“Just barely sixty-six,” Whelan said.
“Wow. She looks like about a hundred years old. What happened to her?”
“Her little boy died. Her husband blamed her and she blamed herself and this is how she ended up. Alone, haunted by that loss,” Whelan said. “So. Anything you can remember about that day would really be a help to me.”
She looked out at the garden, where butterflies fluttered above bright pink blooms.
“I hate to tell you, but that kid was a big pest that summer. Always getting into trouble. And it didn’t seem like he had a whole lot of adult supervision.”
Whelan nodded. “Hudson’s father, Brad—my mother’s second husband—wasn’t around much back then. I think my mom was basically a single mom that summer.”
“Yeah. I don’t know if I ever even saw the dad,” Shannon agreed. “And when I did see your mom, she usually had a cocktail in her hand.”
“Sounds right,” Whelan agreed.
Shannon closed her eyes as she thought back to that day. “Seemed like he was in some kind of feud with his little buddy who he usually hung around with. Mike something.”
“Michael Sullivan?” Whelan had found the name, scrawled in childish handwriting, on a sympathy card among his mother’s belongings.
She nodded. “That sounds right. Mike and another boy were down at the deep end, having a cannonball contest to see who could make the biggest splash. You could tell Hudson was mad about not being included. At some point, he was sitting on the side of the pool. And all of a sudden, he starts screaming and making these gagging noises, yelling that one of the kids had pooped in the pool.”
Shannon rolled her eyes. “It was textbook Hudson. Of course, then Traci—that was the other lifeguard—and I had to get everybody out of the pool. Code brown, we called it. I went and got the skimmer, to scoop up the poop, only it wasn’t really poop. It was a Tootsie Roll.”
“Hudson’s idea of a practical joke,” Whelan said. “He was always a little trickster.”
“It wasn’t funny to us,” Shannon retorted. “Traci started yelling at him to get out of the pool, but then he was flailing around, splashing and pretending that he was drowning, which really pissed us off. And then, he kinda stopped moving. And his head rolled back…”
She wasn’t looking at the butterflies anymore, Whelan noticed. She was looking up at the ceiling, dredging up that very bad day, and her eyes were damp.
“I was down at the shallow end, yelling at kids to get out. Traci jumped in, still thinking maybe he was faking us out again. But his lips were already turning blue…
“Traci and I, we took turns working on him. All these people were gathered around us, yelling for someone to call nine-one-one. And then, I heard this woman, screaming. Just, the most piercing, awful howl I ever heard. And she was screaming… ‘My baby. Save my baby.’”
Shannon looked over at Whelan. She was still clenching and unclenching the hands that had been resting on the knees of her scrub pants. “But it was too late.”
When he’d set out on this mission, Whelan had convinced himself that he could approach it, all of it—including hearing a firsthand account of his little brother’s death—with the kind of clinical objectivity he’d possessed during his previous career in the military.
But he hadn’t reckoned for this—his instant recall of his mother’s high-pitched wail, the utter despair in her voice when she’d called to tell him about what had happened.
That summer, he was sharing an apartment in Charlotte with two other guys, sweating his balls off working on a construction site, bored and considering joining the military.
Kasey had been hysterical, crying so hard he could barely make out what she was saying. Just… “Hudson” and “my baby” and… “drowned.”
It hadn’t made sense then and it still didn’t make sense all these years later.
That July day had been the beginning of the end for Kasey. For years, he’d been too selfish, too wrapped up in his own drama to recognize the fact of her rapid demise. Now, though, he owed it to her, and to himself, to find out the truth.
He reached across the end table and lightly touched Shannon’s hand. She flinched.
“I’m sorry to bring this back up again. It’s painful for me, and I wasn’t even there. I just have a couple more questions.”
“Okay, but make it quick. I’m on the clock and my supervisor hates me.”
“You said you ran and got the pool skimmer, after Hudson hollered about the fake poop. Was there anyone else in the pool?”
“Not in the deep end. Traci and I blew our whistles and yelled at everybody to get out of the pool.”
“What about the kids who’d been on the diving board? Where did they go? Could one of them have pushed Hudson underwater when you weren’t looking?”
