Life had never treated him kindly. Life treats few people kindly since it does not care too much about people. That is why people need to be kinder and why life is only kinder if we are kinder.
My daughter, Ondine, was the best thing in my life. She was the one who still believed in miracles and fairy tales and all those things I'd forgotten. All those things I didn't find again until I found Anna.
The woman I pulled from the water in my net and married. The woman who brought light back into my life. The woman who made me who I am.
We tell it to our children as a fairy tale. The story of a landsman who found a selkie in his net. And the selkie who chose to stay with the landsman.
Caspian doesn't believe it. He and his mother race one another in the water and she even coached his swim team to their wins. The same swim team that gave her purpose in her life again.
The same purpose she and Ondine found when they published the fictionalized version of our story. A story heavily edited. Especially when the cases finally came to court.
The journalists who came after us after that drove my family mad. They wanted all the details on Anna's life in Yorkshire and demanded she relive the horrors of her mother and stepfather's relationship. And when the police finally found the evidence that proved Bricker killed her mother it only got worse.
Green faced her in the courtroom and the lawyers tried to destroy her. Tried to say she brought it on herself and that Green's actions were natural. It might've taken the basic nature of the Irish to hate the English that helped convict him. That and the other women who came forward and destroyed him.
I admit, I wasn't the least bit upset when I heard he'd been murdered in prison.
As for Bricker… he never even made it to trial. There was a moment when the police thought Anna might've done it but they soon realized it was suicide. The man who thought himself so high couldn't taken the idea of being brought so low.
What a horrible cliché.
But none of that matters. All that matters is my family. The family we built together. First with Ondine, then with Anna, then with Caspian. We wanted more children after that but… life had other plans.
They were enough. For a time Anna and I thought maybe not but when we realized we couldn't have anymore children we found the joy in that. Joy in the life we brought up together and the life they brought us.
But I guess that's what happens when a landsman pulls a selkie up in his net. And they fall in love with one another. And she cries her tears to stay with him. And buries her seal coat.
Then they can be together forever.