“And none of her brothers and sisters had a tail like hers? With colors from the flowers in Mom’s garden?”

“No. They all had shiny green tails, normal mermaid and mermen tails.”

“Where were their mom and dad?”

“They lived in an undersea castle altogether. They loved their children very much. They were surprised that Serafina had such a colorful tail. No one else in their family had anything but a green tail, but they told her it was special and they told her that they loved her.”

“Are mermaids nice?”

“Yes. But one merman wasn’t nice.”

“Oh no. What happened?”

“Are you ready for the scary part?”

“Yes. I’m brave. Tell me.”

Chapter 9

It was my grandmother, Lucy, who planned and planted the lush, winding gardens around Rose Bloom Cottage. Lucy was a sweet, loving, absolutely delusional woman. She was mostly sane for the first few years of her marriage, if only somewhat eccentric and quirky, then she seemed to slip more each year, my mother and aunts told me.

My mother and aunts took care of their mother starting at an early age, as their father owned the grocery store in town and worked a twelve-hour day. Their mother often wandered off. Now and then she stole a boat and snuck off the island, which required every person living here at the time—and there weren’t that many—to go search for her, along with the Coast Guard. She had thick black hair, an olive complexion, and dark brown eyes like my mother, sister, and aunts.

I’ve seen photos of her, and she was stunning. She was half French and half Greek, and she liked, now and then, to think that she was magical. “I’m part fairy,” she told her daughters, “and you are, too.”

Who knew what Grandma Lucy suffered from? They didn’t have all the labels then that we do now. My mother and aunts’ best guess was that she was somewhere on the bi-polar spectrum.

“With a twist of fantasy,” my mother said.

“With a dollop of magical thinking,” said Aunt Camellia.

“She was loving and gentle and flat-out crazy,” Aunt Iris said.

My grandma died when she was forty-eight. She jumped off the cliff at the south end of the island. Two fishermen were in their boat below when they saw her running across the top of the cliff in a flowing pink dress, pink ribbons in her long black hair, her arms outstretched. Lucy never stopped as she leaped off the edge. They swore they heard her laughing, even when she was under the waves.

The fishermen, I was told, were absolutely traumatized as they pulled her broken body out of the water.

Lucy loved flowers. She loved her garden. And when she was in her garden, planting, digging, pulling weeds, creating pathways and different garden rooms with shrubs and trees that still stand today, she was peaceful. She was focused.

She knew where a small wood bridge over a rock river would look best. She knew where her garden needed a trellis and a red bench down a curving path. She knew where the vegetable garden would thrive. She knew where a pond should be built for lily pads and where a blue bistro table should be placed under a willow tree for reading books.