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My name is Marcellus, but most humans do not call me that. Typically, they call me that guy.
Giant pacific octopus
But the human called Terry, the one who runs this aquarium,
Terry’s small daughter chose my name. Marcellus McSquiddles,
Tova Sullivan prepares for battle.
Son Eric she is 70
quelling the urge to wonder yet again how Erik might’ve looked now.
The octopus’s eye materializes from somewhere in the fleshy mass. Its marble pupil widens, then its eyelid narrows. Reproachful.
Out of his tank and tova sees him
And once in a while, Terry will slip me a mussel or two just because.
But had I not been fortunate, it could have been my downfall. The cleaning woman. She saved me.
“My word, Tova!” Mary Ann Minetti
One of the four remai ing knit-wits
Janice Kim eyes Tova’s arm
to Janice’s son, Timothy,
get it checked out.” Barb Vanderhoof
“You know my Andie?
Barb
Janice’s husband, Dr. Peter Kim,
“Thank you, but I have no such need.”
Tova is telling them she doesn't need money
A few days before Erik disappeared, Tova had made an almond cake for his eighteenth birthday.
washed ashore with its anchor rope cut off clean. Erik’s prints were on the rudder. Evidence was thin, but it all pointed to the boy taking his own life, the sheriff said.
Tova has never believed that. Not for one minute.
Tova’s Scandinavian genes, so kind in her youth, had turned on her as she aged. By forty, her corn-silk hair was gray. By fifty, the lines on her face seemed etched in clay. Now she sometimes catches a glimpse of her profile reflected in a shop window, the way her shoulders have begun to stoop. She wonders how this body can possibly be hers.
next to her older brother, Lars,
Tova
“Tova Sullivan?” She clears her throat. “This is Maureen Cochran? From the Charter Village Long-Term Care Center?”
“I’m afraid I have some bad news
Her brother Lars
Eighteen minutes, I can survive out of water.
The oc topus
my three hearts throbbed.
Cameron Cassmore blinks through the windshield,
He’d crashed on Brad and Elizabeth’s couch after playing last night’s epic Moth Sausage experimental-metal show at Dell’s Saloon.
Cameron
From his aunt Jeanne’s
bout her clamatis vine
The landlord’s voice is low, patronizing. Jimmy Delmonico.
because Sissy Baker said she saw something.
Thinks she saw a snake in the clematis vines
the two-bedroom house where she raised him. That house was always clean. A few years back, she sold it to help pay off the medical bills from the summer before.
Katie’s the type of girl who’s never in trouble, always fine. “She’s a good catch for you.”
Cameron's girlfriend
engraved with her name: DAPHNE ANN CASSMORE.
C's mom who abandoned him ti Aunt Jeanne
She always called Cameron the blessing she never expected to have.
Aunt Jeanne
“Say, how’s Elizabeth Burnett doing?
Cameron, Brad, and Elizabeth were best friends growing up:
This can’t be right. Aunt Jeanne? Chlamydia?
but Wally Perkins, he won’t—”
“Up three pounds from last month,” Dr. Santiago answered. “Has his diet changed?”
“I’ll hardly need to see that, love,” Ethan Mack says as Tova presents her loyalty card.
“Lars and I weren’t close.”
Tova
One New Year’s Eve, Lars phoned Tova and informed her that he and Denise had other plans.
“Tanner! What happened to stocking the dairy case?”
Ethan Mack plays a very convincing Scots Santa Claus.
Katie will need his half of July’s rent soon.
“Bruce LaRue. I’m an attorney for the estate of Lars Lindgren.”
“Swing by? Charter Village is all the way up in Bellingham. That’s an hour away.” LaRue shrugs. “Look, go get the stuff, or don’t. They’ll get rid of it after some time if no one shows up.”
the hippocampus of the human brain. He devoted a whole panel to the etymology of the term, its derivation from ancient Greek, its shared meaning with the scientific term for the seahorse genus,
“Anything, love. What do you need?” Tova swallows hard. “A ride to Bellingham.”
pretty smile spreads over her face. “Honeybee hands.”
Ethan and Tova drivi v to Belli bham
“Holy shit,” he whispers. “I beg your pardon?” “You’re Erik Sullivan’s mom.”
