Noreen

Pearl

For a quick second I tear my eyes off the dark-haired man before me, glancing toward the jeep in the vain hope that someone else is seeing him, that I'm not just a person on a cold and lonely evening imagining things. In the glow of a singular streetlight, yellow light bounces off the rims my vehicle and mine alone.

"You are very strong, earth-walker," comes the deep voice behind me.

"What the hell?" I whirl on Liam, angry and happy and uncertain if I even want to see him, now that he's here in the flesh. Why wasn't he here sooner? Why couldn't he have stopped my mom from writing me off as a crazy person?

"Not so good bait for summoning selkies," Liam observes with a calm nod at the shrimp. He reaches into the half-frozen bag and lifts a red crustacean to eye level. He gives it a sniff, and then, tail and all, it disappears down his gullet. "Are good though." He flashes a pearly smile.

"You came back," I say more for myself than him, then pinch my forearm for good measure. It hurts. So I'm not curled up dreaming in the passenger seat or anything. When I turn my attention back onto the selkie, the man is still standing there before me, naked and glistening with the salt of the sea.

He wipes blood onto the back of his hand and in turn wipes that onto his bare thigh.  He stretches his arms high over his head and takes in the impressive ocean view. Myself, I try not to let my gaze linger on his lanky muscles. "My home," Liam announces, waving his clean hand. "My territory. No question I am here. Have always been here."

"Ass," I mutter. He could've swung by way before everyone thought I was having a mental breakdown.

Liam cants his head. Judging by his expression he's amused. One long, webbed finger jabs my shoulder. "Came out because you seem a different kind of loon tonight."

"Is there a good kind of loon?" I ask tartly, gripping my blanket tight. On the cusp of winter, there's no warmth to be had in the wind.

Liam's head bobs. "Oh yes," he says, somehow impervious to the drawing night's breeze. "White-spotted ones come to sea for the winter. Very pretty voices, but not as pretty as mine."

I purse my lips in a cross mixture of a frown and thin smile.  "You know why I'm still here?"

He settles into the sand. Using a finger, he sketches out a shoddy ship beside him. "You want to know about the man on the ship. Christopher."

At his expectant pause, I recline beside him, offering him a piece of blanket. He declines. "What happened to him?"

He watches me through those unusually perceptive eyes. "You are a young lady, to be this interested in a man from years past. Not a widow. I am thinking you claim kinship."

"My brother," I affirm, fingering the hem of the cheap fleece. "If he's alive—"

"He is."

Though the night carries no warmth, a fire flares in the depths of my heart. My spine straightens. I lean closer. "Where?" I whisper, as if this was a secret and not something I wanted to shout to the world. But a bigger question lurks in my mind, one that overshadows all else, one that tempers my relief and excitement. "Why hasn't he come home?"

Liam picks sand from his nails. He fidgets in a way I find worrisome, like my query makes him uncomfortable. "Never spoke of home. Does not speak much at all."

My brother not a talker? Every time he came home, the man told tales bigger than a whale, and he never spoke of me or Mom or much of anything? For a moment the dejected thought crossed my mind that maybe this wasn't Chris after all, maybe he was someone else, another man on the ship that got confused and....