Someone was there, at the water’s edge. My heart jackhammered.

But no, this wasn’t Lexie or little Rita. This was no ghost.

Diane was crouched at the edge of the pool, leaning down, over it. She was talking. Saying something to herself—or to the water? Was she making a wish? I watched as she dipped a jar in. Then she looked up, saw me, and started.

“I didn’t know you were back,” she said. She was pale. There were dark circles under her eyes.

“What are you doing?” I asked. There were three big glass jars of water beside her. She put the one she’d just filled next to them.

“It’s for Terri.” Diane blushed a little. “Her symptoms have been better since she started drinking it and swimming in it. More than better, actually. She was in a wheelchair this time last year.”

“So you think the water’s… healing her?”

She thought a minute. “I think she believes it is, and maybe that’s enough.”

I looked at my aunt. “You and Terri—” I began.

I was so tired of all the secrets. Of everything we’d all been keeping from one another.

“Terri is one of my oldest, closest friends,” Diane said.

“If you don’t want to tell me, that’s fine. I just feel like all of us, this family, we’re drowning in secrets. You were absolutely right yesterday when you said that’s what our family does.”

I thought of what Ryan had said Lexie believed about the pool: that all the secrets were what gave it its power.

Diane was quiet, looking at the jars she’d just filled, then at the house and the shadow it was casting over us.

“Terri was my first love,” Diane began, voice low and hesitant. She smiled a bittersweet smile, looked down at her own reflection in the black water.

“We were both teenagers, completely freaked out because we’d fallen in love. It was the seventies, people weren’t exactly accepting, to put it mildly.”

“Did anyone know?” I asked. “Mom? Gram?”

She shook her head. “No. We kept it a secret, which only gave it more weight, but it also made it… toxic. We’d end things dramatically, swear each other off, then end up together again a week later. We just couldn’t stay away from each other, no matter how hard we tried.” Her smile was a sad one, but her eyes lit up, and I caught a glimpse of teenaged Diane, young and madly in love, the secrecy only adding fuel to the fire.

“It was a tumultuous relationship that ultimately ended with both of us running off to the safety of boyfriends. We moved away, went to college, got married. But you know what they say—you never get over your first love? It’s absolutely true.” She looked back toward the house. “Nothing, no one, compared to what I’d had with Terri. In my dreams, it was her I went back to again and again.”

It broke my heart a little to think of my aunt pining after Terri for all those years, trying desperately to make some other life work.

“And now?”

“It’s complicated,” Diane said, the muscles in her face tightening.

“What isn’t?” I asked. I looked at the jars of water, thought of my father dumping Lexie’s ashes, of the flash of white I’d seen in the water.

“This pool,” she said, looking down into it. “It has a hold over all of us, doesn’t it?”

I nodded.

“A while back, before Mother died, I was here visiting. I’d had a lot to drink. I actually came out to the water and made a wish. I wished for the thing I wanted most—the thing I’d longed for my whole life. I wished to have Terri back.” She shook her head. “I feel like an idiot admitting to it.”

“It’s not wrong. I think we all make wishes for things that feel impossible. Some do it through prayer. Some wish on shooting stars. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with wanting to believe the pool might have the power to grant those wishes.”

She shook her head. “The only power it has is whatever power we give it.”

“But you got your wish,” I said. “You and Terri.”

“It’s not that simple.”

I nodded, imagining she meant Randy and the divorce and all the secrecy.

Diane’s jaw tightened. Her eyes seemed to darken. “See, Terri wasn’t sick then. Not long after I made the wish, she was diagnosed with MS. Her symptoms progressed so rapidly. Her mother, Shirley, pushed her to try the spring water from the pool. Terri resisted at first, but nothing else was helping, so she started coming to Sparrow Crest. I’d meet her. Help her into and out of the water. The old spark between us was still there, and over time, it grew.”

“Wait, are you saying you think your wish made Terri sick? You know that’s not really possible, right? You can’t blame yourself.”

Diane frowned, looked down at the inky water. “No! Of course not!” She kept her eyes on the water, on her own wavering reflection. “But Terri does.”

“What?”

“I told her. I told her about the wish I made. And in her mind, she’s connected it all.”

“So wait, you’re saying she blames you for her MS?”

She shook her head in frustration. “I don’t know. She’s never come right out and said it, but she’s hinted at it. ‘The pool gives and the pool takes,’ she says.”

