My mom was wrong. Signs don’t come in threes. They come in tens. Or hundreds. They come in as many as you need. I didn’t have to look for the signs; I’d been swimming in them. I’d been breathing them.

The mom with the baby is packing her things up, and she pauses, then slowly rolls the stroller over to me. “Hey, are you okay?” She’s younger than I thought, with deep brown skin and large glasses. She looks tired but kind. Exactly like Emma.

I swallow, then shake my head. “No. I need some help.”

– 33 – Willow

Watching my mom read Sage’s final letter nearly undid me.

Once she read the clue in the last letter Mason and I had found, she’d stood up and walked immediately to the willow tree, reaching into a heart-shaped hollow positioned on the far side of the trunk. Apparently, they’d always left their messages to each other there.

Sage’s final letter was in a small weatherproof case. She tried to read it aloud to me, but her voice broke partway through, mascara running all over her face, and I ended up reading the rest.

I’m getting more used to seeing my mom cry.

Afterward, we sit for a long time in silence, our backs to the trunk, listening to the swishing wind move through the willow’s branches. My mom’s hands are planted on the earth, her eyes closed, and I reach my hand over to link pinkies with her. “Are you okay?”

There’s a long silence. “I wish… I wish I’d known she was looking for me. You would have loved her.”

“I do love her,” I say, and she tightens her finger in mine.

I have the letter in my lap and I skim through it again. The way to end a curse of separation was to reconcile. If two Bell women were able to fight their way back to each other, the curse would be broken.

Understanding lands on me then, as gentle as a dandelion’s parachute. My mom and I are Bell women, which means our reconciliation was enough to break the curse. “Did we end it?”

“Yes,” she says quietly. “I think we did.”

I reach up and place my hand on the heart-shaped locket, and maybe I imagine it, but a gust of wind picks up, rustling the branches around us in what sounds like ocean waves, and suddenly I have a vivid image in my mind. It’s the mermaid, free of her rock and fin, walking purposefully toward the shore, where a red-haired girl waits, arms outstretched. Thank you, Willow.

Tears prick my eyes again and I squeeze the locket. Thank you, Thalia.