From tormented tides fro.., p.15
From Tormented Tides (From Tormented Tides series Book 1), page 15
Mrs. Gutierrez settled herself in her chair and began to stare into a spot on the floor beside her.
“I was with her that evening,” she began, unmoving. “It was right after our show…a Friday. She took her fins out to the pier for a swim on her own. She was learning to free dive in them. I went with her of course, for safety. That tail was so heavy. I really don’t know how she swam so well in it…” She paused. “What did I tell you already? I…I’m sorry.”
“You said it was Friday night with Serena.”
“Oh, yes…I was waiting there on the shore. She had gone under a while ago. I was getting worried. It was too long for her to be under, I thought. But then she finally came up, smiling. I said it was getting late, and we should be going. As I walked back to the van, Serena wanted to stay behind for a minute and watch the waves. Then…”
Her voice trailed off and her eyes began to shine. I nodded to reassure her.
“A man…he attacked us. I have no idea where he came from. It’s as if he came from the water itself. And he had a…a sword. A dagger. I remember…But I couldn’t get a good look at his face because of his long beard. It was the strangest thing. I thought maybe he was a lost street performer or something, but he had a look of el diablo in his eyes. He…he wanted something…from Serena.”
I was shaking my foot to keep my nerves from taking over. I suspected she was talking about Valdez. If it was anything like the fearsome look of the man I had seen on the ship, I knew exactly what she meant. She took a breath and then continued.
“I tried to stop him, but he knocked me unconscious. I woke up…for just a minute. I couldn’t move, but I saw him taking Serena. And two young men came rushing out of nowhere to stop him.”
Bellamy and Milo.
“One of them I knew—her lover. He kept shouting ‘She’s not what you think!’ He…he begged the man to leave her. I didn’t recognize the other, but he was about the same age. They tried to pull him from her…but I didn’t see what happened after that before I blacked out again. Someone carried me to safety. I woke up in the hospital.”
Russell.
Cynthia looked back and forth between me and her mother. By her expression, I could tell she thought we were both unstable. Mrs. Gutierrez wiped a teardrop that was threatening to roll down her wrinkled cheek. “And I couldn’t prove any of it. The idea of a murder was thrown out. No evidence.”
I searched for the words to respond. Her obvious heartbrokenness was reminiscent of how Russell had shattered right in front of me.
“I’m so sorry you had to experience that. And I’m sorry about Serena. She didn’t deserve it.” I squeezed her hand and she looked up to meet my gaze. “But there’s someone else who needs to know the truth. Serena’s father thinks her admirer helped kill her. It might help him find some closure to know that all this time he tried to save her.”
Mrs. Gutierrez nodded and pulled the pictures of Serena from her photo album. “Take these pictures to him and tell him what I told you. Tell him who I was. If he still doesn’t believe you, you can send him here and I’ll tell him…I’ll tell him myself.”
“Thank you so much, Señora,” I told her as I took the small collection of photographs from her. “I’m glad to have met you and your daughter. It means a lot to me that you took the time to talk to me.”
Cynthia, arms crossed, still looked at me as though I was a nuisance, but I flashed her a genuine smile anyway.
“I hope you got what you needed for your project.” She made a quotation mark symbol with her fingers around the word “project.”
“I did,” I tilted my chin at her. “This was exactly what I was hoping for. And I can’t thank you enough.”
“Thank you, Katrina,” Mrs. Gutierrez interrupted, “because now I don’t have to take what really happened to Serena Loveday to my grave.”
A wave of relief flooded over me. I was elated at the thought that Russell might finally know what happened, and maybe he could put his hatred for Bellamy and Milo to rest.
As I sauntered down the porch steps, the old woman stuck her head out the front door one last time to wave goodbye. I was so grateful that she had been welcoming, and almost felt a bit sad to leave. When I turned to leave, she spoke out again.
“Who…Who are you, lovely? I don’t believe we’ve met. I must’ve been upstairs while you were visiting.”
