It wasn't too much later that Mrs. Smith's prediction came true, and Dave raced in the front door, only to lay eyes on his lately-disappeared daughter Anna, reclining on the couch and flipping her fins as if it were the most casual thing in the world.
Dave stared.
Anna shrugged and smiled. "Hi, daddy!"
"Anna, you're a—you're a—muh—a muh—"
"You can say it," she said with a roll of her eyes. "I'm a mermaid."
Dave didn't say it himself; he couldn't. He just nodded, then went into the kitchen to pour himself a stiff drink.
Several long, awkward minutes later, he came back into the living room, sat down in a chair near Anna, and asked, "What happened?"
Anna very quickly provided her family with the G-rated version of her story, telling them about Eric and her accidental change and falling in love and moving in with the guy, but leaving out everything involving mating or eggs. Austin then took over his side of the tale regarding the park, though he too was careful to leave things out regarding the magical "entity" and his suspicions about it. It would do no good to get his family tangled up in that business.
When all was said and done, Dave fell silent for a long time, just sitting in that chair, staring into space, thinking. He ignored Camila's quiet sobs from the opposite corner of the room; she was still crying about the whole affair, still occasionally crossing herself and muttering prayers for Anna's soul. Dave wasn't given to overt displays, though. He just slowly got up, ambled over to the door to the garage, and went out.
A few moments later, all three kids smiled when they heard the sound of a hammer on nails. It wasn't a project or anything; just a way their father had of helping himself think. After about ten minutes, the hammering stopped, and Dave came back inside and sat down next to Anna again.
"Couple questions," he started. (Anna nodded.) "This Eric guy. You love him?" (Another nod.) "You two gonna get married?"
Anna paused before answering, "I'm still a little fuzzy on their traditions, but, yeah, pretty much."
"So you mean to leave again."
"I have to," said Anna. "I can't change back, and I can't live on land with this tail."
Dave nodded. "But you can contact us? Come visit sometimes?"
Anna grinned. "As long as the magic in these crutches holds out, yeah, I can come back sometimes. If I'm careful."
Dave smiled softly. His daughter was happy; he could tell. "That's all I needed to know."
* * * * * * *
Anna stayed with her family for three more days, doing her best to stay completely out of sight if anyone—even a delivery-man or a door-to-door salesman—came knocking. But the old saying about fish and visitors is even more true when you're both, and Anna eventually felt the need to get back to the sea and to her Eric.
Her father seemed to accept things, and was grateful for all the trouble that Anna had gone to to contact her family and to make them know that she was safe and happy. Her mother, it seemed, would never accept what had happened; she kept pestering Anna to look for some way to "break the spell," or at the very least have the local priest come over and perform an exorcism, to which Anna flatly refused.
Whenever their parents weren't around, Laura kept prodding Anna for information about how to become a mermaid. Anna, of course, knew that the starfish could change males, but she didn't know if they'd work on females. As far as she knew, it was possible that a girl could only be changed by kissing an unattached merman. In any event, she didn't want to risk it, as she didn't want her little sister throwing her legs and her human life away. As it happened, on day two of her visit, she got particularly fed up with Laura's pestering and blurted out right in front of both her siblings, "No, you don't want to be a mermaid, 'cuz then you won't have a vagina anymore!"
After which Anna was very embarrassed, and Austin was full of questions that he would never actually in a million years ask aloud, and Laura decided that her big sis was right, she really didn't want to be a mermaid after all.
* * * * * * *
It made for a terribly awkward drive back to the park, that was for sure. Austin didn't say much all the way back, until they were nearly there.
When he finally broke: "So how do you and Eric, uh, do it?"
"None of your business," said Anna.
"But if you don't have . . . can you do it?"
" . . . Sometimes," said Anna cryptically. And that was all she'd say on the matter.
They got to the spot where Austin had parked his car previously. From the outside, the park looked abandoned—dilapidated. Totally uninviting. "Whatever possessed you to explore this place in the first place?" Austin asked.
"I don't know," said Anna. "Just curiosity. Maybe some kind of—pull." She snorted a laugh. "Maybe it was your 'entity,' leading me to my destiny." She had already affixed the pair of magic starfish to her boobs now and was gripping the crutches to activate the magic.
They crossed the park together in silence. This time, Austin didn't feel malice or uncertainty. He felt . . . invited. It was strange.
They arrived at the beach. Austin used a pocket-knife to cut the rock and coin free of the duct tape; he would keep the crutches for if Anna needed them again. She would take her magic items back with her into the sea. Anna scanned the beach; there was no sign of anyone else here, not Eric, nor any other merfolk, nor even a feeling that the entity of the park was spying on them. (Austin, for his part, sure hoped that it would let him leave without trouble.)
"Well, brother, I guess this is goodbye for a while," said Anna, embracing Austin.
"You take care," said Austin, hugging Anna back tightly. "Watch out for, uh, sharks. And jellyfish."
Anna grinned, sat down on the sand, and popped off the starfish so that she couldn't stand up anymore. She put her magical items back into her bag, slung it over her shoulder, and Austin watched as she crawled into the water and disappeared.