When We Believed in Mermaids: A Novel

“The house might not be haunted, but I surely am.”

Before a clear connection is made between Mari and Josie, O’Neal is already connecting Sapphire House and the tragedy that happened within its walls to Mari’s secret past. Mari has a seemingly perfect life with her kind and understanding husband and two children, as well as a successful business. That life has cracks in it that begin to show as she recalls moments of her childhood that reveal trauma that altered the course of her life, just as this house is like a museum to a lost time but holds the secret of a murder.

“These days, my dad would be a Top Chef contender. Back then, he was still something of a king in his world, the dashing and charismatic center of Eden, the man who knew everyone’s name and clapped you on the back and gave the best hugs in the world. Everyone adored him, including me, at least as a child.”

Mari’s memories of her father tend to be negative throughout the novel, but this description of him shows that although her father was neglectful, he was loved. This begins the way in which O’Neal compares and contrasts the opposing behaviors of the people in Kit and Mari’s lives when they were children. These people were often complicated, their behavior sometimes contradictory with what was right or wrong. Both Mari and Kit will find themselves struggling to reconcile some of these contradictions as they work their way through memories of the past and attempt to understand how those events shaped the women they became.

“What I won’t do is allow myself to have sex with a man who has the potential to genuinely stir my passions. Living through the war that was my parents’ marriage, then everything my sister ever did, including getting herself killed, taught me to steer clear of intense liaisons.”

Kit’s reaction to her attraction to Javier touches on The Lasting Effects of Childhood Trauma on her life, particularly in the way of The Fear of Emotional Connection. Kit blames her parents’ marriage and Josie’s behavior but doesn’t expand on that in this chapter. However, she does explore these things in flashbacks that take place all through the novel. By the time O’Neal reaches the end of the novel, it becomes clear that Kit’s fear of committed relationships is rooted deeply in her childhood experiences.

“When my mother answered the door, a boy was there, soaked and shivering, his long hair stuck to his neck and forehead. His chambray shirt and jeans clung to him, and his face was bruised and bleeding, as if he’d washed overboard from a wrecked ship, or he was the ghost of a seaman who had drowned and didn’t know it.”

The description of how Dylan came to live with Biancis is filled with mystery, not unlike the arrival of Heathcliff in the home of the Earnshaws in the novel, Wuthering Heights. There is little mention of Dylan’s past beyond a few comments about his mother, but the scars on his body suggest regular and cruel abuse. Dylan’s arrival at Eden is a profound moment of change for Kit and Josie because he takes on the role of their protector, but also like Heathcliff, Josie’s desire for intimacy with him leads to his downfall.

“I used to protest, but a counselor finally told me that the more I resisted the emotions of my PTSD, the worse it would get. To overcome it, I have to be present with it. So I head inside and pour a fresh cup of tea. The screen of my memory flashes with images from the earthquake that gave me the scar on my face—the noise, the screams, the blood everywhere from the wound on my head the wound in my belly. All of it.”

O’Neal presents the fact that Mari sought mental health help at some point in her life, likely after becoming Mari. This is important because it helps to highlight the difference in Mari and Kit’s ability to deal with the trauma of their shared past. It also allows insight into Mari’s struggles with her past, and the impact the Loma Prieta earthquake had on her. While the reader is already aware of the scar on Mari’s forehead that allowed Kit to recognize her on the news report, the wound in her belly has not been mentioned, so this moment foreshadows a time when Mari will explain that wound.

“It was, almost certainly, the worst day of my life, but being twelve had nothing to do with it.”

Kit tells Javier about being in Santa Cruz during the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989, and he focuses on her young age as being the reason why the memory of it had a profound impact on her life. Kit dismisses her age as being insignificant to what happened, not mentioning at this point that her father died in the earthquake. Javier shows that he insightful, and Kit continues to struggle with The Fear of Emotional Connection in her relationship with Javier, withholding information to protect herself.

“It was safe with Dylan, warm. Although I complained about the shower, I liked having someone who knew when our clothes needed to be washed and who made us follow a system—shower, brush and braid hair, brush teeth, lay out clothes for the next day. My sense of worry had calmed a lot since he’d arrived.”

The realization that Kit and Josie didn’t have the kind of support they needed from their parents is highlighted when Kit talks about all the mundane things Dylan did for them. At the same time, Dylan’s life was unstable and full of abuse before he came to live with the girls. His support was important to both Kit and Josie/Mari but also was unfair to Dylan, who needed support himself.

“Again the dream arrives.

I’m sitting on a rock in the cove, with Cinder beside me. We’re staring out to the restless ocean, and in the distance, Dylan is riding his surfboard, not even wearing a wet suit, only his yellow-and-red board shorts. He’s happy, really happy, and that’s why I don’t want to warn him that the wave is breaking up.”

