Chapter 1

“On the real?” the dark-haired, eerily pale woman—wearing a hoodie and a T-shirt that read “Not Today, Satan” with slim-fitting jeans—asked her very pregnant friend. Who, by the way, dressed like Grace Kelly and smelled like a luscious rose garden.

“Yes, Nina. On the real.”

“Like a tail, and scales, and one of those little beaded B-cup bras?”

The pregnant woman sucked in her cheeks, her nostrils flaring. “No beaded bra, but definitely a tail. It’s quite beautiful, in fact. I mean, as tails and scales go.”

“So lemme see, Wanda,” she insisted with a pleading tone that held a hint of strangely malicious glee. Her beautiful eyes gazed curiously as she peeked over her friend’s shoulder from the hallway leading off the changing rooms.

But Wanda put five pale-polished nails to the woman’s shoulder and shook her head. “Only if you promise not to stare and make rude jokes.”

“Don’t be a moron. Of course I’m gonna stare and make rude jokes, Wanda. She has a fucking tail, dude. She’s in the middle of a public pool floor, under the stairs to the diving board, no frickin’ less. Who wouldn’t stare at that shit?”

“Nina…” the woman said with a warning tone, her high cheekbones turning a pretty pink.

Wanda and Nina—both very nice, solid names. It’s always pleasant to have a name to attach to the people talking about you and your “predicament” as though you’re not even in the same room…while you’re on the floor…literally flopping around, looking for cover.

Nina, holding an equally beautiful dark-haired little girl with curly hair and the cherubic face of an angel, wearing the sweetest purple tutu swimsuit with ballerinas on the chest, pushed her way past the pregnant Wanda at the entry to the pool. She looked down to the blue-tiled surface of the flooring where Esther Williams Sanchez lay.

And then her mouth fell open.

Immediately afterward, she clamped her mouth shut and her shoulders slumped in a pouty way. “Is this another wormhole, Wanda? Like Shamalot? I don’t wanna go back today. I have shit to do, and it always takes days for me to readjust to the time zones. It’s like fairytale jetlag, dude.”

A woman with long, glistening blonde hair, styled similarly to a Kardashian’s, skidded into the pool area on a pair of burnt-orange heels so high, Esther thought surely she’d pitch headfirst into the pool. And then she thought what a shame that would be, because all that beautiful fake blonde hair would undoubtedly turn green if the pool’s chemicals were to touch it.

“Ho-lee fucksticks!” the blonde shouted, her words echoing in the chlorine-scented air as she stopped just short of the tall dark-haired Goddess, who grabbed her by the arm to steady her and keep her from falling into the pool. “Is she a…?”

Nina, obviously recuperated, said, “No, Marty. She’s not. This is all just a big fucking joke because that’s how we roll at Mommy and Me swim class. We prank each other all the time. Last week, we fucked with all the moms by telling them we found Nemo in the pool.”

Marty rolled her sapphire-blue eyes and let out a ragged sigh, cupping the back of her neck and massaging it with her fingers. “Shut it with the sarcasm, Dark Overlord, and tell me what happened. I have a headache the size of your mouth and I’m tired. It was a long day at Bobbie-Sue.” Leaning over, she dropped a kiss on the baby’s forehead and smiled. “Did you find something awesome at swim class, Charlie Girl? Who’s Auntie Marty’s favorite genie princess?” she asked the baby.

The baby answered with a squeal of joy, holding her arms out for her aunt to take her from her mother. Which Marty did, pressing kisses to the baby’s chubby fists, making her coo with delight. Then she looked at the women named Wanda. “Her tail is spectacular, don’t you think? And that hair! I’d kill a bitch to be in this kind of humidity and still have it fall all down my shoulders in those luscious rainbow curls.”

Wanda eyed her tail and fins, the iridescent scales shimmering in a pale yellow and melting into shades of aqua and teal, and nodded. “It truly is magic.”

“It’s fucking yellow,” Nina muttered.

Marty smiled distractedly at Nina before her face became serious. “So, what do we have so far, girls? How the heck did this happen?”

Esther squirmed uncomfortably. Well, she tried to squirm uncomfortably, but her tail (her tail!) made it almost impossible to move due to its heft and length. Also, if she moved the wrong way, her suddenly luxurious rainbow-colored hair would reveal her very naked breasts.

Wanda, with the swollen belly, dressed in a light blue maternity dress and conservative yet fashionable low heels, shook her head. “We don’t know. I tried to talk to her, but she clammed up.” Then she looked to Esther with her soft brown eyes, made up quite tastefully in pastel eyeshadow colors. “No pun intended, of course.”

Clam up. Hah! Well, if nothing else, they had a sense of humor. Esther had a sense of humor, too. Which is one of the reasons why she’d agreed to take the Mommy and Me class for first-time swimmers—the only class they had available at the Y at this time of year, now that summer was over and fall classes had begun.

She’d taken it at the urging of her friend Juanita, because Esther was thirty-two years old, couldn’t swim, and she was tired of hearing her friends tease her when they went to Mexico for impromptu vacations and she sat on the beach all alone due to her fear.

