The gift box held a pearl necklace. The glossy pearls looked real, with a swirly glimmer you could curl up in and feel safe, nothing like the pretend pearls that were sewn onto her costume along with the sequins and plaster shells Mimi bought at Woolworth. Even the gold clasp looked fancy-schmancy, like what the Gold Coast biddies wore, the ones who came on board with the aldermen and city hall hotshots who wore white spats and beaver-skin top hats.

   She vaguely remembered the Before days, when banks had money and ladies dressed up in their finery: silk, fringe, feathers, sparkles around their necks.

   Back then she and her parents had lived on land. Captain-Father had a real job, on a tug, nothing to do with made-up stories and bootleg liquor and warehouse men who took a cut of the till every week, every month, even when the paddlewheel tourist business floundered.

She fumbled for the necklace clasp at the back of her neck but couldn’t find it. She wanted it off.

    My mother’s necklace. My mother’s perfume.

   That was it! She sucked in a snootful of the flower scent just to be sure. Yep. That was the smell. She recognized it now—the same perfume her mother had worn back when Nattie would watch her get ready for her stage shows. Perched in front of a mirror framed with lightbulbs, Queenie had dabbed eau de cologne from a pint-size bottle, almost enough to hide the cigarette stink that clung to her pale skin. She then applied layers of rouge and painted her lips with a tiny brush she dipped in a small pot of lip paint. Her mother was a star at the kind of theater where stars, even the Queen of Opera, tossed their long white gloves into the audience.

   Bada boom.

   Who else would wear that God-awful perfume? Nattie looked around, half expecting to see Queenie in all her regal glory climbing the curved staircase, her auburn hair flowing behind her like a flag rallying troops through a battlefield. Perhaps the famed vaudeville star had decided to drop in for a mother-daughter chat. Maybe she wanted to give her mermaid daughter some performance tips.

   Wouldn’t that be a real hoot? Where you been all these years, mother?

   Queenie wouldn’t have encouraging words. She’d nitpick. Hem-haw, nag, and stew. Find something to complain about because that was her way. Nattie, in her sequined costume, was almost as famous as Queenie had been, in her day, before the incident.

   Facedown in the sand, red lips open . . .

   Nattie was the ship’s star attraction. Her picture was on all the flyers; it had been since she was four and came to live with Captain-Father on the Lake Maiden. Natalia, Lake Michigan’s child mermaid, had her own glass display tank, a knee-deep aquarium. The back side, hiding the door, was covered with chicken wire and plaster made to look like rocks, painted seagull-shit gray. It was just big enough to hold her throne, a few scoops of sand, and a couple buckets of water.