“That’s what Gram used to say,” I told her.

“Like wishes have a price,” Diane said, scowling. She leaned down, tightened the lid on the last jar of water. “Terri’s a big believer in the power of the water. She got it from her mother, I think. Terri says that the pool grants wishes, but only if it’s the one thing you wish for most.”

“Lexie believed that, too,” I said. “She told me once.”

Diane went on, “But for each wish it grants, it takes something in return. Something to ‘balance the scales’—that’s how Terri puts it.”

I shivered.

“Complete nonsense,” she said. “All these people believing this freezing cold water could possibly hold so much power.” Diane looked back toward the house. “Terri should be out any minute. She went inside to change into her suit for a quick swim. I don’t want her to catch us talking about all this.”

I nodded. “And where’s Ted?”

“Inside. He was going to do some artwork, then go lie down.”

“I think I’ll go check on him.”

“Jax, don’t let on that you know about me and Terri, okay? She’s still… unsure about our relationship. She was sure enough to ask Randy for a divorce, but that whole thing has been messier and more difficult than she’d hoped. She feels like shit for hurting him. She isn’t ready to tell people about us yet. Not even Ryan.”

I smiled. “Mum’s the word,” I said.

I headed inside and upstairs, walked down the carpeted hall to see if Ted was in his room before going up to try the attic. The door to my own room stood open—but I was sure I’d closed it. I slowed my pace. There was someone in there. Someone sitting on the bed. From my vantage point, I could see a pair of bare legs. Lexie?

It was Terri.

She was sitting on my bed in shorts and a T-shirt, no sign of a bathing suit, with her back to the open door, going through the boxes of Lexie’s papers. She was rummaging quickly, like she was searching for something specific. She pulled out a blue envelope. She opened it up, flipped through the contents, then set it down on the bed on top of a pile of papers and photographs she’d already pulled out. She reached back into the box, pulled out something else, and studied it. Then, as if sensing that she was no longer alone, she turned and saw me standing in the hall.

“Oh!” she said. “You frightened me!”

I’d frightened her?“Is there something you’re looking for?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. Her face was red and sweaty. She looked… caught. Guilty. She held out the photograph in her hand. “I was looking for this.” I stepped into the room and looked down at the photo: Terri and Diane at fourteen or fifteen standing in front of the pool in bathing suits, hair wet, arms around each other, sly expressions on their faces. Two girls with a secret. “Lexie showed it to me not long ago. I was hoping to find it so I could show it to Diane.” She glanced down at the photograph. “It seems impossible that we were ever that young. Do you mind if I take it and show her?”

“Not at all,” I said.

She slipped the picture into her back pocket, then gathered up all the other papers and photos she’d pulled out and shoved them into the nearest box. “Lexie found a lot of great stuff,” Terri said. “A real treasure trove of family history.” She put the lids back on both boxes and stood, reaching for her cane.

“Yes, she did,” I said.

I watched her go. Then I went to the window and looked out. Terri was heading for her car—so much for her swim. Diane loaded the jars of water from the pool into the backseat—she seemed flustered. She touched Terri’s shoulder, but Terri shrugged her away and got into the car. Diane leaned down, spoke to Terri through the open driver’s-side window. Terri shook her head and drove off.

“Terri decided against a swim?” I asked.

“She wasn’t up for it. She gets tired easily.”

I told her about Terri rifling through the papers in my room. She immediately snapped to Terri’s defense.

“She was looking for a photo, Jackie,” she said, setting down a jar of mustard too hard.

“I know. She showed me.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“I just think it’s odd, don’t you? That she’d sneak up there and go through the boxes on her own instead of asking?”

“Jesus, after everything I just told you out by the pool? Terri is not the enemy here.” Diane glared at me. “You’re sounding a little like your sister, looking for secrets and conspiracies that just aren’t there.”

Diane turned away from me and sliced her sandwich in half decisively; the conversation was over.

My father came into the kitchen, whistling. Then, sensing the tension, he fell silent too. He made his own sandwich and we had a quiet lunch, no one saying much of anything.

After fifteen uncomfortable moments in which the only words uttered were “Pass the chips, please,” Diane cleared her plate and announced she was going into work and then home and she’d see us tomorrow. “I trust you two will be all right here on your own tonight?”

“Of course we will,” I said, the words coming out with more of an edge than I’d intended.