AN: Here's the last chapter. Sorry it's so short. I hope you like it anyway.

Eddie had been taking a walk along the pier to clear his head. He had just met his father and daughter. He liked them both and was glad he knew them, he only wished he'd met them sooner. None of it seemed fair. Max and Gracie didn't deserve to be torn apart. And he missed his own wife so much. Life was so bitter and yet, there there was something that kept it from being completely bleak. A glimmering hope that never faded, though it seemed to flicker sometimes.

Looking down into the water, he saw something that until that moment, he'd always believed was a myth. A half human girl, half fish. A mermaid with a long golden tail. She was trapped in a net at the bottom of the harbor. And even more remarkable her face looked exactly like his daughter.

He kicked off his shoes and dove into the water feeling very much like someone in a dream. Holding his breath he tugged at the knots and flipped the net in this place and that desperate to get her out of it. Just when he thought he would have to go get a knife and come back, he managed to open the top of it and lift Cleo out. He pulled her to the shore line and onto dry land away from the docks.

She blinked at him in amazement. "Da-Eddie?" She mumbled.

"Are you alright?" He asked gently. He looked down at her tail which was still formed because she was wet. "I mean, aside from the fish tail."

"Yeah.." Cleo sat up and put her hand to her forehead.

"How did this happen?" Eddie wanted to know.

"You wont tell anyone?" Cleo asked him to be sure.

"Of course not!" Eddie seemed rather offended that she would think otherwise.

She took a deep breath and told him everything about Mako and about how Rikki and Emma were mermaids too. She told him that Gracie and her friends had been mermaids and that Charlotte had been one too. He didn't say anything when she finished speaking he stared at her in wide-eyed amazement.

"Mother was a mermaid?" He mused in disbelief. "Like you are now?"

"Yes." Cleo said as her tail dried and turned back into legs. "Which is why we need to find out what really happened to her. If anybody knows."

A soft fluttery voice that did not belong to Eddie answered, "I know."

Looking up, they saw Miss Chatham coming towards them listening to every word they were saying.

"Louise." Eddie said, recalling the photo of her with his mother on the pier.

"Yes that's me." Louise sat down on the ground beside them. She gently eased down her tired old body to be on eye level with Eddie and Cleo. "It all started when we gave up our powers."

-Flashback-

The fifty year full moon was spilling over into the moon pool casting a bright silvery light on the water below. The three mermaids stood looking up at it for a moment. They all linked hands, preparing to jump in together.

"I don't think we should do this." Julia said suddenly, taking a step back from the moon pool.

"It's getting to be too much." Louise sighed, looking sadly at the glowing, bubbling water. "Oh, I will miss it so much."

"We've gone through too much to give it all up now." Juila decided, taking yet another step back and letting go of Louise's hand.

"No." Gracie was tired of living a double life. It was her in-ability to feel human which had torn her away from Max. She was sick of working about avoiding every drop of water she saw. Yes, being able to make water do whatever you wanted was wonderful, but it wasn't everything. It was time to give it up. She broke away from her friends and dived in.

"Gracie, don't!" Louise lunged after her, falling into the moon pool herself.

Julia, realizing that if she chose to stay a mermaid she would be on her own, jumped in behind them.

The moon pulled away their tails and powers forever. Julia and Louise swam out having wet legs for the first time in a long while. Before coming out, Gracie held her breath and swam a little distance under. She found her locket there and grabbed it by the chain taking it up with her.

-End flash back-

"And that's what happened." Louise said sadly.

Cleo shook her head. This still didn't make sense. "Then how did Emma find it? I always assumed she found it where Gracie threw it."

"She found it where I threw it." Miss Chatham confessed. "Gracie called me to come see her when she was on her death bed. We hadn't seen each other in years but she said she had a favor to ask of me. So I came and she gave me the locket and told me to throw it back into the moon pool."

"Why?" Cleo wanted to know.

"She didn't want anyone in her family to have it." Miss Chatham explained.

So, Cleo thought sadly to herself, that's what really happened to Gracie.

Late that night in her room, Cleo sat on her bed holding the locket in her hand, rubbing her fingers over the little stone on the top of it. She was sorry about what happened to Gracie. But she was determined not to let her own life be like that. She was going to be happy to be a mermaid. She wasn't going to give up the fight. She wasn't going to let her fear of others run her life. From now on, she was going to be stronger.

-The end-

AN: Please review.