I shook my head. “When we were kids, you were desperate to impress her, you followed her anywhere she asked, gave her those little notes. You were crazy about her, Ryan.”
He nodded. “I would never have lied to her, then or now. Lexie meant the world to me. So do you. Please, Jax.”
I was crying now, which made me more furious. “I can’t believe I listened to those creepy stories you and your grandmother told me, and really started to believe them. I read Lexie’s journal entries like they might actually be real.”
I’d lost all perspective.
The gate squeaked open again. My father appeared behind Ryan. “What’s going on?” he asked, looking from Ryan to me and the speargun. “I heard shouting. You okay, Jax?”
“Fine,” I said. “Ryan’s just leaving.” My hands were shaking, and my body was covered in sweat.
“But I—” Ryan said.
I stepped forward, aiming the speargun right at his chest, “Just fucking go!” I shouted.
Ryan nodded, and slowly backed away, hands in the air. I kept the speargun on him the whole time. He turned once he got to the gate, and scuttled off without another word.
I began to lose some of that ramped-up adrenaline surge once my father and I were at the kitchen table. He’d opened us each a beer. He’d disarmed the speargun and put it on the counter. I’d spent several minutes pacing, furious. At last, I went up to my bedroom to gather up my evidence and bring it down. I showed my father the newspaper articles about the baby rescued from the hotel fire, the contested property sale, and Shirley’s wedding announcement. I even showed him Lexie’s entry about someone coming into the house and leaving wet footprints behind. Then I laid out my theory.
“I don’t get it,” he admitted. “Ryan and his grandmother were trying to scare Lexie?”
“Yes! And me! They made up stories about the springs, about this evil spirit who lives inside them and somehow traps all the people who drowned there, uses them. Lexie was vulnerable enough to get completely caught up in it; to live inside this fantasy they were perpetuating. They probably convinced her the pool changed depths, too—that some portal or something opened up down there at random places and times. Maybe that’s how the spirits were supposed to come and go? I’m sure they found someone to play the dark-haired woman, made Lexie think she was an ethereal, dangerous creature from the pool. Then they tried to scare me off, too—”
“What dark-haired woman?” he asked. My father still looked puzzled. Worse, he looked downright concerned.
Realizing how quickly and frantically I’d been speaking, I took a breath. My thoughts were all over the place, rising and jumping like red-hot sparks.Slow down, I told myself.Focus and speak calmly. “The woman in Lexie’s sketchbook. The one who told her she came from—”
“So you’re saying Ryan and his family got a woman to pretend to be an evil spirit who came out of the pool?”
I took a good swig of my beer. “Something like that.”
I understood how crazy it sounded, how alarming I must have looked holding a speargun on Ryan. I needed to get my thoughts together, lay things out so that he’d understand.
I flashed back to my conversation with Karen the other day, going over the symptoms of psychosis—erratic thoughts and behaviors, delusions, hallucinations—and now here I was looking like the one who’d cracked, exhibiting all the symptoms. My head was pounding. I couldn’t keep my thoughts straight.
I needed to call Barbara. But I knew that if she could see me and hear me now, she’d be so worried. I was worried.
The front door opened. “Jackie?” Diane called from the front hall.
“We’re in the kitchen,” my father called back. Diane stormed into the room. “Do you want to tell me what in the name of God you were doing pointing a speargun at Ryan? It’s a wonder he isn’t calling the police. You could have killed him!”
“News travels fast around here,” I said.
“Terri was with me at my place—”
“Of course she was,” I said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Diane asked. Her eyes were blazing. I said nothing. She continued, “Ryan called her. You terrified him, Jackie! What on earth possessed you?”
“Jax thinks Ryan and his family were messing with Lexie,” my father said. “That they filled her head with creepy stories and got an actor to pretend to be a spirit living in the pool.”
“Maybe she was just a friend, not an actor,” I said.
Diane looked from my father to me. “Butwhy?” she asked. “Whywould they do such a thing?”
“Do you know who they are?” I asked, reaching for the articles I’d showed my father. “Shirley is the daughter of the couple who owned the hotel! After it burned, Benson Harding lost it to your grandfather in a poker game!” I held the articles out to Diane, but she shooed them away.
“I know all of that,” she said, waving her arms, her bracelets jangling. “I’ve known for years. It isn’t some big secret. Terri told me about it ages ago, back when we were kids. I still don’t understand why youthink they hired someone to try to scare your sister.” She was looking at me like I’d gone off the deep end.
