?"

"Surely I owe you—"

He shakes his head. "I did it for your mom. She was good to me. Probably too good. This is the least I could do." He turns away from me to face the kitchen cupboards. Silent for a while. "I did some grocery shopping for you too," he says at last to the cupboards. "Just so you wouldn't have to think about it for a while."

I stare at his back, thinking of that awful moment in the bedroom with him. How I made him white with fear. Kissed him until he left me, mumbling about how he had to go buy some fruit.

"You bought the fruit."

He's still turned away from me, staring at the cupboards. "Yup."

"Tad, I'm really sorry I was behaving so strangely before. I wasn't… myself."

"It's all good," he mutters.

But I know he's red in the face. I am too. I look at the kitchen floor, which Tad has swept and cleaned in my absence, like he's swept and cleaned everything else.

"It isn't good. I'm sorry if I did anything to make you—"

"Hey," Tad says, turning around at last to face me. His eyes are rimmed red, shining with tears. He walks over and hugs me then. In the warmth of his arms, I feel his love for her. I smell her happiness in his scent of beach and bright days.

"Grief is a journey," he says. "And everyone has their own way, you know?"

"Still," I say, shaking my head. "That wasn't the way I ever meant to go."

He pulls away a little so we're face-to-face. He brushes my hair away from my eyes. "There's no one right way to ride a wave, Belle."

"Thank you for being good to my mother. Thank you for loving her. I'm glad you were in her life."

"I'm glad she was in mine. I'm only sorry I wasn't there that night she…"

He looks away.

"Me too," I say, tears in my own eyes now.

"The truth?" he whispers. "Is that I really didn't know what was going on with her. She wouldn't see me much toward the end. At all. She'd taken up with this… crowd. Fucking weird rich people. Really into skincare, I guess it was?" He laughs darkly, but his eyes look pained, helpless. "I wasn't sure. She didn't really let me in. Your mother was pretty secretive about that stuff. About a lot of stuff, honestly."

I stare into his kind eyes, where once I thought I saw darkness. What was it I really saw there? Sorrow. Loss. Denial. A sunny attempt to sweep it all away.

It's on the tip of my tongue to tell Tad everything. Whisper it all into the shell of his ear.

Instead I say, "I hope you'll come back. For the windows."

He smiles. "Of course. I'll come back anytime. I'll be around. For the windows or not the windows."

He leans in, and for a moment I feel a thrum of panic. Then he kisses my cheek. Ruffles my hair. No cold. Not a trace of cold do I feel from his touch. It feels like being warmed through. And then we're parted.

"Oh hey, I didn't know what to do with those." He points to the two mannequins sitting at the table. "I guess they're new?"

I stare at their white smiling faces. Red lips and hair. Golden eyes. One in a dress of starry midnight. One in a dress of gold.

"Oh no, not new. Old friends. Sisters, you might say."

Tad looks at me. Sisters?

"You didn't see a third one, did you?"

"A third one? No. There was a broken window though. I think someone might have tried to break in while you were gone. I fixed it for you. Reinforced them all too so you won't have trouble like that again."

He smiles at me. Taking me back to the child I once was, standing in Mother's hallway. I picture him waving at me in the dark. A waver, he would have been for sure.

"Thank you."

Through the window, I watch him leave the apartment. Get on his bike and drive away in a cloud of smoke and "God Only Knows."

Hard not to tell him to come back. But I just stand there watching him disappear into the sun from the glass. So clear, you can't even tell there's a glass there. So clear, you would never believe there was anything at all between you and the sea.

At the windows, I sit looking out at the crashing water for a long time. I'm not afraid to look out at the water anymore. Above the waves, the sun is setting. The sunset is really a story all its own. A movie, Mother used to say when I'd first arrived here. The best one ever made, she said, taking my hand. It goes on and on, see? Many twists and turns of color. Magic, really. Like a fairy tale. It begins with a pinkening of the clouds. Then a reddening, so that they look like the underbellies of some great fish. Then a bluing, which can go on awhile, giving way at last to starry black. Then you can hear the water but can't see it. You can only see yourself in the glass, looking out.

I pour myself some prosecco in one of Mother's cappuccino cups. I light one of her cigarettes, the second-to-last one. I'll keep the very last one. I watch the sunset with my sisters and Anjelica, her furry white body at my side, her pale eyes closing.

I think of Mother watching the sunset here. Alone, with a cigarette and a drink, just like this. She'd call me up some nights. I'd hear the waves crashing around behind her voice. I'd hear the wind and the gulls. I'd know she was looking at something other than herself by her voice. I'd hear all the sharp edges of it softened by what she saw happening through the glass, what I'm seeing now. Wind moving through blackening trees. White waves. That's when she'd ask me, Are you happy? That's when she'd say, I do love you. That's when she'd say, Do you think you'll be coming to visit soon?

