Tell her. . . her grandfather’s words kept repeating in Cordelia’s head as she again looked back and forth between her mother and her grandfather. Was this it? After two days of pleading, would she learn at least one secret?

  A sigh filled the silence.

  “Go sit,” commanded her grandfather before he stepped back into the kitchen, heading over to the refrigerator. “Do you both want some hot chocote?” he called.

  “That’s probably a good idea, Dad,” Silka said in resignation as she slipped her arm around Cordelia to direct her over to the kitchen table.

  Cordelia stiffened but moved with her mother, plopping into the chair already pulled out from the table.

  Her mother reached for the chair beside her. Its high-pitched scrape along the floorboards made them both flinch. Silka stopped, picked it up, then positioned it across from where Cordelia sat.

  Then Cordelia caught it, the slight tremble in her mother’s hands as she adjusted the towel around her more securely. That small, nervous adjustment sent a sharp pinch up Cordelia’s neck and a throb to her temple.

  What horrible thing would she reveal?

  Silka looked over at her father near the stove, warming up the milk, and Cordelia did the same. He fshed a reassuring smile at both of them. Silka’s eyes briefly closed, then she sat, leaning forward to take Cordelia’s hands. She lifted them up then down a couple of times before meeting Cordelia’s stare.

  There, reflected back, was a flicker of wariness that pinched at the corner of her mother’s eyes. Silka worried her lower lip; again a slight tremble that now flowed to Cordelia through her mother’s soft, yet still chilled hands.

  Cordelia’s mouth was suddenly dry. She licked her lips, waiting.

  A deep breath, the hands holding hers tightened, “I’m a mermaid.”

  The words hung there before dropping heavily between them, taking the very air with them. Cordelia blinked. She hadn’t been sure what she expected her mother to say, but to not even hear something remotely serious and obviously a crazy lie shocked her.

  She stared, stunned. “Right!” sarcasm bled out of every part of the word. Her breath blew out in disgust as she held back her bitter ugh. Pulling at her hands, she knew she needed to leave the room. Away from this woman who she no longer knew; nor did she want to know.

  Silka held tight. “You wanted the truth. I’m giving it to you.” She took Cordelia’s chin, turning her face, “I’m a mermaid, as are all of us out there swimming. That is why you saw tails spshing.”

  “I thought it was a trick of the light?” Throwing her mother’s words back at her.

  “But then I told you the truth. We were diving.” Her mother shook her head, “I’m still surprised you could see anything from the beach as it was so dark.”

  Cordelia’s reply was a stutter, lips moving in vain.

  “I didn’t want you to find out this way.” Silka’s head fell back as she looked up at the ceiling. “I would have eventually told you, but I thought your father and I would expin it together.”

  “You can’t be a mermaid. They don’t exist.” Cordelia yanked at her hands, which her mother then dropped. “I’ve gone swimming with you dozens of times. No tail. No scales. Just your legs moving in the water.”

  “It doesn’t work that way,” Silka said with a grimace.

  Kostas approached with two mugs of hot chocote, and both of them looked up at him.

  “You’re a merman, I suppose?” Cordelia didn’t keep the question from being snide.

  “I prefer Havmand.”

  “What!” It wasn’t just the unusual word that surprised Cordelia, but that he too was going along with this story.

  “It means Seaman - from the Danish.”

  “Dad always likes to be different,” Silka quipped, taking the mug of hot chocote.

  When Cordelia didn’t take the mug, he set it on the table next to her, saying, “Well, I actually prefer Triton, but all those movies have come out depicting us in a way that I just don’t appreciate.”

  Her grandfather looked earnest, and for a minute Cordelia wondered if she was the one losing grip on reality. Was she in some warped dream? Her fists balled, and she bit down hard on her lip; a slight taste of copper floated in her mouth. She swallowed to keep from screaming at both of them.

  They seemed oblivious to the rigid line of her shoulders or the strain pulling at her mouth. Instead, their open expressions were. . . hopeful.

  The tight rein she had on her anger broke free. “Why are you doing this to me? Why are you making up such an outrageous story?” Tears blurred her vision as she pleaded with them. This had to be a joke.

  Kostas’ face fell at her statement, and Silka sat back in the chair. “We aren’t making up a story,” was her mother’s whisper.

  A minute ticked by, and then an idea must have come to Silka, for she sat up and asked, “What does your father do for a living?”

  “He’s a professor,” Cordelia said impatiently.

  “Of what?”

  “Greek Mythology and Philosophy.”

  Silka looked pointedly at her with a raised eyebrow.

  What did this prove? Cordelia wrinkled her nose and gave her own pointed look.

  Her mother sighed, “Did I ever tell you how your father and I met?”

  “I think you said something about him being on vacation and running into you at the beach.”

  “Not quite. It wasn’t a vacation; rather, he was conducting research.” Silka’s lips turned up slightly, “On a night like tonight.”

  Cordelia’s brow pinched. “I don’t get it.”