“I’m Katrina. Katrina Delmar. I’m—” I thought up something quickly. “I’m a friend of Serena’s.” I smiled.
“Oh…Delmar. 'Of the sea,’ you know?”
“I suppose I’m in the right place, then.” I grinned back at her.
“Oh, yes, I believe you are, nena. Dios te bendiga! And don’t forget the groceries!” And with that she disappeared back into the house, closing the door shut. And as I backed away, I couldn’t help but look at the little white house on the corner, with its screen door and hanging flower baskets, and think what a secret it was harboring all these years. So far there was one thing I was starting to understand about Constantine—nothing was ever as it seemed.
18
Sailing Close to the Wind
I felt a sore spot in my heart as I drove back to campus, still putting together the things I had just heard. Bellamy was the admirer Mrs. Gutierrez spoke of, I suspected. And that meant that he had to watch Serena die after failing to save her. And I had been so awful to him the last time I saw him. I had accused him of murdering the woman he loved.
And Milo—I had assumed he was capable of something so horrific, when quite the opposite was true. He tried to save her. They both had. But why did they seem to hate each other now? And what could Bellamy want with a mermaid scale, if not breaking his own curse? My mind was a hurricane.
Mulling these things over, I knew I needed to see Milo and Bellamy. Not just to set things right, but to see if maybe there was a possibility of breaking their curse any other way. Perhaps Bellamy knew of a way to break it without giving up the scale. If they knew it was the only clue to saving my mom, surely, they’d understand. And maybe it could be their chance to mend whatever was broken between them. I could call on them both tonight and maybe we could all figure out what to do with the scale. So, I took a detour towards the pier.
Midday lunch hour presented a bit of a challenge to do anything discreetly on the beach. Even in November, there were always a few beach goers, usually bundled in a blanket reading a book, or just walking the coastline. But I disregarded their presence and a few wandering eyes as I marched along the pier entrance.
There were rocks below, creating a ledge from which the pier was supported, along with the fishing pier pay-to-enter toll building right behind it. I didn’t need to get on the pier, only below it, so I swung a leg over the railing along the rocky ledge and carefully climbed down the rocks to the sand. The waves reached for the beams, coming up just enough to kiss the third one, but couldn’t quite reach the second.
I headed to the left side of the beams. Milo had told me to carve the star into the second post. With what, though? I hadn’t thought that far ahead in all my eagerness to summon the pirates. My car keys were going to suffice, until all at once I remembered the box cutter knife in my glove box. A little token from Dad that he always said I should have for a seatbelt emergency or whatever other emergencies dads worried about. I climbed back up the rocks and nearly ran back to the Cherokee, parked in the sand just before the beach entrance.
Grabbing the knife, I tucked it in my pocket as I made my way back down the ledge, the warm sun fighting off the nip of the November sea breeze against my skin. It was almost chilly when I stepped into the shade of the pier, and I snuggled my face down into my hoodie, though there wasn’t much I could do about my bare legs in the shorts I was wearing. The underside of the pier was a floor of packed sand and foaming bubbles as the beams creaked and groaned under the weight of the boardwalk above. It made the hairs on my neck stand straight up to think this could very well be where Serena stood on the night of her death. I stood in front of the second beam, clicked the blade into place, and began to carve.
The blade grated against the red flakes of rust on the metal post, turning my fingertips orange. I tried my best to shape the star, all eight points, separate from the other various sharpie-written names and doodles on the metal, though there were fewer of those than I expected. I hoped Milo was serious about this, because in the moment I felt a bit foolish. Next, I remembered Bellamy. Where once his attempt at leaving me his “calling card” had angered me, I was grateful for it now. I just hoped he intended to look for it in the same spot.
With one last stroke of the blade, I took a small step back to admire my work. The outlines of a North Star and a double-arrow-struck heart stood out like yellow threads etched into the red barnacles and rust surrounding them. There was no way anyone who knew to look there could miss them. I smiled with a sense of accomplishment.
