The Ocean Never Forgets

(Contains themes of accidental death and trauma)

It had been seven years now since her family had died. Jessica still kept a photo of them on the desk at work. Next to it was a photo of her husband, Tim, and her daughter, Mary, building a sandcastle on the beach. She felt weak keeping a picture of her dead family, so sometimes, she’d place Tim and Mary in front of them and put her family's faces down. 

Today, however, the three shadows were staring straight from the desk into her soul. Her own mother, whom Mary was named after, clutched her little sister Caroline tightly. Her father had his arm around Jessica’s scrawny teenage shoulders. 

Her mother used to give all of her attention to Caroline. Caroline was a gifted student and was taught at home and taken on field trips with her mother, who created special lessons just for her.

 Jessica wasn’t nearly as gifted and spent more time with her father. Some days, she hardly even saw her sister and mom. But Caroline was always sick and was never allowed to play out in the rain or snow, or even at the beach. And now, out of all of them, she missed Caroline the most. 

But Jessica never cried for any of them. Their deaths taught her two things. God was cruel. And that she would never drive the cliffside shortcut heading into Windford again. Never ever. 

Waves crashed and lurched the car towards the rocks. Her nose filled with damp sand and rotting sulfur. The doors of the sedan were open to the water. The hood of the car crushed up to the wheel like a tin can. No one inside, no bodies, just silence. She saw flashes of her sister’s face covered in wet seaweed. Then came the black phone in the university office, ringing incessantly until Jessica picked it up. A man’s familiar voice. “Hello, Jessica? This is Officer Long from the Windford police department. We found the car. I'm so sorry."

Jessica jolted awake at her desk, her fingers tensing against the mouse pad. The phone was ringing off the hook in real life too. 

“Jessica? We need you here, right now!” cried the woman on the phone. She recognized it as one of the teachers from Mary’s preschool.

 “What’s happened?” Jessica asked.

“I don’t know how to tell you this, but something is happening to Mary. She changed.” The teacher said.

“What do you mean changed? Is she okay? Is she safe?” 

“She spilled a cup of water on herself, and her legs just changed. We put her in a room alone. We took her away from the other kids, but you really need to come down here right now.”

“Did you call 911?”

“No, we haven’t called anyone, and honestly we don’t know who to call. I mean, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but she looks like, um, well, she looks like she has a fish tail,” she said. 

"Wait, what? That's not-"

The panicked teacher cut her off. "Look, I'm serious right now. Please come get your daughter. Something is very wrong."

"Don't call anyone until I get there," Jessica demanded.

"We won't. We'll keep everything under control as best we can."

Jessica couldn't believe what they were telling her over the phone. It had to be some kind of joke, but she grabbed her keys and her jacket and rushed out anyway.

 “Family emergency” escaped her mouth as her boss looked up at her. 

“Understood,” the boss said.

And then there she was, driving ninety miles an hour down the highway, despite the preschool being only five minutes away from the office. She ran into the building, her high heels clattering against the floor with each step. Two teachers stood by the door of an empty classroom. Eyes wide like they’d seen a ghost.

"Where's Mary? Where's my daughter?" Jessica asked frantically. 

The teacher she spoke with over the phone opened the door and pointed into the dark. The other just stood there in shock. Neither of them dared to enter the room themselves. 

"This is insane." She muttered, stepping into the quiet unlit room. Despite the room's vacancy, she was quickly enveloped by the nauseating smell of craft glue and whiteboard markers.

"Mary?" She called out. 

"Mommy?"

The small cry of her daughter came from one of the shadowy beanbag chairs in the corner of the room.

Jessica raced across the alphabet carpet, her heels slightly catching on the rug. As she approached the chair, her heart sank. In that moment, her mind split in half, and she too was left speechless, like the teachers, staring in shock at her daughter.

A dark-blue scaly tail was curled up around Mary, her bright pink dress partially covering where it began at her waist. What they'd said to her on the phone was true. It was all true. 

After a few moments staring at what should have been her daughter's legs, Jessica pulled herself together and noticed Mary's hands clinging to the sticky plastic of the beanbag chair, frightened by herself.  

"Mommy, I want to go home."

"It's okay, sweetheart, Mommy's here. We're going home." She wasn't completely sure what to do with her, but to pick her up. Take her home, like she was asking. Part of her was still in shock as she touched the thing, the fish tail. It was cool to the touch, and bumpy, almost like goosebumps, and slightly damp. Jessica took a deep breath and lifted her out of the chair.

Mary seemed to calm in her arms, pressing her face into her shoulder. A comfort to Jessica as well, despite what insanity this day had become.