Kit has a recurring dream that focuses on the happiness she saw in Dylan when he surfed. This particular moment catches Dylan in a moment of extreme happiness, something that was likely uncommon with Dylan as suggested by Kit’s later reflections on his suicidal ideations. These dreams foreshadow the day Kit found Dylan dead and suggests her hopeful idea of how his death happened.

“When I fled France on a stolen passport, I knew only that I had to change my life. I didn’t stop to consider that I’d be lying forever, that I would be the only person who would know my secrets.”

Mari’s thoughts on leaving France not only foreshadow her explanation of the event, but it gives a motive behind her actions. This thought also gives insight into Mari’s state of mind and explains in small part why little bits of her past have begun to resurface and she begins to spill information about her past to those around her who don’t know the truth. This comes on the heels of Mari studying newspaper articles about Veronica, making the connection again between Veronica’s mystery killer and Mari’s desire to reveal her own secrets.

“Ridiculous. And lovely. I know better than to get mixed up with a charmer, to let down my guard, and yet—it’s limited by circumstances. I’m safe enough.”

Kit spends the early moments of her relationship with Javier, attempting to avoid becoming entangled with him, but when it happens, she begins to find other reasons why it won’t last. As she watches him leave her bed, she clings to the idea that their relationship is only a holiday fling. By doing this, Kit allows herself to act in ways that are unusual for her with the caveat that it can’t last. This shows some of the coping mechanisms Kit has used throughout her life to justify her actions and those of others around her, and it also foreshadows the moment she must accept that Javier isn’t just a holiday fling.

“God, how she loved surfing! And to my chagrin, she was better than I was. I looked better doing it, with my skinny arms and long hair and tiny bikinis—they called me Baby Babe—but Kit was just plain better. She read the waves and the wind as if they were the alphabet. Everyone encouraged her to try out for surf competitions, but she wasn’t interested. Surfing, she said, was just for her.”

Mari thinks back on Kit’s connection to surfing and reveals a source of competition between the two sisters. Mari, it will later be revealed, connects surfing to the summer she was sexually assaulted because Dylan taught her to surf the morning after the assaults began. Surfing then becomes a way of medicating herself as Mari struggles with her trauma and with drug addiction. The connection to Dylan also causes issue because it creates a source of competition between Mari and Kit not only in their surfing abilities, but in the connection it creates between Kit and Dylan.

“And Josie named her son after our father. Which is such a weird choice after how long they were at war. When we were small, they were close, but all I remember is how much they fought later. Constantly, furiously, violently.”

Kit’s reaction to Josie/Mari naming her son after their father shows how perspective can change from person to person even when they are witnessing the same event. Kit only saw the fighting that happened in front of her but can’t appreciate the little moments of happiness that Mari remembers sharing with her father. Their family memories continue to have contradictory elements, and the girls slowly begin to come to terms with the events of their childhood and their parents’ actions as the story concludes.

“I discovered the crack along our closet door, along the shared wall with Dylan’s bedroom. It was situated above our heads, so you had to stand on the end of Kit’s bed to see, and then you had to close one eye, but it was a perfect view of his bed.

Where he had a lot of sex.”

The crack in the wall of Josie’s childhood bedroom is another touch of symbolism that shows how the house was falling apart around them, just as the family was falling apart due to neglect, infidelity, and addiction. This moment is also the beginning of Josie’s downfall as an adolescent, the moment when she begins to see Dylan as something more than a surrogate brother and protector. For Josie, watching Dylan is not only a new interest in Dylan as a young man, but a source of new information regarding sex that allows her to see it as something more than the weapon her assailant used against her. However, without mature direction, Josie struggles to put it in a healthy perspective.

“‘The thing is, my soul mate abandoned me, over and over again.’ I shake my head. ‘After the earthquake, I was so lonely, it felt like a disease. Like something I could die of.’”

Kit has talked about being abandoned after the earthquake, but this is the first time she addresses the impact it had on her as a young adolescent growing up without anyone to support or protect her. This foreshadows the point when it becomes apparent that the core of Kit’s struggles with intimate relationships is this sense of abandonment. This also reveals a deeper motivation for Kit coming to find Josie even though it is outside her comfort zone to leave her home.

“He turned around and left the hallway, leaving me with a crystal-clear understanding that the only guy I wanted then or ever was Dylan. It had always been that way. It would always be that way.”

Left again without adult guidance, a 15-year-old Josie thinks she understands adult love and its intricacies. This moment pushes Josie into a night of intimacy with Dylan that leads to disaster and foreshadows the beginning of Josie’s downfall. At the same time, this moment adds to Dylan’s already struggling mental health, and Mari later sees it as a catalyst to his death.