Walking back to the car, I thought about what Milo had told me about rising with the night tides. I could be there waiting for them, to make sure they each knew I had summoned them both. I tapped my fingers on my phone screen to do a quick search.
Scanning through the tide times listed on a fishing website, I quickly learned that tonight’s tide would begin rising just after sunset. I’d be sure to be there, keeping watch. I knew Milo had told me it wasn’t safe to be near the water, but considering my run-in with the crewmen back in town a few days earlier, I didn’t think I was truly safe anywhere. Besides, he didn’t even know where my dorm was, did he? I doubted Bellamy would share that information with him. Surely, with my head start, I would be able to see an approaching pirate ship before any danger could reach me. Though, that hadn’t been the case for Serena...
As long as I'm *on* the pier, not under it...Right?
I weighed my options, well aware of the danger, and perhaps foolishly, decided to risk it. Besides, I couldn’t just have two pirates bursting through the door of my dorm with McKenzie there.
Driving back to ISA, I thought about missing class this morning and wondered if I’d miss anything important. I checked my student email through my phone, and noticed the date, November 18th. The showcase gala was at the end of this week, and I felt a small panic roll over me. All this pirate ghost and family curse nonsense had kept me so busy I had lost track of the days. I desperately needed to work on my painting. It wasn’t far from being complete, but I knew it still lacked something. There were a few details I needed to go back over as well now that everything had dried enough to be painted over. I was already missing class, I thought, so it would be wise to at least do something productive.
However, my first mission was to find Russell, to give him the pictures and tell him what really happened to his daughter. I only hoped he would believe me. I wandered around campus, looking in all the usual spots where I often saw him. He wasn’t anywhere near the South Lawn that I could see, and I didn’t notice his van in any of the parking lots. But I did finally notice a mop and bucket rolled next to the bathrooms in the student center, and that’s where I waited.
It was only a matter of minutes before he emerged, lugging a wet floor sign in one hand and a full trash bag in the other. He walked with the same short step he always did, and his benevolent, friendly expression had returned. When I stopped him, the surprise on his face was evident.
I took a step toward him, unsure of how to start the conversation. Luckily, I didn’t have to, as his eyes wandered down to my hands, and he immediately recognized the pictures of his daughter in my grasp. No words were exchanged, but I simply held out the photos to him. He took them in silence, still seemingly at loss for words.
“I…I talked to the owner of the show. She was with Serena that night. She was the woman you saved.” I started, having to clear my dry throat just to get the words out. “The captain attacked her and took Serena. But Bellamy and Milo were only trying to stop him. Cynthia saw it all.”
I waited for him to say something, but he only kept his gaze fixated on the photos now in his hands. He rubbed his thumb along the edges of the top picture. I waited for him to say something. I wondered if I should mention Bellamy and Serena’s relationship, but then thought better of it. Something told me he already knew. There was nothing left for me to explain. He only had to decide whether to accept it.
The seconds felt like eternity, but Russell never looked up, and he never spoke. I watched him processing it with such reverence, and I realized there was nothing more to expect.
After moments that dragged on in uncomfortable silence, he looked up at me through eyes glistening with welling tears.
“Thank you,” he muttered with a small nod. He turned away slowly to walk off, but stopped to look over his shoulder with three last words. “Please, be careful.” The only option I had left was to walk away, too, hoping he had believed the truth.
Within the next few minutes, I was scurrying up the stucco-textured steps to my dorm with a newfound vibrance. All at once, I had hope that maybe things weren’t all as foreboding as they seemed. Some strange weight had been lifted off me, and I could only hope that Russell now felt some sort of closure, too.
The dorm was quiet when I entered, and I guessed McKenzie was still in class. With the showcase painting on my mind, I prepared some water and set to work. I thought about the pier, and how it had come to mean something so significant. It was where I—shy Katrina Delmar—could beckon a personal visit from literal ghosts from the past. And that notion seemed unreal to me the more it lingered in my head. I started to question everything all over again. Was any of this even real? Maybe this was all just one very long dream and I just had yet to wake up. I didn’t know, but I knew a strange excitement was welling up inside me, knowing I had connected the pieces for now.
