Chapter 1

My husband brought home a mermaid. Said I could keep her as a pet.

Her tail shimmered with every color, but the way she looked at me was the way you'd look at a lump of dead meat.

I smiled. "She's beautiful. What's your name?"

She tilted her chin up. "Maura Winfield."

Her voice was thick and sticky, a knife dipped in honey.

After that she was always draped over my husband, flicking that tail, sending droplets across my face.

"Stop making a fuss," he'd say. "She's just a fish."

But his eyes went soft enough to melt.

Until the night I came home early to a living room glimmering with water.

Half of her lay across his lap, silver hair wound around his wrist, and where they tangled her tail tapped gently against his shins.

His eyes were shut, his fingers stroking her hair, rapt as a man at prayer.

I gripped the strap of my bag, and suddenly I laughed.

"You like her?"

His eyes flew open and he shoved her away in a panic.

The water snaked all the way to my feet. I crouched, pinched a scale at her cheek, and gave it a light tug.

"Then let's keep her together."

He froze, and something wild and joyful flickered in his eyes.

...

Burton Delgado's expression locked in place, shock and confusion churning across it, until it settled into the ecstasy of a man who'd gotten back something he thought he'd lost.

"Chris, you—"

My tug had hurt her. Maura let out a sharp gasp and shrank her wet body back behind Burton, her eyes gouging into me, full of venom.

I let go and rubbed the cold scale between my fingertips.

Thin, brittle, like a cheap chip of plastic.

"What? You don't want to?"

I stood and looked down at the two of them.

Water dripped from Maura's tail and pooled on the floor, reflecting my blank face.

Burton scooped her up, quick and clumsy, as if shielding some priceless treasure.

"No, of course not. Chris, I'm just—I'm just so happy."

The words came out tangled as he tried to explain.

"I was afraid you'd be angry, I—"

"Why would I be angry?"

I cut him off and walked to the bar to pour myself a glass of water.

"She's special, isn't she?"

I turned, leaned against the bar, and drank the whole glass down in one go.

The cold slid down my throat and did nothing to put out the burning in my chest.

Burton held Maura, at a loss for where to set her down.

This three-bedroom apartment had nowhere to hold a living, breathing mermaid.

She squirmed uneasily in his arms, tail slapping against him, leaving wet marks.

"Chris, she needs water."

There was a faint plea buried in his voice.

I nodded and took out my phone.

"Hello, is this Seaborne Design?"

"I want a custom tank. It's going in the living room of a villa."

The person on the other end hesitated, clearly not expecting business at this hour.

Burton went still too.

We lived in a penthouse downtown. There was no villa.

I ignored his surprise and kept talking into the phone.

"I need it large. Big enough for a grown adult to move around freely."

"Best water circulation system you have. It has to simulate a deep-sea environment."

"I want the proposal before tomorrow morning."

I hung up and looked at Burton.

"That villa of yours out in Shallow Cove, hasn't it been sitting empty all this time?"

"Perfect. She can live there."

That villa was something Burton had bought before we married. For our future children, he'd said.

He'd said it had the best international school, the most beautiful ocean views.

Now it was going to be a palace for a fish.

His throat worked, and his eyes turned complicated.

"Chris, there's no need to go to all this trouble—"

"It's no trouble."

I answered lightly.

"If you're keeping a pet, you have to give it the best, don't you?"

My gaze dropped to Maura.

She seemed to understand too. The venom in her eyes now carried a touch of smugness, of challenge.

She lifted her chin at me, tail hooking around Burton's waist, the pose intimate and shameless.

His body stiffened, but he didn't push her away.

Whatever ridiculous little sting I still felt was covered over in an instant by a hard, cold layer of ice.

Five years of marriage, and I'd honestly believed our marriage was unbreakable.

Burton was a well-known architect, handsome and refined, gentle and attentive with me.

I was a jewelry designer with a bit of a name, from a comfortable family, and I'd thought myself his match.

To everyone else, we were a golden couple.

Until three months ago, when he went on a business trip to a coastal city, and everything changed after he came back.

He started staring at his phone in a daze, always carrying that faint trace of a salty, briny smell.

I thought it was just work stress.

Now I could see how naive I'd been.

"Where does she sleep tonight?"

I asked, breaking the strange quiet.

Burton's face flushed red.

"The bathtub... would the bathtub be okay?"

I nodded.

"That's fine."

Then I looked at him, one word at a time.

"You go scrub the tub clean."

"Use disinfectant. Three times."

"I don't want anything unclean left in my tub."

His face went white, then green, and his arms tightened around Maura.

She let out an aggrieved whimper against him.

"Burt, I feel awful..."

Burton looked at her, aching for her, then looked at me, torn.

I met his gaze without any expression at all.

In the end, he carried Maura toward the bathroom.

I heard the rush of water inside, and his voice, lowered, soothing her.

"Maura, hold on a little longer. We'll have a big house tomorrow."

I stood where I was, feeling like a joke.