“Emma,” Nalia says softly. “These are all decisions that don’t need to be made right now. These are all decisions that shouldn’t be made right now.”

Grom nods. “Your mother is right. We need to do what we can now so we have the freedom to make these decisions later, when the time comes to make them. Would you not agree, Emma?”

Emma bites her lip. “I guess so.”

Nalia stands. “Let’s hit the road. I have some arrangements that need to be made before we can leave. I’ll change Rachel’s bandage before we go. We can set her up in the back of Galen’s SUV with some pillows.”

9

IT’S ONE of those moments where life seems to pause, and the universe opens its mouth and vomits comprehension on you. It’s not knowledge, not cold hard facts that you can talk about in casual conversation, like we did in the motel room, surrounded by Galen and Rayna and Toraf. People who I’d already accepted could sprout a fin. Sure we’d talked about Mom being one of those people, too. But until now, until this, I guess I didn’t really believe it.

Even when Galen had stood there in my kitchen and accused my mom of being a dead fish monarch, I thought we’d be having an awkward conversation right now. Maybe trying to explain some inside joke he’d been telling. “You’ve got a lot of explaining to do, Nalia.” Chuckle, chuckle.

Talk is talk is talk. Talk is what we did before true realization hit. Realization that there had been an inside joke, and I was the butt of it. For eighteen freaking years. Hardy. Har. Har.

But those were just facts. Knowledge. Like knowing how many feet are in a mile or knowing which city is the capital of China. Facts with no emotion attached. I’d even heard her on the phone a while ago, calling her employer to arrange a leave of absence, paying all the utilities way ahead, droning on about all the things I shouldn’t forget to do at the house. It was like planning a vacation or something.

But this? Watching my mom’s long silver fin move her through the water behind our house with none of the clumsiness of Natalie McIntosh, the wife-mother-nurse, and every bit the grace and precision you’d expect from Nalia, the long-lost Poseidon princess … This is slap-you-in-the-face comprehension.

And all I can do is watch.

Stretching and twisting, Mom seems relieved to ditch her human legs, the corners of her mouth pulling up in satisfaction. Watching her face, it’s easy to believe the transition feels as good as Galen describes. Her tail flits in controlled elegance, in a way that makes Galen’s and Rayna’s somehow look immature and unseasoned. But the grandeur of the scene seems cheapened by the fact that she’s still wearing her tank top—the same one she’d worn on the car ride home, when I still felt, in spite of everything that had happened, that she was just my mom.

She swims toward me now where I wait with my feet anchored into the sand in the shallow water to keep me floating to topside. As she approaches, I study everything about her, taking it all in and trying to process it, but it’s her face that gets me more than anything else; she doesn’t even have the decency to look apologetic. Guilty would be best, but I’d settle for apologetic. Because she’s about to use this tail, this secret extension of herself, this thing she kept hidden from me for eighteen years, to propel herself away, toward the open Atlantic.

And she seems okay with it.

“Surprise,” Mom whispers when she reaches me.

“You think?” Of all the anticlimactic ways to begin this farewell. I mean, we’re in the water behind the house where I grew up. Where she and my dad deposited me after birth, where she fixed me garbage eggs, where she grounded me for reasons valid and invalid.

She looks down at my legs. “So, you don’t have a fin.”

I shake my head. This seems to confirm something she already suspected. Her eyes get that serious, listen-to-your-mother glaze in them. “Emma.” She grabs my shoulders and pulls me close.

I wrest from her grasp. “I don’t hug strangers.”

I must sound like a traumatized three-year-old, because Galen darts over to us. Mom waves away a stray piece of seaweed between us and puts her arm around me again. Galen has that look on his face, the one where he intends to drop everything and hold me. Normally that’s my favorite look.

But I don’t want to be tended to right now. More than that, I don’t want anyone to feel the need to tend to me right now. I need to keep all these bratty feelings to myself. My dad always told me that holding a grudge is like swallowing poison and expecting the other person to die. I don’t want to hold any more grudges. I don’t want to swallow poison.

“I know this is a lot to take in,” Galen says. He doesn’t move to touch me though, which I appreciate.

Grom swims up behind Mom and puts his hands on her shoulders in a “couple” sort of way and I don’t want to, but I hate it, hate it, hate it. I realize I’m going to have to try way harder to embrace my grown-up self. “We won’t keep her long, Emma,” he says. “We’ll be back before you know it. You and Rayna won’t even miss us.”

“What?” Rayna rasps. “I’m not staying here!”

Grom cuts her a look. “You and your mouth are staying with Emma. It’s not open for discussion. This is all going to take a very diplomatic approach, and frankly, diplomacy is not a gift of yours.”

Toraf wraps his arms around her from behind. “We need you here, princess. To protect Emma.”