As we leapt up, prepared to race after Zebediah, Old Tom approached, calling to Wilfred that it was time to work in the garden, and we lost our chance.

“I gotta go,” said Wilfred. And he was gone, too.

“Mermaids, UFOs, ghosts,” said Winifred. “Honestly.”

“Yes, honestly, have you ever heard such nonsense?” I said. And then added quietly, “Except for the ghost.”

“Let’s go ask your mother about the letters,” said Winifred. “Maybe, just maybe, Zebediah has told her something.”

So we trooped up to the studio, where Sina was circling a half-formed clay mermaid as if she were a boxer looking for an opening. When we came in we startled her and she said, “Oh, dadblast it! I think I almost almost had it. Now it’s gone.”

“Oh, Sina, I’m sorry,” I said.

“We’ll go, Mrs. Whitekraft,” said Winifred. “We’ll leave immediately to let your genius percolate again.”

“Genius, feh,” said Sina, knocking the clay to the ground. “Never mind, it was never going to come to me, it’s all a tease really. What did you want?”

“Has Zebediah told you anything about the letters he and his father are exchanging?” I asked.

“No,” said Sina, looking surprised. “Why should he?”

“Right, that’s fine. We were just checking,” said Winifred.

“I must say, he has lovely printing for someone so young,” Sina said distractedly, picking the lump of clay back up and throwing it on her pedestal to start again. And then she seemed a second later to forget we were there, so we crept out.

“Lovely printing!” said Winifred, incensed. “Zebediah’s printing is way messier than mine was at that age.”

“Never mind,” I said. “Grown-ups are always speaking hyperbolically when it comes to children. Sina is always saying that I’m a stunning beauty, which even I, in my most wishful-thinking moments, know is utter bunk.”

Winifred nodded, but I could tell her mind was elsewhere.

* * *

The rest of the day passed uneventfully. We turned in early to our separate quarters, having had really rather enough of each other. It was one thing having houseguests, and it was another having ones with their family dynamics thrown in. It was interesting but wearing.

I went up to my cupola because as engrossing as it had been watching Winifred and Wilfred interrogate Zebediah, I had begun to have new feelings for my mermaid story. I could sense it churning, a little ball of energy in the pit of my stomach, and I couldn’t wait for my typewriter; my fingers were fairly itching for it. Perhaps something about Zebediah mentioning the hermit’s mermaid had sparked it. Even before I knew about the hermit’s mermaid or before Sina and I knew about each other’s current projects, Sina had been working on her mermaid sculpture and I on my mermaid story. Mermaids seemed to be everywhere. It’s as though these things are just in the air and people all grasp onto them at the same time. One year all the books are about dragons without any communication about this, the way one year everyone plants hollyhocks. They’re just in front of everyone’s house, but if asked people will say they don’t know why they planted them; they just got the urge. Sina often said that, like it or not, we’re all drinking from the same pond.