Chapter 7: Turning Tide

All good things do eventually come to an end. This played in her head from morning, noon, to night and ever since returning to the lighthouse three days ago. And it's been eating at her insides no matter how hard she tried to squelch it.

"If only those damned words would stop running around in my head," she mumbled with an irate look on her pretty face. "It's not as if I don't already have so much to think about," she added as she opened the glass door to McDougal's Coffee Shop and entered.

In addition to her trademark dark men's clothing—a pair of baggy denims and an oversized black hoodie sweatshirt—Charly Meeren also wore a grim and pensive look. She was obviously in deep thought, oblivious to the friendly faces watching her.

But not for long.

"Hiya, Charly!" she heard in a chorus, and it stopped her dead in her tracks as the glass door slowly closed behind her. She was torn out of her troubled ponderings, and it was anything but a pleasant experience. She blinked in surprise for a few seconds before she smiled a little uncomfortably, a little annoyed, and finally gave them all a quick nod before she made a beeline for her spot at the counter.

Having heard the chorus of jovial greetings, Mac emerged from the kitchen just when she'd taken her seat at the counter. On seeing her, his eyes lit and he smiled, happy to see her after such a long time. "We've missed ya, Charly. Good to see you up and around again."

She smiled and took the menu. "Missed your breakfast, Mac," she muttered as she perused the items on the menu.

"Hardy-har-har," he said, but in his heart he was happy as could be that Charly was back. He was so afraid that she'd left without notice, just like her father. He knew the island wouldn't be the same without a Meeren taking up residence there. It would become an Isle of zero Enchantment.

Fact of the matter was, this last time had been the very first time she'd been away this long. He'd been pretty worried about her. A full three weeks, give or take a few days, had passed without Charly. The other islanders had been so worried that their treasure had gone undercover that even a few brave ones had come together and had gone to her lighthouse. They reported back that no one had answered their calls at her door.

"So, what'll it be this mornin'? Whatever you choose, it's on the house," Mac said cheerfully.

"That's mighty kind of you, Mac," Charly said with a smile that didn't reach her sad eyes. "I'll have some light toast, two raw eggs, two strips of bacon, and some hash browns."

He came over to her side of the counter and set a steaming mug of her special herbal tea on the counter, and she smiled as she set the standing menu back and took her mug to her.

"Whadd'ya want for toast? Sourdough, white, wheat or rye?" he asked.

"I'll have sourdough this time," she said with a nod.

He nodded in return before he turned and relayed her order to the two short order cooks behind the hanging heat lamps.

Charly sipped her tea as she recalled the events in Argur's company and the fact that she'd been with him for over three weeks. She'd lost all sense of time while in the grotto and was completely surprised to discover that she'd been there so long with him. It was probably the reason why she felt a sense of loss when he disappeared on her.

Then on her way back to the lighthouse that early morning, the sadness was only compounded when she also discovered that the Masterson's yacht was gone from its dock. She had felt a certain cramping sensation squeezing inside her chest; a strange sense of emptiness, but she quickly and mercilessly squelched it as much as she could.

It was ridiculous to feel this way about Royce Masterson. It was ridiculous to feel sad that he up and left Mount Desert Island without telling her. She held no claim on him and he certainly didn't owe her anything. Besides, she barely knew him—well, that really wasn't entirely true. She knew him pretty well, actually, but only on a physical level ... and only that one time.

Yes, he was right. She was the girl he was with that night, but she could never admit that to him because it would only be a matter of time before he learns about the twins ... and that he fathered them. With his zeal to get the lighthouse, she was afraid that he'd use her babies in order to force a sale. She couldn't let that happen.

After that night in his bed, and for the longest time, she felt it had been the biggest mistake of her life—especially when she discovered she'd gotten pregnant afterward. Then she had the twins, and it changed everything for her. She reevaluated her situation and her lonely life, and the fact that her children would be the balm her desolate soul desperately yearned for. She'd finally have someone to love with all of her heart, and someone would love her back. Two 'someones', now.

It was at that moment when she began to remember the handsome young human on that boat fondly and no longer as the greatest mistake of her life. She would remember him as the one who gave her a taste of what it was like to feel warmth, admiration, tenderness, and being wanted ... and all of this for the very first time in her existence. To top it all off, he gave her a gift for her to cherish and nurture. Well, it actually became two gifts.

Ava and Arthur.

And for just little over a year, she never felt happier. Then that little bit of happiness, too, was taken from her when her father took her children and disappeared with them. It had shattered her heart once again, and back was the overwhelming sense of desolation and sorrow. She had no idea where he'd gone with them. She had searched tirelessly for them for weeks, but she never found them.

How could he be so cruel, so selfish? Did he so despise her for being half mermaid? Was he so ashamed of her and so disappointed that his only child wasn't one hundred percent human that he couldn't bring himself to love her? Did this disappointment bleed over to her children, too? She never saw it, but her father had proven to be good at hiding his emotions, so she couldn't be certain.

What few people on the island knew and understood was, Charles J. Meeren was not the warmest person in the world. In fact, he's never been a loving father toward her. He was fairly aloof due to his obsessive preoccupation with her mother that was very similar to Gems' preoccupation with her.

