The Starfish Sisters: A Novel(46)

A crowd of them mills around the creek, some poking through the sand, others grooming and bathing, a sight that never tires. Is there anything more exuberant than a bird splashing water on its feathers? “Maybe. We should really notice his markings and see if we can spot him in the crowd next time.”

“Why are some of them brown?”

“They’re young. Your nana would know when they start to be all white, but I don’t.”

“She knows a lot,” Jasmine says.

I nod, watching a pair of murres super-pedal their arms, looking like little flying footballs. I pop grapes into my mouth, and catch sight of movement in the water. “Hey, I think that might be a whale out there!”

She jumps to her feet and shades her eyes. “It is a whale!” She watches, rapt, as it breaches, magnificently, and dives back into the water, leaving a sudsy wake. “Wow,” she sighs. When it is no longer visible, she plops down beside me and digs her feet into the sand. “I might want to be a marine scientist,” she says.

“Yeah? Do you want to study tsunamis?”

“Well, that’s one thing. They cause a lot of damage, you know, and if people could be warned faster, it would help.”

“Definitely.”

“But really,” she says, gazing at the horizon, “I just like the ocean. I would like to be a fish, and swim around down there and learn new things.” She peels string from her cheese. “Maybe I would find treasure.”

“Oooh, I like that idea. Pirate treasure!”

“Yeah. There were a lot of ships that sank out there, did you know that?”

I did know it, but it’s more fun to hear what she has to say. “No.”

“It’s one of the most dangerous coasts in the world,” she says with pride.

“Ah. What kind of cargo did they carry?”

“All kinds of things. Gold, of course.”

“Of course.”

“And sometimes jewels or stuff like that, and all kinds of things, really. Sometimes they were on their way to China or Japan.”

“Is there still a lot of lost treasure?”

“Maybe. People still look for stuff.”

“Mmm.” I open the cookies and grab a handful of pink and white frosted elephants. “If I found treasure, I would like to find a crown. With rubies.”

“I would like to find a diamond necklace.”

“I would like to find emeralds.”

“You already have an emerald ring.”

“Yes.” I hold out my left hand, where the square-cut emerald Dmitri gave me lives on my ring finger. We never married because I didn’t want to, but I wore the ring to please him. Looking at the deep translucent color, I think of him, his big way of laughing, of living, a big drinker, a big eater, a big chance-taker. It still seems impossible that a virus could have felled him. It was a brutal way for such a social man to have died, and it still hollows me out to imagine him alone in that hospital room, forbidden any visitors at all, myself included.

“Was he your husband?”

“No.” From the bag, I choose a Hershey’s Kiss and peel the foil away. “But we were together a long time. Almost twenty years.”

“Didn’t you want to get married?”

“No,” I tell her honestly. “I liked my own way of doing things.”

“Hmm.” She pulls hair out of her face and takes a bite of a cookie, studying my face. “Do you miss him?”

“Dmitri?” She met him a couple of times, though not here. He didn’t care for the cold Oregon coast, but when Jasmine and Phoebe and Stephanie came to visit, they stayed with me. Dmitri went to Disneyland with us, and enjoyed it as much as Jasmine did. She adored him from the first moment. “Yeah, sometimes. It’s easier now than it was at first, which is how life goes.”

“He was really nice.”

“He was.”

“Was he old when he died?”

I take a breath. “Kind of. But he probably would still be around if not for COVID.”

“COVID,” she says with a weariness far beyond her years.

“Exactly.”

We’re quiet for a little while, eating our feast and watching waves rise and fall and ripple toward shore.

“I want my nana to be a hundred before she dies,” Jasmine says into the space.

I nod, listening, feeling there’s more.

“If she’s a hundred, then I’ll be grown up and maybe married and have some kids and it won’t be so horrible that she has to die.”

My heart folds completely in half, squeezes itself until I nearly can’t breathe. “That’s really sweet, Jasmine.”

“Do you think she will? Live to be a hundred?”

“Why not?” I say. “She’s healthy and artists are known to live a really long time because they love their work.”

“Is that true?”

I chuckle, hold up my hands. “I swear.”

She nods.

“Amma was ninety-four. That’s almost a hundred.”

“Amma? Yeah. I went to her funeral.”

“I remember. It helped your nana to have you there to hold her hand.” I think of the house afterward, the parade of people; then finally, it was only Phoebe and me, left behind in the yawning emptiness of Beryl’s house.