Marty eyed Esther with a critical glance. “Any idea why a woman of her age is taking a class at Mommy and Me?” She paused and then gasped. “Wait! Is there a child involved here? Where’s the child? Oh, hell. Please tell me there’s not a baby in the mix, Wanda.”

Wanda shook her head and picked invisible lint from Marty’s sharp beige suit before straightening her dark brown and rust scarf. “No children involved in the making of this…this…whatever this is. I mean, I know what this is, but you know what I mean. I did manage to get that much out of her before she stopped talking to me. So, I’m not sure why she’s at a Mommy and Me class.”

Marty sighed, now massaging her forehead as she looked to Nina. “Did Big Mouth scare her? How many times have I told you when you find yourself in a position where someone is afraid, don’t make them more afraid, Nina?”

The beautiful Nina pushed her hoodie from her head and flicked Marty’s arm, taking the baby back. “Shut your Botoxed lips, Blondie. I haven’t said jack shit. I was handing off Sam to Heath when all this went down. Speaking of, we better send him home with the kids so we can spend the next nine frillion hours of my life listening to the fish cry and carry on about how awful this is.”

Wanda looked up from her phone. “I just texted him. He was in the parking lot waiting for me. And please, Nina, don’t be so crude. You’ll make her think we don’t care. Plus, it’s not like you don’t have nine-frillion hours. You, my dear, have eternity.”

Sam must be the baby with the strange complexion Nina had been carrying around in the pool along with her little girl Charlie. He was quite small, in Esther’s opinion, for a swim class. But then, who was she to talk? She was in her thirties and still afraid of bathtub water deeper than four inches.

A tall, devastatingly handsome man with dark hair and gorgeous eyes, wearing a casual navy-blue pullover shirt and low-slung jeans, appeared behind Nina, carrying Sam. He put a hand to Wanda’s waist and asked in a husky tone, “Trouble, honey?”

She patted his cheek lovingly and smiled, pressing a kiss to the baby’s cheek and nuzzling his button nose. “Or something.”

“Remember what we discussed, okay? Please?” he reminded her in a tone that spoke of a serious conversation they’d had.

Wanda smiled coquettishly at Heath and batted her eyelashes, rubbing her belly. “Promise, no heavy lifting today. I have to watch out for junior. He’s my first priority. Always.”

“First, that’s my daughter you’re carrying around. And that’s not what you said when you picked up the car to collect Sam’s teething ring, young lady,” he teased good-naturedly.

Picked up the car? Like, the car-car or a toy car?

“Oh, stop. The SUV’s not that heavy. I certainly wasn’t crawling under it with this belly, and that’s Sam’s favorite teething ring. How could I leave it there until you got back from your golf game? And this?” She pointed to her belly. “Is a boy, Heath Jefferson.”

Okay, So Wanda had picked up a car-car. Not a toy car.

What the fresh hell?

Standing on tiptoe, Wanda kissed her husband’s lips. “You take the children home, would you, please? I promise to be very careful. No heavy lifting. Okay?”

Nina nudged Heath’s wide shoulder. “Don’t worry. I got her back. We won’t let her do anything she shouldn’t do. Text Greg before you leave and he’ll come get Charlie from you. Carl’ll worry if she’s gone for too long, and Calamity’ll have a cow if Carl gets upset.” Nina plopped kisses on each baby’s forehead and waved them off.

“Stop being a worrywart, Heath. Would we, in a million years, let anything happen to Wanda and baby Jefferson? Never. We got this,” Marty said, blowing kisses to the babies and waving to Heath before she turned around and narrowed her gaze on Esther, like she had a purpose and Esther was her mission.

Esther, who still hadn’t spoken a word, fought a cringe under Marty’s scrutiny.

As a general rule, she liked to observe people, situations, life, more than she liked to interact. At least at first. Her job as a divorce mediator required she pay close attention to body language and inflection and all sorts of things. But right now, after what had happened when she’d been the last in the class to climb out of the pool, she didn’t have any words left to offer.

Instead, she’d just sit here under the diving board until this thing attached to her like some sort of colorful, yet, admittedly beautiful growth went away. It would go away, right? It had to go away…

On a sigh, Wanda slipped her arm through Marty’s and they made their way the short distance to the diving board.

Marty sat on her haunches and looked at Esther with the prettiest sapphire-blue eyes Esther had ever seen. “I’m Marty Flaherty. What’s your name?”

“Swear to fuck, if it’s Ariel, I’ll piss myself,” Nina cackled, coming to stand behind her friends.

Marty reached behind her back and swatted Nina’s leg without even looking. “Find your inner marshmallow, Elvira, and show some empathy,” she ordered, as though the order made any sense at all.

Now Wanda gazed at her, genuine concern on her finely boned face. “You’re frightening us, honey. Please say something. We want to help. I promise you, we can help if you’ll let us.”