  “While researching, he discovered some information about mermaids,” her mother expined. “That they can only change when the moon is dark.”

  Like tonight. The cloudless sky rose in her mind.

  Her mother continued, “He was trying to prove it by visiting various beaches when it was a new moon and seeing if he could ‘catch’ a mermaid swimming.” Silka chuckled as she gnced over Cordelia’s shoulder. “He’d made a mistake because it was actually the night after the new moon, and most of our usual group had left.”

  Her mother looked back at her, “I went out anyway. Sometimes you can still transform a day or two ter.” A pause. “He caught me coming out of the water.”

  “Oh.” Red flushed Cordelia’s cheeks as understanding dawned.

  “A complete gentleman. He held up the towel I had left on the sand and turned around so I could dry off.” Silka added softly, “I wasn’t worried that he’d seen anything. I hadn’t changed. But how do you expin swimming out in the ocean by yourself in the dark?”

  Cordelia lifted a shoulder. “You say you’re a little crazy. Or that you think you’re a mermaid.”

  Silka’s eyes hardened. “I’m not crazy. And he didn’t think that either.”

  “So what did he think?”

  “He didn’t say. I said thanks and tried to walk away. He followed me back to the resort and strangely didn’t ask questions. The next day he was back again, and soon he was doing odd jobs for my dad.”

  Kostas added, “If he was going to hang out and keep you from doing your work, I had plenty to keep him busy.”

  “You kept him very busy.” Silka looked at her father, a shine in her eyes.

  “I was trying to run him off,” he huffed.

  “He knew.” Silka looked back at Cordelia. “But what we didn’t know is that he was researching. Us.”

  Her mother was completely lost in this story, but Cordelia didn’t see how any of this proved anything other than maybe both her parents needed some professional help.

  Silka went on. “Working at the resort gave him access to watch. Be pces. Overhear things.”

  “I’ve been here a week,” Cordelia shot back. “Working around the pce. Overhearing things. I have found nothing about mermaids.”

  “Well, if you’d paid more attention when your father talked about his research, you may have known what to look or listen for,” retorted her mother, eyebrows raised.

  “He talks about myths.”

  “Are you sure of that?”

  Cordelia stared at her.

  “As I was saying, your father was positive that not everything at this resort was as it seemed. But he was also drawn to me.” Again a secret smile, “I think he surprised himself when he asked me to dinner and I said yes.”

  Cordelia could picture it. Her father, dressed in his usual button-down blue shirt and tan khakis, helping her mother with some mindless chore, just blurted out the question before he lost his nerve.

  “After a couple of months, he revealed he knew what we were.”

  Kostas broke in dryly, “You should have denied it and walked away.”

  “I loved him.”

  A snort. “And that is how all secrets get out.”

  Silka rolled her eyes. “He wanted to marry me. He didn’t care about what I was. I was shocked, but happy, as I had never felt so comfortable in someone’s presence as I did his.”

  “I was initially against it. Some random stranger shows up at this resort, discovers our secret, and then wants to marry my daughter.” Kostas continued, “I worried he was up to something.”

  “I pleaded, as did he, and finally we convinced Mom.”

  “Who forced me to agree,” Kostas grumbled.

  “We got married and were supposed to live here at the resort and help Mom and Dad, but it didn’t work out.” Silka said regretfully. “As you know, your father is brilliant. An expert on Greek mythology. People weren’t believing that he gave up his career to work at some beachside resort. They became convinced that he had found something.”

  “We made good money,” Kostas ughed.

  Silka frowned. “What he means is that others started coming to the resort. Sneaking around. Asking questions.” She sighed, “We decided he should go back to teaching and that we’ll leave the resort to protect the others. After all, it wasn’t just Mom and Dad, but all the mermaids that came here to swim. Many of them don’t live near pces where they can swim free.”

  * * *

  As Cordelia tried to process what her mother was saying, she heard a grunt of disagreement from her grandfather.

  “We didn’t need him to protect us.”

  “Dad - we had just caught that slimy tabloid reporter breaking into your office. Who knows what he could have found?”

  “He wouldn’t have found anything,” Kostas waved dismissively. “I’ve been keeping us safe since the North Carolina sank and every treasure hunter with a boat came looking for gold.”

  “Still with the shipwreck,” Silka muttered.

  “We had people crawling all over the coast back then. Asking questions. Snooping around.” He shook his head, “And then again in the seventies. Heck, just a few years ago divers found more rare coins.” Kostas shrugged. “It never ends.”

  Silka gave him a pointed look. “That was 1840, Dad.”

  “I remember.”

  Cordelia’s vision tunneled. That couldn’t be right. 1840. She quickly counted back.

  Almost two centuries.

  Cordelia’s eyes widened as she gasped at the thought. That was impossible. People didn’t live that long.

  As she shifted her gaze, she found them both watching her. Her grandfather’s face lit up upon seeing her expression, “I get along pretty well for my age, don’t I?”

