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The sun was setting on another perfect day in Montauk. Percy and Paul were chasing Estelle into the sea for one last splash in the ocean before night fell. Annabeth and Sally watched all three of them with smiles on their faces, having opted to sit back and keep an eye on the firepit. Of course, Annabeth’s eyes were mostly focused on Percy. Running around, diving after his 4-year-old sister, laughing, completely at ease with the world. It made Annabeth feel at ease.
“Enjoying the sunset?” Sally asked, in a teasing tone that let Annabeth know that Sally was not talking about the sunset.
“I am.” Annabeth said, without a hint of shame. No sense in being coy with Sally Jackson. After spending the better part of a school year at the Jackson residence while confiding in each other about how worried they both were about Percy being missing, Annabeth had good reason to suspect that Mrs. Jackson knew how much Annabeth liked her son.
“It is almost scary to me how much Percy looks like him.” Sally said. “In the water, at sunset.”
“Poseidon?” Annabeth guessed as the waves crashed against the shore.
“Yes.” Sally smiled, looking wistfully off at the horizon where the ocean met the sky.
Annabeth looked back at Percy and could absolutely see what Sally meant. Though Annabeth had only seen the Sea God a few times, she could definitely spot the family resemblance. Dark hair, sea green eyes, sun tanned skin, swimmer’s body. All the traits listed off by the Aphrodite campers whenever they didn’t realize that Annabeth could hear them gushing over Percy. Yet there was more to it than the physical traits. Percy and Poseidon both had a quiet air of power behind them. Like the ocean itself. It could be calm one day and a raging hurricane the next. Or, like today, it could be fun and playful. Like how the waves had risen high today, but not enough to endanger your life. Only to whip you around and make playing in the water fun.
The biggest log on the fire popped. Annabeth poked it with the poking stick to get the unburned side closer to the fire. Sally watched as Percy and Paul tossed a hysterically laughing Estelle high into the air right into a rising wave.
“This is where you met, Poseidon, isn’t it?” Annabeth asked, feeling like now was as good a time to broach this topic as any. Paul was going to be out of earshot for a while and it had been in the back of Annabeth’s mind ever since she had gotten to know Sally. Percy had once told her the abridged version of how his parents met. At the time, he had been telling her the story through mouthfuls of blue jellybeans, so Annabeth had probably missed out on the finer details.
“It is.” Sally said, a smile split her face that made her look timeless. As radiant as any goddess that Annabeth had ever seen in the sunset. “I must have told Percy this story a hundred times.”
“Can you tell me?” Annabeth asked.
“Sure.” Sally said before reaching down to open up the bag of blue marshmallows. She reached in and handed one to Annabeth before taking one herself. “Do you want the short version or the gushy details.”
“I’ll take a few gushy details.” Annabeth said, curling up in the lawn chair with marshmallow in her hands.
Sally took a bite to give herself time to figure out where to begin. She swallowed. “After my uncle died, I was just fed up with it all. Percy told you about how Uncle Saul passed away from cancer? Well, he took years to finally lose his battle. Years and thousands of dollars in savings. I don’t want to sound crass- we were never close, but he was the closest thing I had to a father for the longest time…”
She sounded so ashamed to admit it. Someone as kind as Sally Jackson, resenting a man for not dying fast enough.
“Going to college would have been impossible without a scholarship and I hadn’t had time to get one while I was caring for him. I barely had enough to keep the apartment after he passed away. After 3 years, I needed a vacation. I had no school in the fall, so at the end of May, I scraped together every spare chunk of change I had and I rented a cabin as far away from New York City as I could find.” Sally gestured back at the weather-beaten cabin behind them. “This charming little hut in Montauk. I threw down my bags onto the bed, walked out to the beach, and I sat down to cry.”
Annabeth didn’t say anything. She wouldn’t dare interrupt this. She could tell how important it was to let Sally get this all off her chest. Even if Annabeth wasn’t the first person she had ever told this to.
“I spent the next three days feeling sorry for myself. Just let it all out before I had to force myself to go back to my life in the real world and figure out how I was going to afford the rent when I got back. Then one day out of the blue, he appeared.” Sally said, now pointing down the beach where 22 years ago, the Greek God of the Sea had appeared. “He was in swim trunks, his fisherman’s hat, and a dorky shark tooth necklace.” She chuckled, making Annabeth laugh. “It was the 90s. What could you expect?”
“Oh my Gods.” Annabeth shook her head.
“He walked right through my private beach that I had rented like he owned the place. Before I could ask him what he was doing here, he offered me a blueberry.”
“What?” Annabeth chuckled, wondering if she was about to learn the origins of the Jackson family obsession with blue food.
“A coincidence.” Sally said, anticipating what Annabeth was thinking. “There was a fruit stand just down the road at the time. I assume that’s where he got it from.”
Annabeth had more of her blue marshmallow. She could clearly picture it in her head. Poseidon offering a younger Sally a blueberry from one of those tiny crates.
“I’m sure you can imagine how this went.” Sally said. “I told him he was trespassing. He asked me who died and made me queen. Some more back and forth until the next thing I knew, we were both sitting in-between an empty blueberry box and the sun was almost down. He bid me goodnight and said he hoped we could talk again soon. I said I would like that.”
Annabeth couldn’t help but smile, imagining her own verbal jousts with Percy and how fun they always were in hindsight.
