Tides by Betsy Cornwell Page B

found himself smiling along with her.
    It was easy, if he could only let himself go. Noah still wasn’t sure if he could, but he decided to try. He sensed that he was working toward something important, and while he didn’t quite understand what it was, he wanted—rather desperately—to try to find out.
    “You said you wanted to talk to me.”
    Mara nodded briskly. Her hands moved up to the hood of his sweatshirt and raised it to nestle against her small, flat ears.
    “I want to apologize for my behavior last week,” she said. “I was rude.”
    Noah shook his head. “I deserved it. It was presumptuous of me to . . .” He faltered. He didn’t want to say
rescue you;
he knew the reaction that would get. “I was being presumptuous.”
    They sat together in awkward silence. Noah scuffed his foot against the ground.
    This was so much easier when she was human,
he thought. But then, she had never been human—he’d only thought she was.
    “I came to tell you,” Mara said, her voice cutting through the whistling island air, “about me. I came to tell you that I am a selkie.”
    Noah thought he probably shouldn’t believe her, but he did. “And Maebh?” he asked. “She doesn’t have a problem with your telling me that?” She had certainly seemed to when he’d seen them together.
    “Well . . .” Mara hesitated. “You saw us talk about it.”
    Noah would hardly call that “talking,” the way they had crashed out the door like a pair of hurricanes, hollering accusations at each other. He could only imagine how much worse the fight had gotten when they’d gone home to . . . well, wherever they lived. Mara didn’t seem to feel guilty, though, as he often did after a “talk” with his parents. He compared their icy silences and passive-aggressive manipulation with the scene he’d witnessed between Mara and Maebh. He decided the selkies’ way was probably better.
    “It’s complicated,” Mara said. She sighed. “I think she might understand.”
    The sky had faded from violet to deep blue. Noah felt the chill more deeply now without his sweatshirt.
    “Why don’t we go in?” he asked.
    He held out his hand, and Mara took it. His sweatshirt’s long sleeve flopped down and a breath of warmth drifted onto their clasped hands.
    Noah moved his fingers ever so slightly, feeling for the webs he’d seen earlier and hoping she wouldn’t notice. They reached only to her first knuckles. He could hardly feel them at all.

eighteen
S OURCE
    M AEBH waited, but Dolores had stopped speaking.
    “Should I tell the rest of it, love?” Maebh asked.
    Dolores shook her head. “I can bear it. It’s remembering, knowing how I hurt you, that’s worst.”
    “No. We’re so far from that now. And we wanted to talk to Lo about hurting—right, Lo?”
    Lo nodded again, still careful, still disbelieving. She watched them both.
    “Love.” Maebh pressed her hand over Dolores’s. “It is my turn to tell.”
     
    In their first winter together, Dolores taught Maebh how to read.
    It rarely snowed on the islands, but harsh storms and freezing winds kept them indoors. Dolores offered to lend her novels, but Maebh balked, embarrassed.
    “I’ll get them wet.”
    “What?—Oh, I guess you would.” Dolores’s face colored. Maebh was always having to remind her that she wasn’t human, didn’t live in a human place. “Well, I can keep it here for you. This door doesn’t lock—only the front door does.”
    They stood together in the narrow corridor between the lighthouse and the cottage, shivering with cold, relishing their privacy.
    “Oh . . .” Maebh sighed, searching for some other excuse. Dolores sounded so worldly when she talked about books and the places they described—all the places she yearned to visit someday. It made Maebh feel naïve and homely and a little stupid. She’d hoped Dolores would never find out she couldn’t read.
    But when she finally told her, Dolores’s face showed none of the deep