Yet, Esther cringed, attempting to inch farther away. After everything she’d heard, she was convinced these people were either all part of some weird cult of unbelievably pretty people who believed they had superpowers, like super-strength, or she was having a nightmare. A stone-cold, really real, scary-AF nightmare.

“Fuck, Wanda. Am I gonna have to haul this chick out to the car?” Nina complained, as though she hauled chicks with multicolored tails every day. “Because I’m tellin’ ya, Marty’s gonna have to move that shit-show of Bobbie-Sue crap out of the backseat. Her car’s the biggest one we have, and we’ll never stuff her ass in there with all that lip gloss.”

Suddenly, and quite without warning, Esther found her voice. “Bobbie-Sue? Do you sell Bobbie-Sue?” She’d sold Bobbie-Sue once, in order to pay for college.

She’d been about as bad at it as a breast implant salesman at a porn convention, worse at trying to put all that makeup on her face, let alone anyone else’s. All that talk of color wheels and blend, blend, blend was not her gift.

Marty smiled warmly, her eyes lighting up. “She speaks! Yay! Now we’re getting somewhere. And I own Bobbie-Sue, honey. I’m an honest, reputable businesswoman. And my husband owns Pack Cosmetics. We’re in the process of merging the two companies right now. Which is why I missed Mommy and Me class tonight with my little girl, Hollis. But now you can see, you have nothing to be afraid of.”

Tentatively gazing at the women, Esther confessed, “I tried to sell Bobbie-Sue to help pay for some college courses.”

“Yeah, and you bought what with that pile of cash, a pack of pencils? Some Ramen noodles for a week?” Nina asked on a cynical snort.

“Actually, it was a loaf of bread and a bottle of mustard from the Andes. Did you know they even had their own mustard in the Andes?”

Marty shook her head and clucked her tongue. “Sounds like you didn’t work the program… What’s your name?”

“I’m not sure I want to tell you because I’m pretty sure you’ll laugh.” After that Ariel crack, she knew they would.

“Aw, they won’t laugh,” Nina reassured her. “I will, for damn sure. Trust and believe. But these two sensitive snowflakes would rather die than hurt your fucking feelings.”

Giving them all a sheepish glance, she winced even before she spoke. “It’s Esther…”

Wanda leaned in, her eyes questioning. “Esther…?” she coaxed with a hopeful glance.

She swallowed, smoothing her hands over the long length of her new locks. Just say it and get it over with. You’ve lived with it all your life, for pity’s sake.

Well, sure I have. But that was just a bunch of lame jokes about being named after a famous synchronized swimmer and not actually being able to swim.

It wasn’t because I had a tail with a fin.

“Esther Williams…er, Sanchez. Esther Williams Sanchez,” she finally blurted out.

There was a short silence while each woman processed who Esther Williams was as the lights from the pool played against the ceiling and the floor continued to dry around her.

“Like the famous synchronized swimmer?” Nina crowed, holding her belly before she doubled over at the waist.

And then they all began to laugh.

Wanda was the first to recover, sputtering against the back of her hand and using her thumb to wipe tears from her eyes. “Ladies! Stahhp!” And then she choked out another string of hyena-ish giggles before she straightened and cleared her throat, composing herself. “Girls. Knock it off! There’s someone in need. Also,” she said, her eyes imploring Esther’s, “please forgive me for behaving so poorly. I’m given to fits and spurts of all sorts of crazy emotions since I got knocked up. I wasn’t laughing at you.”

“But I wasn’t laughing,” Esther protested, catching a glimmer of her yellow and aqua tail under the pool lights before briefly clenching her eyes shut.

Wanda bit her lip to keep from laughing again. “Okay. I was laughing at you. But you have to admit, it’s kind of funny, your name being…and you ending up a mermaid.” Wanda shook her head as if it would help clear it. “Never mind. My apologies for being so rude.”

Esther watched this all play out, but simply said, “No sweat.”

Marty plopped down on the ground, holding her belly after laughing too hard, then she reached out a hand and placed it on Esther’s arm. “I’m sorry, too. Now let’s get down to business, Esther Williams Sanchez. How did this happen?”

“I’m not sorry, ’cuz that shit’s funny, but yeah. How the fuck did this happen? Like, how do you have legs one minute and a tail the next?” Nina inquired.

Esther stared at the length of her body, and then she looked up at the ladies, all expectantly waiting for her to answer. The pressure to explain became intense. “I…I don’t…”

Tears began to form in the corner of her eyes and panic swelled in her chest. Her heart raced, crashing against her ribs until she thought surely it would burst through the wall of her chest.

Nina rasped a sigh, planting her hands on her hips. “Fuck. Here we go, girlies. Meltdown in three, two—”

And then Esther screamed.

She screamed loud. So loud, it reverberated around the Olympic-size swimming pool, swirling and swishing as it wended its way into one ear and out the other.

And she didn’t even care if she came off as some hysterical, screeching shrew—something she despised in most women.

She had a tail.

A fin.

A whateverthehell you wanted to label it.

She had it and it was attached to her and she didn’t know how to get away from it.

So, she gulped in a fresh breath of air and screamed again.

Even louder.