The Merman Who Wouldn't Sing, The Tears He Saved For Me novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Not for Sale

She refuses Garrick in front of the neighbors, sees the fresh cuts on the merman, and he speaks his first words.

At six in the morning Garrick's truck was still at my gate, and so was he.

I stood on the boathouse steps in my fleece and didn't go to him.

Aggie Lunt's pickup rattled up the dock road, and she parked across his bumper.

Aggie is sixty-seven, five feet tall and has run the bait shop since before I was born.

She climbed out in her yellow slicker with a paper bag of donuts.

"Garrick," she said. "You lose your way?"

"Morning, Aggie. Just having a word with Marnie about a lot mix-up."

"At six a.m. At her gate."

"You've been out here all night," Aggie said. "My neighbor saw your lights at one."

Two men who work the early crab boats had stopped on the road to watch.

Garrick laughed, and it was a warm, easy laugh.

"All right. I'll say it in front of everybody, since Marnie likes things plain. A thousand dollars, Marnie. Cash, today. That's two and a half times what you paid, and I'll haul him off myself."

The crab men looked at me.

A thousand dollars was my whole electric bill for a year.

"Thirty-one is my animal," I said. "I paid your price and I signed your paper. No."

"Marnie."

"I said no last night, and I'm saying it again where your friends can hear."

His smile held.

One corner of it slipped, just an inch, and came back.

"Then it's your headache," he said gently. "You call me when it gets to be too much."

He drove off slowly, waving.

Aggie watched his taillights, and then she looked at me for a long time.

"Show me what you bought," she said.

We went down into the boathouse.

He was in the slip, close to the edge.

His eyes went to Aggie, and then to the floor, and he sank until the water covered his shoulders.

Aggie set the donuts on a crate.

"Easy, son. I'm not a buyer. I'm a woman who sells worms."

He hummed one note.

She crouched on the dock with her hands on her knees.

"Marnie. Bring the work light."

I brought it, and held it over the water.

In the light, the scars on his back were old and white, a line of numbers and a tide-stock stamp.

Across the top of them, stitched up crooked, were seven new cuts, long and red.

They were wet.

"Gaff," Aggie said quietly. "That's a gaff hook. A day old at the most. Those were done the day he was sold."

"Done by who?"

"There's a way to make a merman sing and a way to make one cry, and it's the same way." Her mouth went flat. "You hurt him until he does."

I looked at the cuts.

"You're telling me Garrick did this."

"I'm telling you somebody at that yard did, and nobody works there without Garrick's say-so." She shook her head. "It didn't work. A merman who sings or cries on a hook goes for twenty thousand. He sold for four hundred because he gave them neither."

The hot taste in my mouth was rage.

The work light shook in my hand, and the water threw the shaking back at the rafters.

"He was kind to me," I said. "He's been kind to me my whole life."

"I know, honey," Aggie said. "That's what he's for."

I knelt at the edge of the slip and made my voice small.

"I didn't know. I'm sorry. I should have asked what they did to you."

He lifted his head.

For the first time he looked straight at me.

His voice was low and rough.

"You did not hurt me."

I almost fell in.

"You can talk."

"I can." He swallowed. "I am Lachlan."

"Marnie," I said. "That's Aggie."

He nodded to her. His gray-green eyes moved to the pickle jar on the loft sill, and his face pulled tight. "You kept it."

"I don't throw things out. Rule of the house."

He didn't answer.

His hand was clenched under the water, and the knuckles showed.

"Are you in pain?" I asked.

"Yes."

"Do you want me to take you somewhere? Back to the water?"

It was the wrong thing to ask, and I knew it as it left my mouth.

His whole body went still.

"If you want me to go," he said carefully, "I will go."

"That's not what I asked."

"It is what I heard."

Aggie cleared her throat and stood.

"I'm going to the shop for salve and a real saline kit," she said. "Marnie, get him out of the cold part of the slip. And, son."

"Ma'am?"

"Whatever you decide to give her, you give it slow. She isn't used to it."

Lachlan flinched, very slightly.

Then Aggie was gone, and the boathouse was quiet, and the water in the slip lapped at the pilings.

He hummed again.

It was six minutes this time.

I counted.

"Lachlan," I said. "Are you hungry?"

"No."

"Did you eat at the yard?"

"They fed us at night," he said. "I did not take it."

"Why not?"

He looked at the window above us, where the pickle jar caught the sun.

"A man who eats from their hand is theirs," he said. "I did not want to be theirs."

I sat down on the dock and put my feet in the water, boots and all.

"Then eat from mine."

His mouth moved, almost a smile, and the wet in his eyes shook.

It still didn't fall.

"Marnie," he said. "You paid too little."

"I know. It was a steal."

"No." His voice dropped. "That was the point of the price. They will come back for the difference."

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