Monstrous Beauty Read Online Free PDF Page B

But then, after rational thought—bleak and melancholy. And pointless. The more she had turned the problem over in her mind the last few years, the more her future dilemma unraveled backward, to the present. Why start a relationship when nothing could come of it? Birth control was not foolproof, unless it involved surgery—something she’d have to wait years to contemplate. And how would she convince a doctor it was necessary, when she was a seemingly healthy young woman?
    Love. Sex. Loss. It was safest to avert the whole sequence.
    Peter stooped to reach into the water. He came up with the shell of a large marine snail, but after turning it over and seeing the soft body retracted inside, he lowered it into the water again.
    She knew he wouldn’t judge her if she told him her worries. But he might debate, he might press. And she had solved the problem on her own; she had found a private path that required approval from no one but her. It was simple and logical: stay single. It left no opportunity for failure. She would be happy with a career. She’d be a doting aunt to Sam’s kids someday. She didn’t want to be talked out of it.
    They paused to look out over the water. A gull hovered above them, cocked its eye at her, and laughed, “uk uk uk uk,” before flying away. Peter looked up at it, and then Hester felt his eyes drift down to her. She had been quiet for too long.
    “Did I ever tell you that my dad once saw a mermaid in the bay?” he said with a grin.
    “Oh, God, I think so! Ages ago,” she snorted, grateful for the offer of levity. “Tell me again.”
    “It was before I was born. She swam right alongside the boat, the way dolphins do. She was so white, the phosphorescent organisms in the water made her look like she was glowing green—you know, like the underside of a humpback? He thinks she was white because she lived at great depths and didn’t need pigments to protect against the sun.”
    “It was probably a molting seal or something.”
    He shook his head. “He knows the animals in the bay like the back of his hand.”
    “I’ve read that the ancient mermaid legends all sprang up from manatee and dugong sightings. Mariners who were out to sea for years on end were lonely enough to imagine they saw women in the water. Dugongs have pale skin, and when you look down at them from a boat they look like they have a human head, because they have a sort of slender neck.”
    “Horny mariners? Hester Goodwin, you have no sense of magic.”
    “It’s historical, scientific reality.”
    “So all those tales of men getting it on with mermaids…”
    She nodded mischievously. “… Sailors trying to justify bestiality.”
    “Now you’re just being gross.”
    She laughed. They turned back. And suddenly she recalled a story she had never told him. A genuine secret she could share.
    “Do you remember when we were little and my dad took us swimming at White Horse beach?” she asked.
    “He took us a million times.”
    “I mean the day I drowned.”
    A sober look flashed across his face. “I remember. You were diving for bocce balls. You were fanatical about that game, like a golden retriever.”
    “I made him throw the target ball…”
    “It was light, so it flew way too far, and your dad yelled not to go after it, and you went under anyway, deep under, because you’ve always been ridiculously stubborn. And you never came up.”
    “What they say about drowning is true. It was peaceful.”
    He kicked gentle falls of water ahead of them.
    “It was scary as hell.”
    “Not for me. I didn’t feel any pain. I just forgot to hold my breath. I was still alive.”
    “You coughed out this huge spray of water when your dad pulled you from the bottom. He took us to the emergency room, and you kept saying the whole way there that you were fine.”
    Hester dragged her toes through the rippled sand. It was ice cold below the sun-warmed top layer.
    “There was a woman down there with me.”
    “What?” He