EPILOGUE
Cora
One Year Later
The sign survived the winter.I check it most mornings when I come out to the dock. One upstate New York winter: four months of hard frost, two ice storms, wind that took three shingles off the Snack Hut roof. The sign held. The cedar held. The shell inlay held, both symbols still clear.
SIRENA & CO., it reads, the carved letters in their wave-stroke font.
Selkie-in-Training, below it, in my handwriting.
Both of us. Still here. Intact.
It's the second week of June, and summer has come back to Harmony Glen the way it always does. Not gradually but all at once, a Monday morning when the lake turns from steel-grey to a blue so clean it looks like the sky decided to lie down and rest.
The booking calendar is full through September. Every Saturday mer-magic session. Every Thursday night swim. The underwater photography partnership with Sera produced three sold-out gallery shows over the winter and has a waiting list for July that makes Sera visibly pleased.
I'm sitting on the porch with my coffee and the postcard that arrived in Tuesday's mail when Muir comes out with the second mug and sits beside me.
"From Rex," I say, and hold it out.
He takes it. The front is a photo of a wave, bleached and salt-washed, the kind of image that makes you feel the spray. He turns it over and reads.
His expression does something quiet and warm.
"She glows in the dark," he says.
"Hey Cora, I have a glow-in-the-dark girlfriend," I read, because I've already read it twice and feel the indignation requires additional airing. "Be chill. When have I ever been no chill?."
"I think it would be wise not to answer that," he says. "And also to avoid pointing out that you made a sound when you first read it."
"That wassurprise."
"It was a specific kind of surprise."
"It was a totally chill sound of surprise. I am genuinely happy for him." I take the postcard back. Rex's handwriting is large and confident, the way Rex is large and confident, filling the space without apology.She is extraordinary. Can't wait for you tomeet her. Missing you both.P.S., also in Rex's hand, underlined:The Ocean still talks
I look at the postcard for a moment.
Then I get up and take it inside and pin it to the equipment shed wall, next to the tide charts and the DEC certification copies and the laminated emergency protocols and the hand-drawn mussel map Phineas left last Thursday, which already needs updating because the eastern colony has apparently expanded again.
I stand back and look at the postcard in its place on the shed wall.
Met someone. She glows in the dark.
Rex. Who agreed to fake-date me with zero hesitation because I looked like I needed a lifeline. Who told Muir I'd moved on before he knew who Muir was, with nothing but honest protective instinct. Who sat beside Muir on a marina dock and saidyou were a cowardand then stayed sitting beside him, which is what acceptance looks like in a were-shark. Who cleared the dock in four minutes at the festival and walked away whistling and never asked for anything in return.
She is extraordinary, he wrote.
Of course she is. Rex would not have it any other way.
By ten o'clock thewaterfront has come to life. The marina activity, the kayak rental queue, Finnbar doing something decisive with a net at the Monster Catch door, Phineas visible in the shallows near the north dock doing his morning survey.
Down the shoreline, where the public beach gives way to the grassy slope, Liana and Roarke have found themselves a patch of morning sun.
Liana is sitting on a folded blanket with her shoes off and a book open in her lap, which she's not reading because she's watching the water. Her braided hair is loose today, the ends touching the blanket, and she has a woven bag beside her that almost certainly contains food she brought to share with anyone who passes, because that is simply what Liana does.
Roarke is sitting beside her, his considerable frame taking up its usual more-than-average amount of the available space. Large and warm and settled, his long legs stretched out toward the water. He has his work bag with him, which means he came from the clinic, which means Liana texted him and he rearranged his afternoon because it was a good lake day and Liana said so.