Emma sat obediently beside her mother but stared in our direction with wide blue eyes. “Mommy told me that Tiger bit you,” she said in a small voice.
“Yes.”
The girl’s eyes grew round and threatened tears.
Rosalie touched her daughter’s shoulder. “Tiger was only doing what he’s been taught to do,” she said. “He would never hurtyou,Emma. He knows you. You’re family.”
I had no right to be stung by this comment, so why did it bother me so? I took a bite of the sandwich that had been set before me and in an instant, my emotions swung from resentment to elation. The bread was thick but deliciously fluffy. Asmy stomach filled, I felt sleepy and energized all at once. Amir caught my gaze and the look on his face was so delighted that I laughed.
“What did I miss?” Will asked. He had a face that took to a happy expression easily, as though it were returning to a natural state.
I paused from eating long enough to tell him that the bread was delicious.
“We brought it with us from San Francisco,” said Rosalie.
“It’s my favorite,” said Emma. “It’s called Dutch Crunch.”
Amir groaned with pleasure. His cheeks darkened when he realized we were all looking at him. Everyone laughed then, even Rosalie.
“That’s where we live,” Will explained. “In San Francisco. I’m in the Marina, and Mom and Dad and Emma are in Presidio Heights.”
I nodded, though the neighborhood names meant nothing to me.
“We’re here on vacation,” Emma said.
“Why did you pick Osha?” Amir asked.
Did the others hear the hostility that I heard in his voice? He’d finished his sandwich. His plate gleamed in front of him. I hoped we would be given seconds.
“My husband considers himself a fisherman,” Rosalie said. “When our friends offered us their house for the week, we took them up on it. It’s nice to stretch out in a bit of countryside. Everyone needs a break from the city now and then.”
“Believe it or not,” Will said, “Mom was once a Girl Scout.”
“We’ve been camping all over California!” Emma said.
“I do adore Osha,” Rosalie said. She sounded surprisingly wistful. “This whole area is stuck in time, isn’t it? The back-to-the-land hippie movement lives on up here. All of these artists and farmers and tree-hugger types. It seems like a simpler sort of life.”
“I love swimming in the ocean,” Emma added.
“That’s true.” The way that Rosalie smiled at her daughter made my throat tighten. “Emma is wild about the sea. I can’t even get her to put on a wet suit—she just runs right into the freezing water. We think she might be a mermaid.”
“That’s what my name means,” I said. “In Irish folklore, mermaids are called merrows.”
Emma looked so excited that I wondered if she had misunderstood and believed that I was an actual mermaid. “Do you love the ocean, too?”
I nodded. “I swim every day. Our house is on top of a bluff that drops right down to the sea, so we have our own little beach. You can visit us if you’d like.”
Before Emma could answer, Rosalie said, “So Merrow means mermaid. And Amir, what does that mean?”
We knew the answer to this because Rei had shown us a book of Hindi names and their meanings. “In Hindi,” Amir said, “Amir means rich.”
We had often wondered if his parents had settled on the name because theywererich, or if it was because they longed tobecomerich. We decided it must have been the latter; if they’d been rich, it didn’t seem likely that Amir would have ended upin an orphanage. Surely if his parents had been wealthy and died, the money eventually would have been given to Amir. Of course there was always the possibility, Amir said once, that his parents hadn’t named him at all. Maybe someone who worked at the orphanage, someone with an inclination toward irony or even cruelty, had selected his name. I tried to talk him out of believing in this version of events; it bothered me that I was given the memory of my parents choosing my name while Amir did not have even that small certainty.
“Rich,”Rosalie said. “Isn’t that interesting.”
“His parents must have seen what was in his heart,” I said.
“Rich of heart,” said Will with a level of warmth that made me like him more than I already did (which I was afraid was quite a lot).