So growing up, she was left to her own devices for as long as she could remember. She quickly learned how to survive the very moment she became aware of the world around her. Good thing mermaids matured quicker than human children or she would've never made it. This quick maturity was a necessary trait since the sea was vast and filled with so many dangerous and deadly sea creatures that wouldn't hesitate to make a meal out of an unsuspecting and naïve mermaid. So it was a pleasant surprise to her when, after her father discovered she was pregnant, he could actually be kind.

Throughout her pregnancy, her father busied himself with making sure she was comfortable. He saw to it that she ate right, that she had enough rest, and that she lived stress-free—things he never bothered with before. She didn't suspect a thing nor questioned his sudden change of attitude toward her because she was all too happy to be on the receiving end of it. Since she all but raised herself up until then, it had made it difficult for her to connect with people and to make friends, so her father was all she had. But those nine months when she carried the twins, he finally gave her what she craved and she was overjoyed that he'd become the father she so desperately wanted and needed.

Those were wonderful days, she thought sadly.

Of course, now it's clear why he did what he did. Now, after speaking with Argur and hearing him confirm her suspicions that her mother was not dead but still very much alive and waiting for her to make her choice to either be a mermaid or a human, her father's sudden change of attitude toward her back then became painfully clear.

It was then when she realized that his personality change wasn't for her. It was all out of pure selfishness. It had all been a terrible farce. Her father had only undergone a temporary personality change, not out of regret for neglecting her for most of her life, but out of the fact that she'd mothered merchildren.

Merchildren. Her children. They were precious to merfolk due to high fatality rates among their kind. It explained why sightings of mermaids and mermen have become so rare in these modern times, so it stood to reason that merfolk would do anything to preserve the continued existence of their kind ... perhaps even trade one mermaid for two.

It tore her up inside to realize this probability. Her pain was exacerbated when she recognized that he'd planned all of this; planned to take her precious children away from her from the get-go. It stood to reason that he knew that merchildren were priceless assets to merfolk since her mother was a mermaid and she must've told him, just as Argur had told her with immense pride that he'd fathered ten merchildren and they were all alive and thriving.

Now she believed that her father had played her for a fool. He needed Ava and Arthur to be born and healthy in order to offer them to the merfolk in exchange for his wife—the wife who left him and the mother, he told her, who had died giving birth to her. Not that she believed him. Deep inside, she always felt, always sensed, that her mother was alive and well somewhere out there ... and now Argur confirmed it.

Her father had lied to her all these years. Thanks to Argur, she now understood her father's reason for taking Ava and Arthur out to sea ... Ava and Arthur, her precious babies; Royce Masterson's gift to her from a single night of pain and pleasure.

Royce. She never thought she'd ever see him again after that one night when she came looking for her Mermaid Pearl. Yes, Gems was correct about the mermaid's pearl—although he keeps calling it the "siren stone"—in as far that the pearl was a part of her, created when she was born and a gift only she had the right to give to the one she would choose to be her life's mate.

In the world of merfolk, the more pearls a merman gathered, the wealthier he was among the merfolk. Now Gems had her mother's pearl, and she needed him to give it willingly back to her or it would lose its value. She needed the pearl so she could maybe find a way to use it to bring her mother back. Surely, her mother would come to her to retrieve it? She might have tried with Gems but he might have scared her away. This was all just guess-work, but it was all she had to hold on to.

Over the years, as she happily cared for her babies, she rarely thought about the young man on the boat who made her feel alive for a few moments in time. She thought she'd never see him again. Then she was much too occupied with raising her merchildren and then panicking that her father had taken them, and then trying to fend off some big corporation's pushy proposals to buy her father's lighthouse to think about the handsome human.

That mega-corporation frustrated her so with their aggressive tactics that she finally just ignored them. How could she have known that the man she made mad passionate love to that night was the same man who was all but bullying her into selling the lighthouse?

And then the Masterson brothers appeared with their ladies. She immediately recognized Royce although his handsome face had filled out more and he looked stronger. Older. More serious. She had already seen him in his younger brother's features, and that already triggered those memories of long ago, but the moment she looked at Royce, she knew it was him.

She had hoped he wouldn't recognize her. There was every chance that would be the case since he'd been very drunk that night, it was dark, and it's been five years. Unfortunately, he eventually did recognize her. Now she found herself hounded. The pressure was too much, and she fled to gather her thoughts and regain herself. And then she met Argur...

Men—of both human and sea creature—just seemed to drop into her life whenever they please, and they took off without so much as a good-bye. It was disheartening and it made her feel strangely glum. It was why she was less than jovial that morning as she entered Mac's establishment.

It was normal that the people so used to seeing her at the coffee shop and her other regular hang-outs were bound to wonder what happened to her, but she was still confused and deeply troubled with what she'd just been through; feeling as if that part of her that she'd inherited from her mother was starting to grow stronger.

The pull to disappear into the sea was also growing stronger, but then she was reminded that she had no gills and that she could only submerge for two hours under the right conditions ... and then she remembered that her children, too, lacked gills. How will they survive in an underwater world without them?