Yes. I love you too. Soon, I'd answer, not even knowing if I meant it. But Mother pretended I did.

I'm glad.

The light changes and the moon and sun are in the sky together now. One falling light, one rising. They can be together like that in the sky? I asked Mother once. The moon and the sun? Of course, she said.

Of course they can be together like that. It doesn't happen often. Most of the time they're far apart. Sometimes at opposite ends of the earth. But sometimes—

Like tonight?

Like tonight.And she put her arm around my shoulders. They're close.

From where I sit now by the window, I can see where I lay with her on the rocky shore. The morning after our night of water. Where we saved each other from the nightmare of our Most Magnificent Selves. Where I watched her turn from a tangle of red tentacles into the face I knew all my life, into sea-foam. Just sand and water and rocks now.

In my mind, I answer her questions again.

Yes. I love you too. Soon.

My face begins to appear in the window glass. No Glow. No Moonbright. Just my old self. My familiar skin with its shade and texture and age. Only my forehead scar seems to have gone for good. Not even a shadow of a shadow remains. My eyes seem open in a new way. Like a fist, long closed, finally opens. Or like a flower opens for the sun. I smile at what I see.

And then just beyond my reflection, there's suddenly something else.

Someone else.

A man. Out there on the beach. Dark suit and hat. Walking barefoot along the lapping shore, his pant legs rolled. I stand up from my chair, looking closer. He seems to be dragging something behind him. Some sort of female figurine. Like a doll, but much bigger. Stiffer-looking.

I look at my sisters, who are watching him with interest. Who is that?

And then I'm running to the darkening beach.

When I get to the shore, he's shin-deep in the water. No disguise tonight. He's dancing with the third mannequin, my missing sister. Turning her around and around like they're doing a waltz in the water. Her silver dress is drenched. His dark suit is also drenched. But he doesn't seem to mind at all. Or even notice. He's too busy dancing, just like he and I danced in the grand hall. Like the waves are the music. Like the setting sun and the rising moon are a chandelier of fire above their heads. He's holding her like he held me. Close. Whispering tenderly into her ear. Words I can't hear in the waves. She just stares into space with her painted eyes.

"Hi," I call to him over the waves.

He looks at me. He knows me and doesn't know me, I can tell by his eyes. Searching mine. There's a Glow to his skin I recognize. A Brightening. But the scar is still there like a slash over one brow and down his cheek. Whatever they took from him, they didn't take everything.

"Can I cut in?" I ask him. "Do you mind?"

He looks from me to the mannequin. He's reluctant, I can tell. Doesn't want to leave her. He's gripping her hand so tightly in his fist. The fist is bloody, I see, speckled with small cuts, like he might have punched it through glass. He was the one who broke into Mother's apartment. Took her with him. I'm saving you, he probably told her.

"She'll be all right," I tell him. "We'll just put her right here on this chair," I say, pointing to a rock behind me. I remember him trying to soothe me like this not so very long ago. "She's been dancing for a while. I'm sure she'd love to rest."

I take her from him and sit her down on the rock. When I turn to him, he's still dancing with the shape of her, still dancing with air. He's moved farther away from the shore, deeper into the water.

So I take off my shoes. So I walk deeper into the cold waves that take my breath away. I wade out to where he's turning and turning with air, lost in the ocean's music. Hip-deep in the water. He looks at me and I take his hand. I wade into the empty space between his arms. Slip his hand on my back, my arm on his cold wet shoulder. I become the shape of her. His body visibly relaxes. I feel it relax in my embrace. He smiles for a moment, then looks serious again.

"We have to get you out of here," he whispers.

I stare at his moonbright face. Glowing, glowing in the light of the bloody sun and the high pale moon. The waves are gentle tonight, but they're rising. "We do?"

"It'll be dangerous. You'll have to fall for me. Follow me. Like I fell for—followed you. Didn't intend to love—to lose you there like that."

I trace the scar's curve along his cheek. "Me neither."

"Just keep dancing with me. Don't let anyone else cut in. Ever, okay?"

"I won't," I say. "Promise."

He sighs with relief. Looks at me, his eyes clear and deep as the first mirror. Beautifully broken. "I'm saving you, you know," he says as we turn in the waves.

"I know."

Above us, the blue sky begins to blacken. Though the sun's fading now, there's still some light on the waves. It's nearly the end of its story, the fairy tale of the setting sun. Time for the moon's full rising. We're still deep in the dark, shining water, but I'm dancing us slowly, surely, to shore.