  “Yeah,” what more could she say. She studied his now familiar face with just a few ugh lines around his eyes, a sturdy frame, and a full head of white hair. If this were a joke, it was an eborate one. Too eborate. And what would be the point?

  When Cordelia said nothing more, he went back to what he had been saying, “My point is, it’s going to take more than a slimeball reporter to discover my secret.”

  “Yet, Robert figured it out in a few weeks.”

  “Because you told him.”

  “We just told her,” Silka gestured in her direction, “and she doesn’t believe us.”

  “He wanted to believe. Regardless, as I tried telling both you and Robert at the time, we have a solid pn to keep our race a secret. Pns that have worked for centuries.” He pointed at Silka, “We understand humans better than they understand themselves. How else have we been able to run this resort since you were a child?”

  “Well, people in town talk about how something isn’t right out here,” Silka quirked an eyebrow at him.

  “Pfft - nattering old dies,” he waved her comment away.

  “These were women in their twenties,” Silka looked at him. “You are going to need to go on an extended trip soon. Have Glen and his family take over for a decade.”

  “Your mother likes it here.”

  “She likes Greece, too.”

  Watching her mother and grandfather debate back and forth made reality sink in. They were telling the truth. It wasn’t some story they had made up to keep a secret from her; rather, this was the secret that they had kept from her.

  They were mermaids. And she’d never been told about her grandparents because her parents thought they were protecting them. Keeping people away from them. The secret was unbelievable, yet she had seen something in the water.

  “Am I a mermaid?” Cordelia blurted out.

  Silence fell as her mother looked over at her, “Part mermaid. We won’t know until you turn twenty if you can transform.”

  “It is rare for a halfling to be able to change,” her grandfather added.

  Cordelia let the information settle for a few seconds. She wasn’t sure how to feel about this. “Is that. . . good or bad?”

  Silka hesitated, her gaze drifting up toward the ceiling, searching for the right words. “I wouldn’t think of it that way.” She drew a slow breath. “Swimming in mermaid form is incredible. And swimming with others of your kind,” a faint smile as she looked back at Cordelia, “is like coming home.”

  The smile dropped. “But it is an enormous secret, and one you have to keep from almost everyone.” Her mother’s voice threaded softer, “No one other than your family can truly know who you are. You are apart from the world. We are incredibly slow to age, living around 300 years, and that means we see a lot of loss.”

  “Three hundred years?”

  “Yep,” her grandfather responded. “And some days I feel like I’m that old already.”

  Cordelia looked between her mother and grandfather as they both continued to look at her as if waiting for more questions and wondering if she did actually believe them. The revetion left her stunned, struggling to process her thoughts or form a question. Feeling like she needed to say something, “I guess there is good and bad with everything.”

  “Yes,” her mother agreed with a quirk of her lips. “That is why I wouldn’t change one thing in my life because if I did, this moment right now might not have happened. That is what time gives you. The realization that things happen as they should.”

  * * *

  “Why did we have to rush here?”

  “Your father wouldn’t say, but I could tell he was really frightened. I asked a couple of questions, but he said he needed to find out more, and he could only do that if he knew we were safe.” Her mother stood then, clearly agitated. It seemed her mother was just as in the dark as she was when it came to why her father had rushed them away.

  “Now we are a safe pce!” Her grandfather chimed in with a smirk.

  “Dad - do we have to get into this again?”

  “Alright,” he groaned. “I’m tired anyway and should go back to bed. Your grandmother and a few of our friends were out earlier on a swim, and the transition is always exhausting.”

  Cordelia kept herself from saying eww, thinking of how she could have caught her grandparents and their friends on the beach tonight instead of her mom. Clearly, she was getting several lessons in why it was best not to snoop around, as you might see something you are not prepared to see.

  Her grandfather pulled her up into a tight hug, whispering, “I’m gd you know, kiddo.”

  “Me too!”

  “I don’t know how I would have reacted at your age if I’d seen something like that and not known about our kind. I think you’re handling it all pretty well.”

  She squeezed him and then let go as he too pulled away, giving her mother a kiss on the cheek and heading out of the room.

  “We should get to bed, too.”

  “You can finish your swim. I promise to head back to the cottage.”

  “I’m sure everyone is almost done, and honestly, I’m feeling pretty tired myself. It has been so long since I’ve changed I forgot what a toll it takes on you.”

  Both of them took their mugs to the sink to rinse them out, and then Cordelia went to the door while her mother shut off the kitchen lights before following her out. They walked on the path back to the cottage, the dark night silent around them. Cordelia kept her eyes off the beach, not wanting to see anything more.

  “It’s been a week. I’m guessing your father will return in a few days and we’ll learn more about what happened.”

  “Do you think we’ll be able to return to our lives?”

  Silka wrapped her arm around Cordelia’s shoulder. “I hope so.”

  A shiver ran down her spine at hearing her mother’s words. Did she want to return to her life? Yes. She missed her friends, her home, her school and was sick at the thought of losing that.

  Yet, she felt she was different now. That needed exploring and could only be done with her grandparents. At this pce.