“That’s bullshit therapist talk,” he said, shaking his head. “I’ve beena shitty father. But I’ve never lied to you. You or Lexie. Jackie, I swear to you, I know what I saw. Yes, I’d been drinking, but it was no hallucination. It wasnotmy eyes playing tricks on me!”
“Okay,” I said. De-escalate and problem solve. “Let’s take it step-by-step, Ted. Tell me exactly what happened.”
“I’d been talking with Lily. You know her, from the bed-and-breakfast? Sweet woman. She invited me to come outside with her, said she had a little of Vermont’s finest greenery to share.”
“Wait. You’re saying you and Lily got high?” I couldn’t help barking out a laugh. So much for remaining objective.
“No! We didn’t, because when I went outside, I couldn’t find her. She went out to the garden. I went out to the pool. A simple matter of miscommunication.”
I nodded.
“I was looking at the crayon writing around the pool, over by the back corner of the fence. I heard a splash. I thought maybe someone had snuck over and jumped into the pool. I saw ripples, bubbles—”
“The wind?”
He stared at me, his eyes shimmering with the intensity of his story. “I saw a hand reach up! Someonewas in the water! Drowning!”
“Could it have been a reflection?”
There’s nothing in that water but what we bring with us.
I closed my eyes, a glimpse of a memory surfacing. Me, out by the pool, alone at night when I was a little kid.
But I wasn’t alone.
There was someone, something, in the water.
I opened my eyes, shaking the memory—if it even was a memory—away.
“I’m positive!” my father said. “I jumped in without thinking about it. I didn’t even take my shoes off. I swam for them as hard and fast as I could. But they went under. Then suddenly I was under, too. Someonewas pulling on my leg; the swimmer in distress, I figured. They were disoriented, panicked. I’ve always heard that rescuing a drowning person is incredibly risky, because chances are, they’ll take you down with them.”
I’d heard that, too, at the swimming lessons Gram made Lexie and me take at the lake each summer. One of the older lifeguards told us.
My father continued. “I struggled, reached the surface.” His breathing was coming in short bursts now, like he was still trying to catch his breath. “Then, she had me by the wrist. She was pulling me down. I saw her face, Jackie. It wasLex. I know my own daughter!”
“Fear and adrenaline can do crazy things to your body and mind,” I said. I wanted to steer us back to solid ground.
He sat up straighter, looked me in the eye. “So you think I just got confused? That I imagined it?”
“That water’s so black,” I said. “It’s hard to see your own hand in front of your face down there.”
He shook his head in frustration.
“I believe you saw something,” I soothed. “But I also know how easy it is to see shapes in the darkness, to imagine things.”
And I did know, didn’t I? Hadn’t I seen things in that water?
Again, I had a flash of standing by the side of the pool at night, looking out into the dark water.
What had I seen?
I went on, “Lexie died in that pool a few days ago. You want nothing more than to see her again. I know I’d give anything to have her back. So your brain—under the influence of booze, and not working at one-hundred-percent capacity—took confusing, scary stimuli and tried to make sense of it in a split second. It showed you what youwishedto be true. That’s totally normal, Ted.”
“Sure. Whatever you say, Jax.”
When I finally went back up to my room, Lexie was waiting for me on the bed. The painting of her, at least. I’d forgotten all about it and jolted. “Idiot,” I mumbled to myself.
Scaredy-cat, Lexie taunted.