“It’s less easy to read Kit. Over the years, she’s created an urbane but kind shell that lets little of her true self leak through. I catch sight of the real Kit every now and again, when she listens to Sarah and she leans close. When Javier touches her arm or shoulder or pours her a little more water from the pitcher.

Mainly I see her when she engages with Simon. As if she wants to know and like him, which gives me hope.”

Mari observes Kit over dinner with her family and feels the walls Kit has created to separate herself from others. Kit struggles with abandonment and doesn’t want to connect with others but has found it impossible not to connect with both Javier and Sarah. At the same time, Mari senses a connection between Kit and Simon, creating another foil with Dylan as Kit begins to develop a relationship with someone Mari loves. This moment foreshadows the possibility of a happy ending, but it also shows the damage Kit continues to carry around and needs to overcome before a happy ending is possible.

“When I saw you, I recognized you, like I’ve been waiting, all the time, for you to show up. And there you were.”

In Javier’s attempt to convince Kit that their relationship is deeper than just a holiday fling, he brings up the concept of soul mates, or twin souls. This becomes a theme in Kit’s relationship with Javier, with him teaching her that a person can have more than one soul mate. It is with the discussion of soul mates that another of Kit’s issues surfaces—her fear that Dylan and Josie were her only soul mates, and they left her. She is fearful that if she accepts Javier as a soul mate she’ll have to face the fact that he will one day leave her, another obstacle she must overcome to find happiness.

“‘The beginning of the end,’ I say with a sigh. ‘Pretty sure that was one of his suicide attempts.’”

Kit addresses the motorcycle accident Dylan was in months before his death and points out that it was likely a suicide attempt in a foreshadowing of the revelation of the cause of Dylan’s death. Mari’s surprise at this idea shows how her perspective was different from Kit’s and that she wasn’t equipped at the time to understand how difficult things had become for Dylan, or to appreciate how bad they would become.

“‘No one ever protected you the way they should have. But I would have.’ She’s crying. ‘I would have.’”

Kit is the younger sister. She was seven when Josie was sexually assaulted and 12 when Josie became pregnant with Dylan’s baby. There is a sense of abandonment still at work in the relationship between these two sisters that fuels a lot of Kit’s anger toward Mari after believing her dead for 15 years. This statement is an expression of Kit’s struggle with abandonment, as well as an example of how well Josie and Dylan protected Kit from reality when they were kids. It is also the beginning of healing as Kit finally expresses her pain and learns how to move forward from it.

“I sat down beside him. Touched the bracelet. My heart in my chest was exploding, a scream I couldn’t allow into the world. Once I told them that he was here, I would lose him forever.”

Kit describes finding Dylan’s body on the beach and explains why she sat with him rather than tell anyone what she found. This is the first time Kit is abandoned by someone she loves, and it has a profound impact on her life, changing the way she views the world around her. At the same time, this moment reveals that Dylan’s death was not the result of a surfing accident as Kit’s dream suggests, putting that dream into the perspective of the wishful thinking of a child. It also underscores the likelihood that it was suicide, as foreshadowed in earlier parts of the novel.

“‘I just love you so much,’ he whispers. ‘And it was all so perfect.’

‘If this is the worst thing that happens to our family, we will be lucky people indeed.’”

Mari convinces her husband that her secrets are not enough to end their marriage, but in doing so she points out to him that perfection is illusory. This is a mistake Kit makes as well. When Kit sees Mari’s life, she thinks it is perfect, like the fantasy they made up in their childhood. However, no relationship is perfect, and Mari understands this better than most people, gently assuring Simon that their relationship and their family is vastly different from the one she grew up in, and the one Dylan was born to. By doing this, O’Neal shows that striving for perfection is pointless because there is no such thing as perfect in fiction or reality.

“Josie and Billy. Dylan and Josie. My poor, poor sister, carrying it all for so long. Finally killing herself off rather than deal with it anymore.”

As an adult, Kit sees what a burden it was for Josie to deal with her own trauma while protecting Kit from it as well. Kit has struggled to understand Mari’s motivations and to forgive Josie for abandoning her. By coming to this conclusion, Kit not only begins to move down the path to forgiveness, but she also expresses Mari’s motivations in a way that has yet to be acknowledged even by Mari herself. This is a climactic moment for Kit because it gives her the tools she needs to move forward despite her anger and sense of abandonment.

“‘We abandoned you,’ my mother says. ‘All of us, in one way or another. Me and Josie and Dylan and your dad.’”

During a “love intervention” (336), a twist on a substance abuse intervention, Kit’s mother admits something that no one has really acknowledged before—that everyone abandoned Kit during her childhood. This acknowledgment is powerful for Kit because it allows her to face the impact this abandonment had on her, and to finally accept that her mother and sister are determined to be a permanent fixture in her life going forward. This moment also opens the possibility of a relationship for Kit with Javier, who also attends the intervention and again attempts to convince her that they are soul mates.