Farther out, the girls scanned the horizon, looking for the Trachis Lighthouse. Each time they arrived, they had a contest as to who could see the lighthouse first (inevitably it ended up with Isabel in tears). Mark had started the game once on a rough ferry ride when the girls were very young, to keep them from getting sick: Looking at the horizon was the best thing for mal de mer. But since then spotting the lighthouse first had turned into a competition. It didn’t help that Mark invented tales about the lighthouse: bedtime stories he told about the family who lived in the lighthouse, the daughter of the lighthouse keeper, the sailor she’d rescued at sea, who’d become half man, half fish: a merman.

When he first told the story, Olivia protested.

Daddy, she said. There are no mermaids, and certainly no mer mans.

Quite the contrary, Mark said and told them about the Danish Havmand, the German Nix, and the Chinese Hai Ho Shang—all manfish (the last a Buddhist monk!). He’d just been researching a screenplay, and the names were fresh in mind.

Olivia was about to argue when her father put a finger to his lips and winked to seal the conspiracy between them—at the expense of Isabel (who was not yet four at the time and who lay rapt in the bottom bunk).

Olivia was smiling now.

Tell us about the merman, Olivia said, picking up the thread.

And he did.

Sometimes the story changed. Sometimes the shipwrecked sailor was a real person, other times he became a selkie or a merman or a succubus. But the lighthouse keeper’s daughter was always the same, always steadfast and brave, always risking her life to save drowned sailors. Sometimes she became an Olympic swimmer. Other times she stayed at the lighthouse, rescuing people or dolphins or whales (Mark was a screenwriter after all). Each night in August, he told them the stories before bed, as the green arm of the lighthouse rounded into their room and Olivia lay on the top bunk and Isabel on the bottom. What made the stories even more mysterious was that some nights they could see the lighthouse and others, because of the fog, it disappeared entirely.

I saw it! I saw it! Isabel screeched. It was me, Mommy, I saw it first!

She was pointing into the wind. Trachis Light, a small speck, a flash of a coin on the horizon.

Olivia shrugged.

Big deal, she muttered.

She was just learning the uses of indifference; and the result was immediate. Isabel’s face deflated. It was wonderful for Olivia to see. Isabel didn’t understand: Why wouldn’t Olivia at least argue? If only their father was there, he’d care. Isabel stalked off toward the plastic seats, mumbling to herself that she’d seen it first.