When We Believed in Mermaids

by Barbara O'Neal

I do know that it’s hard to be the children of parents who are obsessed with each other.

All around me are the voices of my childhood. Me and Josie and Dylan. Our dog, Cinder, a black retriever mix, romps around us, wet and smelly and happy.

only things I’d ever really wanted—peace, calm, predictability. My childhood had been drama enough for one life.

The sound of the ocean keeps her calm. It’s the thing we share, that hunger, bone-deep, for the ocean. Nothing else will do.

My heart literally aches, not metaphorically—a weight of memory and longing and anger press down hard on it until I have to pause, set down my fork, take a breath.

She was the worst mother of all time. She was the best mother of all time.

A ripple of lightning edges along the horizon as I open the door, and I smell rain walking toward us over the water, carrying the scent of ocean and sky.

For a moment, a wave of loss and longing threatens to swamp me, a longing for that time,