I painted the pier. It was easy to incorporate, simply by using dark paint over what was already there, it was merely a silhouette. I considered adding a matching silhouette of a girl, waiting to see what the sea would bring in. But I decided to wait. I wasn’t sure of that part yet.
When I finished painting the pier to my satisfaction, I left it to dry. I wondered what to do next to keep myself occupied until evening when I planned to head back to the pier. There was always studying to be done, but my mind was running too wild for that. Instead, I jumped up to grab something to satisfy my rumbling stomach. Cereal, protein bars, bananas, and ramen noodles were about the only things consistently stocked in our kitchenette. Both McKenzie and I were still getting the hang of dorm life and grocery shopping. So, I opted for a protein bar and a banana and then made myself comfortable back in my room.
It wasn’t long before the tiredness began to settle in. My eyes became heavy, and a feeling of cozy cradling overtook me. Of course, I never slept well regularly, and I knew I would likely be up most of tonight if I planned to talk to Milo and Bellamy. So, I let the creeping sleep have me, there sprawled out on my stomach across the bed.
Wave after wave gushed down on me, as I fought to swim back up. The salt water burned not only my desperate lungs, but also my skin, as I was bleeding from open wounds, like lash marks along my arms. The water was heavy, like a damp towel covering every inch of me that I could not unravel. As I tried with all my strength to resist the merciless tossing of the ocean, a darkness engulfed my vision. The blue of the ocean around me became black, and an ominous presence loomed overhead. I looked up, my eyes on fire as if someone had rubbed pepper into them. Above my head drifted into view the underside of a wooden ship, shrouding the sea under its shadow wherever it moved.
A single text notification from McKenzie awoke me, making me grateful that I was a light sleeper. I noticed that somehow in my sleep, I had managed to become partially entangled in Milo’s blanket, which had been folded at the foot of my bed when I closed my eyes. Trembling and soaked in sweat—or ocean water—I couldn’t tell which, I clumsily gripped the phone to read her message. She simply said that she’d be out late, so I shouldn’t worry if she didn’t come home till the middle of the night.
Perfect.
Despite the frantic feelings I was still trying to suppress from my dream, I sighed with relief at the thought that McKenzie wouldn’t be here when I left later. I wouldn’t have to come up with an excuse to cover up where I was headed off to when I went to meet Bellamy and Milo. So, I wrote back to her that I would be out quite late as well.
She replied with a kissy face emoji, and I bit my lip, acknowledging the double life I was leading. I envied other students whose greatest worries this time of year might be passing midterms. But for me, I was saddled with hiding from ghost pirates, unraveling mermaid curses and family legends, while keeping it all behind the scenes. And I had no other choice.
I waited at the edge of the pier. It was closed this time of night, but it was no challenge to climb over the gate to the entrance and walk through to the other side. I moved with all the paranoia of someone trying to hide a body, and I couldn’t stop checking over my shoulder to make sure no one was watching.
I silently cursed under my breath that I never carried hair ties with me. The ocean wind whipped my hair in all directions as it met the shore. I checked my phone for possibly the tenth time to see that only six minutes had passed. The sun was long gone now. In November, the sunsets came sooner, so I practically had the moonlit pier all to myself as I stared into the distance. I decided that I would paint the girl on the pier after all.
A strange wind blew in, caressing me like frostbite, reminding me of the one I had felt on the island when I saw the pirate ship rising for the first time. I pulled my denim jacket close as I braced against the ghost wind. As if it had blown some sense directly into my head, I started to think this was a bad idea. What was I planning to do? Tell Bellamy and Milo that I was sorry for falsely accusing them of a murder 30 years ago and then ask them to kiss and make up? Would they even come? That wouldn’t change the fact that they needed my necklace. And I wasn’t about to let that go until I knew how to stop Mom’s nightmares. But maybe, just maybe, resolving one problem could lead to the solution to another.