Jessica half-expected to wake up in her office chair and have this all be a dream again. But having the two teachers approach her with a blanket, covering her daughter and escorting her out of the building to the car, it all started to feel a little too real. 

"The director wants to know what's going on. What should I tell him?" the teacher asked.

"Nothing," Jessica said. "Tell him Mary's sick and I'm bringing her home."

A metallic taste was building in her throat as she stumbled down the sidewalk toward the car. Her daughter was not well. Nothing was well about this. Something bad was happening. Not again, God, please. Not another tragedy. 

***

On the ride back, Jessica could hear Mary sniffling in the back seat. Every noise she heard reminded her of what just occurred. Her only child was now some kind of half-fish creature. 

As they got closer to her street, Jessica wondered if she was making a mistake. Should they turn around? Should they even go home? How quickly was word going to spread? What if the police were already there to take Mary away? 

 Jessica had to be logical about this. Their home was legally the safest place right now. There were no cars behind her, and she didn’t see any cops on the way back home. The teachers said they weren’t going to call anyone. She had no other choice but to trust them.

The car crept slowly into the garage, as Jessica's eyes scanned the tall, weathered coastal homes and old gravel roads surrounding them. No one. They were safe. 

Jessica turned to get Mary out of the backseat. Mary had fallen asleep from exhaustion. She lifted the soft blanket from her daughter and sighed with relief. Mary's legs had returned. She then carried Mary inside and let her rest on the couch. Maybe it was just a strange nightmare, but Jessica knew something really wasn't right. 

She visually inspected her daughter on the couch. Mary's eyes fluttered open, but she said nothing. Her hands, feet, arms, and legs still looked like her little girl's.

Jessica pulled an old checkered quilt over Mary and let her sleep. She seemed back to normal. No scales. No fins. She wasn’t acting like a creature, or particularly fish-like, but a change like this was unprecedented in all of reality. If mermaids were real, what other myths were real? Were sea monsters real too? Jessica still couldn’t believe this. And that it had happened to her child. Why Mary out of anyone in the world?

Sitting rigid in a chair by the kitchen windowsill, littered with tiny shells, Jessica stared outside and wrung her slender, bony hands. Today she really felt skeletal. Her childhood friends, who had long since left Windford, used to call her Skelley.

Later on, she would overhear whispers around the hardware store and the grocery store about how Skelley was supposed to be in that car with her family that day, and that somehow she'd cheated death. She went home almost every weekend. But that particular Saturday, she'd decided to stay at the university and lived. Maybe this was God's twisted revenge because Skelley cheated death. But to have her daughter taken away would be worse than death. She couldn't live with that.

All of the curtains in the house were pulled shut, but for a sliver of light where she peeked out. Jessica stared at the lighthouse in the distance as she listened to her daughter's quiet breathing.

Finally gaining the courage to do so, Jessica picked up the phone and called her husband.

"Please come home, Tim. Something happened to Mary. It's serious."

"What happened?" He asked, his voice edged with concern.

How could she explain this?

"Just come home. We need you here." Jessica said instead.

"I'll try to get off when I can, but there's a lot on our plate this week. I'm sorry."

Jessica bit her fingernail. She knew better than to just ask him home. He would be home at his regular time. 7:30. So, she was going to be alone with this for a while.

Mary was still sleeping on the couch, her small feet sticking out from under the quilt, making this whole ordeal feel unreal. Why the hell was her daughter growing a fish tail? And how was Tim going to react?  

***

Jessica drew Mary’s bath with a shaking hand, while Mary finished eating a sandwich downstairs in front of the TV. She could faintly hear the cartoons and Mary giggling over the running water. Mary looked fine. 

But Jessica knew what she saw, and the teachers knew what they saw too. Maybe it was a one-time thing, and now she’d be back to her normal self for good. That eerie feeling in the pit of her stomach grew as she finished filling up the tub. 

“Mary, it’s bath time,” she called from upstairs. For good measure, she made it a bubble bath with Mary's favorite watermelon bubbles.

As soon as Mary stepped into the tub, it happened again. Her daughter’s legs began to transform. Despite the bubbles, Jessica could see Mary’s legs merging into one and darkening into a bluish-gray tail. There was something so surreal about seeing it in the bathtub that Jessica took a step back for a moment, catching her breath. She wasn’t sure if she could really handle all of this right now.

Jessica backed all the way to the door, her heart pounding uncontrollably. Mary noticed and started crying. Jessica’s mind flashed again back to Caroline, back to the waves, back to the car crushed in the water. Jessica tried to breathe normally, but her daughter’s cries escalated the feeling so much that she couldn’t go near her. Now not only was her family gone, her daughter was changed. And she was afraid. 

