It seemed so familiar, yet strange, to witness people discuss the best plan of action, to listen as they went through all the possibilities, all the parameters for change, without once stopping to even ask her opinion. But it had always been this way: her taking a step away from reality, allowing other people to decide for her.

Another bite. Another swallow, before she realized Phoebe was talking to her.

“I’m sorry,” she said, resting her chin in one hand and staring at Emily as if she were some relic in a museum.

“What for?” Emily moved her fork about the plate, imagined a whirlpool inside of which a mermaid was trapped.

“For not understanding about your scar. The accident.”

“It’s fine.” Perhaps the mermaid could grow legs, like in the fairy tale? Walk amongst others, learn how to blend in, to pretend.

“She really was quite a remarkable woman,” Phoebe said as she pushed her half-finished pizza aside. “I mean, to raise a child alone even now must be tough, but back then?”

Emily was always jealous of all the people who adored her grandmother, of all the people who thought they were owed a piece of the great Catriona Robinson, and she used to wish the stories could have just been for her.

Before the second book in the series was published, Catriona had asked Emily if she minded, if she was okay to share the stories, and her pictures, all over again. For years she wished she had said that actually, yes, she did mind. But now Emily realized how empty the world would have been without those stories, without the one about a boy who was afraid of the dark and so climbed to the top of a cliff with Ophelia and her little gray duck, just so he could see the stars. The two of them dove off the very same cliff to swim with the creatures that lived at the bottom of the ocean, down where the sunshine couldn’t quite reach.

As Antoine had told her, Catriona was a woman always searching for more, always looking out for inspiration that could strike at any moment. Emily had come to understand that her grandmother had written because the desire to tell stories, to share her ideas with the world, was in her blood, it’s what drove her every day. It was never just about Emily.

“There must be something more, something hidden in the book that you haven’t thought of.” Tyler reached over to steal Emily’s discarded olives. It was irritating, his familiarity not just with her, but with everyone. The assumption he could do what he wanted, all the time.

“What do you mean, hidden?” Phoebe asked.

“Don’t you remember? Every book had a treasure trail at the back. Something more for the reader to find.”

“And you think one of these might point to where we need to go next?”

“We?” Emily said.

“She’s trying to help, Em.”

“Why? Why do you care, Tyler?”