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I saw the pride in Mason’s eyes when he said the word detective. That was the look he’d had at Jeremy’s graduation from the police academy. He was glowing with pride. “Um, she’s out playing amateur detective. She gets that from me.”
“I’ll claim half credit,” he fired back with a wink. “Jere, you’re with me. I bet we can get a look at the files on Eva Quaid. Professional courtesy and all.”
“That’s brilliant, Uncle Mace,” Jeremy said. And that look in Mason’s eyes got brighter. He was as proud of his nephews and my nieces, soon-to-be his by marriage, as if they were our own offspring.
* * *
RACHEL
“I am so excited for this!” Sandra said when, a short time later, we were sitting in a small but elegant bridal boutique awaiting the dresses I’d liked from the catalogue. Our twenty-something bridal consultant was loading them into a dressing room for me. Before us sat a circular dais with mirrors around half of it and a foot-high pedestal in the center, like the spoke of a wheel.
I was not thinking about wedding dresses.
I was worried about my nieces dying. And trying to figure out a gentle way to break it to my sister that nobody knew where Misty was.
“So about Misty,” I began.
“Christy says she’s fine. So she’s probably fine. I feel bad for sending you out here to spy on her. Maybe we should just go home, after this.”
“Maybe,” I said. “And I think she is okay, but?—”
The helper appeared and said, “Ready for you, Rachel.” She opened and held the dressing room door.
“Go on,” Sandra said. “Find the dress you’re gonna marry your guy in. We’ll discuss my wayward daughters after.”
I sighed in relief, gave her a here goes nothing look, and went to do my duty. I was not buying a dress today. It wasn’t the right time. There were mermaids and nightmares in my head and Misty was still out of reach, the little shit. I was going to kick her ass when she got back. Did she not realize how worried her family would be?
No, because her family wasn’t supposed to know she was gone, Inner Bitch said.
She never thought that. She was raised in our family, how would she think that? We all know everything.
Not everything.
She didn’t need to remind me about that.
I went into the dressing room and turned to close the door, only the helper was in the way. She was a four-foot-eleven redhead who smiled too much, and who apparently thought she was going to help me change my clothes.
“I’ll call you if I need you, ‘kay?”
“Oh. Okay!” She backed out and I looked past her at my sister, who was shaking her head and grinning as I closed the door. Because she didn’t know I’d dreamed of her daughters lying dead in the surf.
A chill shivered up my spine.
Finally, I pivoted to face the dressing room. Five gowns surrounded me like a circle of white lace witches and I actually gasped. There were two on each side and one facing me. It was an ambush!
Something in me whispered, it shouldn’t take an ambush to get me to pick a dress to wear while I marry my soulmate. I think it was my heart. So I closed my eyes and reminded myself this was important, that I should be fully present for it. This wasn’t something I was likely to do again.
Step one, Inner Bitch said. Try on a dress.
I stripped off my jeans and T and picked the dress that had stopped me cold in the catalogue. I didn’t need help putting it on. Its Grecian neckline draped from my shoulders; its long skirt clung to my hips, its side slit played peek-a-boo with my thigh. I actually exhaled all my breath as I held up my hair and turned this way and that in the mirror. My heartbeat sped up.
Wow, Inner Bitch said. I didn’t think you had it in you.
I opened the dressing room door, stepped out and up onto the dais, and caught my sister’s reflection just as she saw me. She pressed her fingertips to her lips.
“Up on the little stool in the middle, hon,” said the consultant, gathering my skirt up like I was too dumb not to step on it. I got up on the pedestal, and she let the skirt go, then fussed with it a little.
“Oh, it has a little train!” Sandra said it like she was saying, “Oh it’s made of golden threads mined by trolls and spun by fairies.”