Then she heard Tim opening the front door. 

Jessica’s heart beat in her ears. 

“Tim, can you come in here?” 

Hearing her daughter’s cries alerted Tim upstairs, into the bathroom. He dropped his bags on the floor. 

“Mary?” he asked, his voice calming. 

She expected his reaction to be loud and chaotic, but instead Tim kissed his crying daughter on the top of the head and gently lifted her out of the tub. He wrapped her in towels and set her down on the bathroom floor. 

“It’s alright,” he assured her. 

 He didn’t say anything about the tail, but she knew he was holding part of it in.  

“Daddy, is something wrong with me?” Mary asked, her voice hitching in between tears. 

Tim carefully embraced his daughter. 

“No, sweetheart, you are still our beautiful little girl. You have a secret now, a wonderful secret that we are going to help you with.” 

He looked back at Jessica, his brown eyes shining with a layer of confusion, yet also reassurance. He always knew what to do and say. Thank god he showed up. 

Jessica felt awful as she became aware of her posture. Her spine stood straight up by the door, holding the handle like she was trying to leave. But one look from Tim calmed her, and she walked closer and sat by her daughter. 

“What’s happening to me, Mommy?” Mary asked, peering her hazel-green eyes over the thick towel. 

“We don’t know,” Jessica told her child honestly. 

“Am I going to be okay?” she asked. 

“Yes, you’re okay, baby girl. You’re safe. Mommy’s here.” Jessica said, kissing her sweet child on the forehead. 

They waited, all three of them holding hands with their daughter until her legs finally returned. 

Jessica helped Mary brush her teeth and wash her hands before bed. The water on her hands didn’t seem to change her at all. She stayed normal through the process. Maybe this would be manageable after all. She then tucked Mary into bed, turned off the light, and went down to the living room where she could finally speak with her husband. She sat down, exhausted, on the green living room couch, covering her face with her hands.

“What’s wrong, Jessica?” 

Jessica looked up at Tim as he walked over. He sat down beside her with his signature evening glass of whiskey. 

 “Our daughter is a mermaid," she said.

Saying it aloud to Tim made the situation sound even more outlandish. Her daughter could not be a sea creature.

“I know. I’m just as confused and shocked as you are. But we have to be strong for her. Keep ourselves together,” he said, putting a steady hand on her shoulder.

Jessica closed her eyes as the crash of waves battered against the car behind her temple. The ocean wasn't going to let her get away that easy, was it?

“We’re cursed.” Jessica finally let those words spill out. It was what she wanted to say all day but couldn’t. 

“Don’t say that." Tim said, "We are going to get through this. We’ve gotten through so much worse.” 

“Yes, but we can’t stay here. We have to move right now, Tim. We have to leave Windford. People are going to ask questions.”

“But this is your family’s house. We can’t afford to pick up and leave, not with my work. And you just got that new job.” 

“Tim, you’re not thinking straight; this isn’t just about the house or our jobs. This is about Mary, and our family’s safety. Those teachers at the preschool, they saw her change. Those kids saw her change. How long until someone talks? She could get taken away by the government.”

Tim scoffed at the idea for a moment. Jessica took his hand, squeezing it. 

“Do the math. Chances are those kids have already told their parents. There’s thirty kids. Their parents are going to tell other people. That’s almost a hundred people knowing about our daughter. We have to leave as soon as possible.” 

Tim took a deep breath as she watched his eyes finally register the weight of the situation.

“Okay, we’ll leave first thing. We can take her to Pennsylvania to stay with my parents.” 

The thought of staying at Tim’s parents made her queasy. They never liked her, but Tim’s parents were truly the only people they could turn to. And even then, they were strict Catholic-Italian immigrants. There was no way they could find out about Mary and still accept her. They'd surely involve the church or claim that she'd become possessed.

For the first time in her life, she realized how precarious everything really was. How few friends she had in Windford, how small and suffocating this seaside town was starting to feel, and how quickly word would spread about her daughter’s new condition.

"I just want her to be safe," Jessica said.

Tim was right, though; she had to stay strong. This was going to be impossibly difficult, but she was going to keep her secret. Tomorrow they would both go in, quit their jobs, and pack up. Take her as far away from Windford and the ocean as they had to. For Mary, she would do anything. 

“It’s going to be okay, Jessica.” Tim embraced her with warm, tender arms.

Jessica gazed back at Tim, feeling something wet against her cheek. For the first time in a long time, there were tears.