Mermaid [Kindle in Motion] (Kindle Single) Read online

  This is what I’ve fed the pool:

  Fifty pounds of asparagus. Fifty pounds of lettuce. Twenty-five pounds of broccoli. Green beans, leftover Chinese food, chocolate. Jelly beans, Jujubes, tofu, couscous. Campbell’s soup, still in the can. Tortillas and frozen french fries. Yogurt gone bad and yogurt that’s still fresh. Salt-free potato chips. Seven gallons of milk.

  It is now almost midnight, and the pool is still hungry. It asks for food at regular fifteen-minute intervals. Although the throngs of people have dissipated, there is still a small group of people maintaining a vigil. They carry flashlights and line the fieldstone with citronella candles.

  I watch from the kitchen as people rub good-luck charms and count rosary beads. They wrap up in blankets and lie under the stars. Every so often I take a cardboard box that once held broccoli and empty a cabinet in the kitchen. At this point, there are only eggs and bottled water left in the fridge.

  Nick and I aren’t speaking. He sits at the kitchen table, his fingers pressed to his temples. He has been sitting like that for four hours. I am plucking bottles from the spice rack: chives, parsley, mustard seed. The bottles clink as they roll against each other in the box.

  Then Nick gets up, as if he has come to a decision. He walks into the backyard. He stands on the diving board and clears his throat like he’s about to deliver the Ten Commandments. “I’m sorry, but you all have to go home,” he says. “This is my backyard and my pool, and I want to keep it that way.”

  As he is talking, the ground shakes. The pool turns neon yellow.

  I show everyone the way out. I lock the gate and find Nick waiting for me on the back porch. “Hope,” he says, his voice breaking, “I’m going to call Dr. Fisher.”

  White coat, red lipstick, black bob. The scratch of her pencil. Three bitter pills in a paper cup. The group sessions, where sometimes all I could do was sob.

  “No,” I say, shivering. “I can’t go back there.”

  Nick puts his hands into his pockets. “Neither can I,” he says sadly. He walks back into the house. I see his silhouette as he holds the phone to his ear.

  Here is what I never told anyone. Not Nick, not my OB. Not Dr. Fisher. Not the paramedics who found me in the bathtub, slack with sleeping pills, beneath the surface of the water.

  I heard her speak to me before she left.

  She said, It’s my turn.

  We’ve barely just said I love you, I told her.

  She said, Wait.

  She said, No.

  The fact that she didn’t say this out loud doesn’t mean I never heard it.

  The pool churns like the spin cycle of the washing machine. Waves splash on my ankles. “What?” I whisper. “What now?”

  You.

  It is the color of the Caribbean. In the shallows, I can suddenly spot porpoises, parrot fish, Portuguese men-of-war. Bright brain coral sets the deep end on fire.

  It’s been a long time since I had a swim.

  Without thinking about what I’m doing, I stand and peel off my clothes. I walk the diving board like a plank.

  The moment my hands break the surface of the water, mist rises, and there she is. Perfect and tiny, the size of a kumquat. Her skin the pink inside of a seashell. Her arms crossed. Her heartbeat a rebel drum, not that terrible hurricane of silence underneath the ultrasound wand.

  Sometimes these things just happen.

  There’s no scientific explanation.

  But I knew it was my fault. I knew even as I swam with the sharks that day, as fish slipped over my feet and ankles, that I could not stay afloat.

  I think of the air tube rising to the surface of the mermaid tank. And I sink.

  Then a hand cuts through the velvet underground and wraps around my wrist. Nick drags me out of the pool, into the heaviness of here. He is dripping over me. “God,” he whispers. “I’m sorry.”

  They come the next day with their pumps and their bulldozers, with truckloads of fill. They suck the water from the pool and crack the gunite, taking it away in giant pieces. A reverse puzzle.

  Nick and I sit with our shoulders touching, watching as soil is dumped into the hole left by the pool. He has not let me out of his sight. He drove me to Dr. Fisher’s office, and back. He cried with me when I told him the truth. I cannot help but think that this landscaping is a burial. I’m just not sure what is in the grave.

  When the pit is level, Nick walks to the edge. “We’ll get grass seed,” he says. “Or wildflowers.”

  He steps onto the diving board, which remains like a scar, a visual oxymoron. After a few bounces, Nick leaps into the dirt. His bare feet leave an impression. Then he holds out his hand. “Come in for a dip?” he says, an invitation.

  I walk over what used to be water. I wonder how long it will take for things to grow.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Photo © 2017 Deborah Feingold

  Jodi Picoult is the #1 bestselling author of twenty-four novels, including Songs of the Humpback Whale (1992), My Sister’s Keeper (2004), Nineteen Minutes (2007), Sing You Home (2011), Lone Wolf (2012), The Storyteller (2013), and Leaving Time (2014), and two young adult novels, Between the Lines (2012) and Off the Page (2014), which were cowritten with her daughter, Samantha van Leer. Her most recent novel, Small Great Things, published in October 2016, was an instant #1 New York Times bestseller. Her books have been translated into thirty-four languages in thirty-five countries. Four novels—The Pact, Plain Truth, The Tenth Circle, and Salem Falls—have been made into television movies. My Sister’s Keeper was a big-screen release from New Line Cinema, with Nick Cassavetes directing and Cameron Diaz starring. Small Great Things has been optioned for motion-picture adaptation by Amblin Entertainment and is set to star Viola Davis and Julia Roberts. Picoult is also currently developing a Broadway musical based on her YA novels. She is the recipient of many awards, including a New England Book Award, an Alex Award from the Young Adult Library Services Association, a lifetime achievement award for mainstream fiction from the Romance Writers of America, and a New Hampshire Literary Award. She holds honorary doctorates from Dartmouth College and the University of New Haven. She is also a member of the advisory board for VIDA: Women in Literary Arts. Picoult lives in New Hampshire with her husband. They have three children.

  ALSO BY JODI PICOULT

  Small Great Things

  Leaving Time

  The Storyteller

  Lone Wolf

  Sing You Home

  House Rules

  Handle with Care

  Change of Heart

  Nineteen Minutes

  The Tenth Circle

  Vanishing Acts

  My Sister’s Keeper

  Second Glance

  Perfect Match

  Salem Falls

  Plain Truth

  Keeping Faith

  The Pact

  Mercy

  Picture Perfect

  Harvesting the Heart

  Songs of the Humpback Whale

  For YA

  Between the Lines

  Off the Page

  And for the Stage

  Over the Moon: An Original Musical for Teens

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2017 by Jodi Picoult

  All rights reserved.

  Cover design: Belief Agency

  Videography and photography by Belief Agency, except where noted.

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