If her father, indeed, had taken them in order to barter them in exchange for her mother, why did it take so long? It's been almost three years! Could they have met their deaths out there somewhere?

That thought terrified her and made her feel ill. She pressed a hand over her tummy just as Mac came to the counter and set her order in front of her. She took one look at the food before she suddenly clamped a hand over her mouth, shot off the stool, and rushed for the restroom.

Mac put fists in his sides as he watched her go. "Yea, thanks, Charly!"

~~*

Later that afternoon, she decided to go to the market. She needed to get out of the lighthouse and get some fresh air to clear her troubled head—and help settle her stomach. She also needed fresh produce and supplies to fill that picky tummy. Her attempts at nurturing her human side by trying to eat human food weren't progressing well, but she wasn't going to give up!

"If at first ... second ... for the hundredth time ... you don't succeed, you keep tryin' till you drop dead," she whispered with a sigh.

During those three weeks that she'd been gone, the food in her home had all gone bad. There was nothing for her to eat. And she really didn't feel like transforming for a dive in the pond and chase her meal every time she was hungry! So she needed to replenish her stock. Luckily, it was Friday, and there was always market on Fridays and prices at the market were very good—for her small budget, that is.

She tried not to think about the events of the past three-plus weeks as she walked peacefully along the many market stalls with wicker basket hooked on her arm. She tried to focus on the wealth of fresh fish brought in earlier that morning by the local fishermen, rather than her problems and fears. She nodded and smiled almost on auto-pilot at the other market visitors, but she kept her distance and they did the same. Like her, they sensed a change in her although, even if they asked her, she couldn't tell them what that change was.

Yes, she knew something had transformed her on a deeper level. She felt that transformation deep inside her, but she wasn't certain if she actually liked it or even if it was a positive one. What she didn't know was, she looked fresh and very attractive since returning from her three week sabbatical. It was as if she glowed from the inside out.

Other than her worries, it was a perfect morning, promising an equally perfect day. Unfortunately for her, though, it wasn't going to stay that way. It was about to change ... for the worse.

Although the Masterson brothers had taken their yacht and left the harbor, they didn't return to New York. They'd only gone to the other side of the island to defuse a quarrel between the construction crew and the historians who were there to ensure that the lighthouse was renovated but kept in as original a state as possible. When they finished their business and calmed the waters, they left their yacht on the west side of the island and drove back to Charly's side. They were going to try, one last time, to convince her to sign the deed over to them. Then they'd head back to Manhattan.

On their way to the Bar Harbor Inn where their suites were booked, Cheryl had spied the bustling market and begged to have a look. So there they now were, enjoying a stroll through the market crowd ... on a collision course with none other than Charly Meeren.

Neither party spotted the other, as caught up in the wonderful market and their enchanting wares and people as they were, and neither party spotted the scruffy man in a green army jacket and dark green woolen cap pulled down low over his head as if that could make him invisible.

Gems had heard that Charly was back in town, and after being worried sick that she'd taken off like her pa or went "back to her people", he decided to look her up and once and for all prove that he wasn't a nutcase and that she really was a sea siren. He'd noticed that Charly's absence was getting longer and longer and he was afraid that he was running out of time to expose her for the sea creature she really was. When he heard she was back, he rushed to put his plan into action that, hopefully, will prove to the world, once and for all, that Germaine Jones wasn't a total nutcase.

It wasn't hard to spot her. He saw her strolling along the fish stands for fresh fish. He surmised that she'd been gone so long that her private stock had been depleted, so it was that part of the market he headed for first, and he wasn't disappointed. He watched as she calmly did her shopping, and since the other islanders were never interested in him no one seemed to notice the two buckets full of water splashing at his sides nor the camera on a strap hanging around his neck.

He paused for a moment and watched with an annoyed frown how the object of his obsession changed course and stepped across one busy aisle to another fish stand. He cursed beneath his breath but, undeterred, proceeded to move among the shopping crowd, hell-bent on seeing his plan through.

Alice Brooks, a pretty brunette and who was the same age as he, saw him, and she smiled as she looked at him with big expressive brown eyes. She always had a thing for him ever since they were kids, and the moment she saw him, she smiled shyly. He didn't seem to even notice her standing with her mother by the bakery stand.

She put up a shy hand and waved but when he didn't seem to see her, she said her greeting a little louder. "Hi, Germaine!"

He briefly stopped with that frown glued on his brow before he looked at her.

She smiled shyly. "Nice day, ain't it?"

Then his gaze widened when he realized she'd called out his name a bit loudly because of the noise there, and his head snapped around to look in Charly's direction. She hadn't heard. She was standing by a fish stall, pointing at some fresh cut tuna and flounder.

He looked relieved.

When Gems didn't immediately rush off, Alice felt a little bolder and came over to him. It was then when she noticed the two buckets of water he was holding, but she didn't pay it much heed as she smiled up at him. "Say, Germaine," she began, "I was just talking with Lonnie Butterman, and she said that the Biddeford Fair was about to open in a couple o' weeks, so I was just wonderin' if maybe you'd like to go—"

"—Can't talk to you now, Allie!" he cut her off.