Today, Maggie asked if she might take the train to White River Junction tomorrow with Shirley and her family to visit relatives. “It would just be for the day,” she said. “We’d be home by bedtime. Please? The train is such fun! Shirley’s aunt and uncle have a farm, and they’ve got baby pigs and a foal that was just born!”
I stroked her hair. “I don’t think so, little sparrow. I don’t think leaving home is a good idea at all.”
She made a sour face at me.
“You don’t want to get sick, do you?”
Her face turned serious, worried. “No, Mama,” she said, cuddling up beside me.
“Let’s plan a special picnic tomorrow, out in the rose garden, just you and me.”
She was a quiet a minute.
“Can we bring the teapot and good china cups?” she asked.
“Of course, my love.” I pulled her tight against me, rocked her like I did when she was ever so little.
“We can put on fancy dresses,” she said. “And make strawberry tarts.”
“I think that sounds like a very good plan indeed,” I told her. “We have all we need right here, don’t we, my sparrow? Why would we ever want to leave?”
chapterthirty-three
June 22, 2019
Dad?” I called, using my key to open the locked front door to Sparrow Crest. “Diane?”
No answer.
“You here?” I called.
Diane’s car wasn’t in the driveway; the house was empty. The kitchen smelled amazing—I found a pot of sauce on the stove, still hot. The sink was full of dirty dishes: knives, grater, a cutting board. There were vegetable scraps on the counter.
My headache was firing up again. I opened the fridge, found a bottle of beer, cracked it open, and swallowed another one of Diane’s pain pills from my purse. I sipped the beer as I walked from room to room, not sure what to do with myself. Upstairs, the bathroom door was open, the shower turned off. I wandered into my room, said hi to the Lexie painting.
Hi yourself, Jax.
I took my dead phone out of my purse and plugged it into the charger. Then I got my suitcase and started packing.
By the time I finished, my head was pounding, and Diane and Ted weren’t back yet. Where were they? I thought of calling them, sending texts, but knew they’d be angry with me for sneaking off. I decided to put off that confrontation for a while longer. I looked over at the boxes, wondered if I should try to bring any of my sister’s papers back homewith me. I opened the boxes, started rummaging through, sorting. Another pile of photographs, another stack of journal entries. I pulled out the last one, read it.
June 14
Weeks of research and still so much I don’t know, don’t understand. But maybe I’m not meant to. Maybe none of us are.
One thing I’m sure of: the power of the pool. The pool gives miracles. Grants wishes, just like Gram always said it did. You just have to be prepared to pay a price.
I went out tonight and made a wish. I wished for the thing I want most in this world.
I wished to have Jax back.
Back here at Sparrow Crest.
The X girls, always and forever.
The room got strangely dark, and I saw little lights in the corners of my vision. I worried I might pass out. I closed my eyes, held tight to my sister’s journal page, to her words, to her wish.
“You got your wish,” I said, my words a low whisper, my mouth tasting coppery and acrid, like the pool.