“Again soon, turned out to be next morning.” Sally continued. I made him some scrambled eggs to pay him back for the blueberries and he took me out swimming to pay me back for the eggs.” She could still remember the exacerbated horror on Poseidon’s face when he saw how much pepper Sally was putting on his eggs. Yet hadn’t she been right in how much he loved them?
“He didn’t leave with the sun like last time. We built a fire and kept on chatting. He asked me about the stories I wanted to write and I asked him about what was so appealing about being a fisherman.”
Annabeth raised an eyebrow at that. “You didn’t know he was a god by then?”
“No.” Sally admitted as she tended to the logs. “I could always see monsters clearly, but Gods are trickier. They look like regular humans. Maybe just a bit… brighter, is a word. As if the light is always hitting them just right.”
Annabeth tried to ponder this. She wondering if Rachel saw Gods in the exact same way, or if it varied from clear sighted mortal to clear sighted mortal? She should try to ask Rachel when they saw her again.
“By the time the fire died down, it seemed way too late to let Poseidon walk back to his cabin. So I invited him to spend the night at mine.” Sally said, pocking another log back into place.
Annabeth stopped midchew, wondering if she dared ask this next question to the woman she would most likely call her mother-in-law one day. “Is that how Percy came to be?”
“No.” Sally admitted, putting the poker stick down. “Not that we didn’t give it the old college try, anyway.”
Annabeth coughed; some marshmallow got stuck in the back of her throat. Sally waited until her future daughter-in-law had recomposed herself.
“That week I spent with Poseidon had to be the happiest of my life.” Sally continued. “We’d swim all day, sit under the stars by night. He would take me fishing and sailing. He would pay for dinners in town. When my week was up I almost wanted to sell my car just to stay longer. So Poseidon pulled out his seashell pattern credit card and paid for another week at the cabin. And the week after that. And the week after that. All summer long.”
“That sounds incredible.” Annabeth awed, trying to imagine it. A whole summer alone with the man she loves. Where nothing goes wrong.
“It was…” Sally said. “It took me two months, but I finally plucked up the courage to ask him if he was Poseidon. He had told me he could see all the monsters too after our first week together. I could probably have guessed who he was earlier, but I was worried that if I told him, he would leave me. I didn’t want him to ever leave me. I had never been so happy and carefree. I didn’t think I could go on living without him in my life. What would even be the point, without him?”
“I know exactly how you feel.” Annabeth admitted before she could stop herself. Sally just looked at her with kind sympathy.
“I know you do, sweetie. Percy does too. I know he does.” She said, as a mother would to a beloved daughter. “But do not let your love consume you. Not when you have so many other people in your life who care about you.”
“Okay…” Annabeth replied, not wanting things to get too gushy.
Over in the water, Percy was letting Paul and Estelle walk on water with him. Paul looked like a nervous fawn. No wait, Annabeth decided immediately, he looked like Bambi. Estelle was much more trusting of her brother and ran across the surface of the water like she had been cooped up in the car all day and finally let loose.
“At the time, Poseidon seemed to need me in his life too.” Sally finally continued. “Summer was winding down and I couldn’t put off going home any longer. Even with Poseidon paying all my bills. He made me an offer though. He said he would build me a palace under the sea. Away from his wife and his brothers. Away from landlords and disgusting managers, creeps. With servants to attend to my every need. All my troubles just gone forever.”
“You couldn’t live that life either though.” Annabeth guessed. “Having no agency of your own. Everything given to you. Nothing earned. Just another trophy wife of a God.”
“Yes…” Sally said sadly. “I’m sure he was genuine, but like I told Percy. If my life is going to mean anything, I have to live it myself. I can’t let a God or my son solve all my problems.”
“And so you killed your abusive ex and sold his corpse for a ton of money.” Annabeth said with the same respectful awe that the rest of the female campers used whenever this story made the rounds at Camp Half-Blood.
“That I did.” Sally said before taking a bite of another marshmallow.
Annabeth smirked, so glad that she got to know Sally Jackson.
“Back to Poseidon. He begged me to let him give me something I wanted. So I told him, I wanted a family.” Sally smiled as the last sliver of Apollo’s rays disappeared beneath the waves and Percy stood silhouetted on top of the ocean. “So he gave me Percy. I gave birth to him the very next day, August 18th. The last day of summer.”
Finally, Paul decided to call it a night. Sally could see him gathering up the kids and the three of them all returned inland to the fire pit.
“He told me everything I needed to know in order to keep Percy safe. He gave us both his blessings and he walked right out into the ocean.” Sally concluded.
“That is a beautiful story, Sally.” Annabeth said, trying to fight back a tear.
“What story?” Percy asked as Estelle went after the open bag of fluffy, blue, sugary goodness.
“Nothing, Seaweed Brain. Just some girl talk.” Annabeth waved off.
“Uh oh, Percy.” Paul smirked as he sat down next to Sally who wrapped her arm around his shoulders. “That can’t be good for us.”
“No indeed.” Percy concurred as he joined Annabeth in the seat next to hers. They busted out the pack of wieners and the pointed sticks. The Jackson family ate and laughed, letting the fire die down until the sky filled with stars. Enough for Percy and Annabeth to teach Estelle about the Huntress Zoe constellation. All the while, the waves lapped against the shore in a soothing rhythmic beat. Like a lullaby wishing the Jackson family a good night.