Chapter Thirty-One

chapter thirty-one

June 22, 2019

There was a hand on my arm, rubbing gently.

You’ve gotta stop thinking so hard about what’s real and what isn’t, Jax.

I was afraid to open my eyes. Afraid that she’d disappear. Surely, I was dreaming again.

I opened my eyes and found my father looking down at me. “Hey, sleepyhead,” he said. “You planning to get up today?”

I blinked at him. “What time is it?”

“Nearly two in the afternoon.”

Pig was curled up at the foot of the bed.

I sat up, reached for my phone on the bedside table. He was right, though I had trouble believing it. I never slept in.

“Your aunt sent me up to make sure you hadn’t escaped out the window or anything. You slept through breakfast.” My father smiled. “I brought you coffee.”

“Thanks,” I said, reaching for the cup, taking a sip. Cream and four sugars—just how Lexie liked it. I preferred mine black. I sipped gratefully anyway.

My father took a seat on the edge of my bed. “Listen,” he said. “I’m sorry about last night. Sorry for throwing you under the bus, not believing you.”

“It’s okay. I know how crazy it sounds.”

“No crazier than cooking for your dead daughter,” he said. “Maybe Diane’s right. Being here isn’t good for either one of us right now. The house… the pool. They mess with you. It’s good that we’re both out of here tomorrow.”

I nodded, sipped at my overly sweet coffee.

“We’ve got sandwich stuff downstairs. Or I could make you some eggs if you want.”

“A sandwich sounds great. I’ll be down in a few minutes.”

I went down and had lunch. Diane had a Scrabble board set up at the table. “I thought maybe we could play a game.”

I smiled. “Sounds great.”

We spent the afternoon playing Scrabble and drinking tea, my aunt watching me like a hawk the whole time. I felt like I was under house arrest.

“What would you like for dinner?” Diane asked, getting up to check the fridge. “We’ve got ground beef, some vegetables, stuff for salad.”

“Doesn’t matter,” I said, flashing another agreeable smile. “Anything’s fine with me.” I stood up, stretched. “I think I’ll go start packing. And maybe take a shower.”

“Sounds good,” Diane said. “Your father and I will figure out dinner.”

Ted jumped up and started looking in the cabinets. “How about spaghetti? I make a terrific Bolognese sauce.”

Upstairs, I looked at the boxes full of my sister’s things. I felt unsettled. I couldn’t just leave Sparrow Crest without knowing the truth.

I grabbed my purse and my phone from the bedside table. My phone was dead. No time to charge it now.

I went into the bathroom and turned the shower on full blast, then snuck out of the bathroom, leaving the door closed and the shower running. Pig sat in the hall, washing his chest and giving me a what are you up to now? look. I crept down the stairs slowly, avoiding the ones that creaked. I could hear Diane and my father in the kitchen, talking, Ted asking for a grater.

“Some people chop the carrot, celery, and onion,” he was saying. “But the key to a really fine sauce is to use a grater.”

I slipped right past them and grabbed the keys to Lexie’s car from the hook in the front hall. I opened the door as quietly as I could, then ran for the car, started the engine, and took off without looking in my rearview mirror to see if they’d heard me.

Nice getaway, Jax!

“Thanks,” I said, turning to look at the passenger seat, but of course there was no one there.

I drove straight to the nursing home. I checked in at the front desk and told them who I was there to visit.

If Ryan wasn’t going to confess, I’d try Shirley. How hard could it be to get her to tell me the truth?

“Oh, she’s been waiting for you,” the woman in scrubs said cheerfully.

“Has she?” My throat went dry. I nearly turned and ran back out to the parking lot.

“Yes, she skipped going down to dinner because she was afraid she might miss you.”

I walked down the corridor to Shirley’s room feeling like I was moving in slow motion. I had the terrible sense that I was walking right into a trap. But what harm could an old woman in a nursing home possibly do?

The door to her room was open and she was there, waiting at the little table, playing solitaire.

“What took you so long?” she asked when she saw me. She set the cards aside. “Don’t just stand there, Jackie. Come in. Come in. Shut the door behind you.”

Shirley had the table in her room laid out with cookies and juice, like we were two little girls about to have a tea party. “Sit down,” she said.

I remained standing, arms crossed. “I know who you are,” I said.

“Oh?” She reached for a sugar cookie and took a bite.

“You’re the daughter of Benson Harding and Eliza Flemming.” Shirley said nothing. She just kept chewing her cookie. “Your family believes the springs and the land belong to you. That your father hadn’t been in his right mind when he lost it to my great-grandfather.”

She nodded, set down the cookie, and dabbed at her lips with a napkin. “My father died a ruined man. That hotel and everything that happened there—it destroyed him financially, physically, emotionally. My grandparents felt we’d been wronged, yes. They were outraged.”

My head was starting to hurt—a little jab behind my left eye that I knew would soon turn into a full corkscrew twist. Cool sweat began to form on my forehead. The room seemed impossibly bright.

“How far did you go to punish my family?”

“Punish them?”

My mind was whirring. “There was someone with my aunt Rita the night she died. My mother heard two voices. Was it you? Did you lure Rita into the water that night?”

“Me?” She looked pained. “Why on earth would I do such a thing?”

“To hurt my family. To get back at them. Did your grandparents put you up to it?”

“No, dear. You’ve got it all wrong.”

The room seemed to waver. I squinted. My left eye was watering.

“What really happened to Lexie?”

Shirley sighed in frustration. “She discovered the truth. But she didn’t listen to my warnings. She didn’t understand how dangerous the situation was.”

This was too much.

“The only truth she discovered was the story you carefully fed her.”

“The stories I told her were all true. Just like what I’ve told you.”

“I don’t believe you.” I struggled to keep my voice calm and level. The last thing I wanted was a bunch of nurses and aides busting in. “I think you talked Lexie into getting off her meds. You and Ryan and Terri filled her head with all the stories about the pool. I think you even hired someone to play the dark-haired woman from the pool.”

She laughed, throwing back her head. “That sounds like an awful lot of work, dear.”

“Was she the one who came sneaking into the house while Lexie was upstairs? Did she lure her out to the pool that last night? I don’t want any more crazy stories. I just want the truth.”

The old woman looked down at her hands, folded neatly on the table. She sighed, then looked up me.

“We were like sisters, your grandmother and I,” she said. She went over to the shelves and pulled out the scrapbook again. “I would never, could never, do anything to harm her or anyone in her family. All I’ve ever done, ever tried to do, was to protect you all. Come sit,” she said, patting the spot next to her, the book on her lap.

She opened it to a photo of a bunch of schoolgirls. “That’s your grandmother, there,” she said, pointing. “Second row, third to the left.”

And there was my grandmother, impossibly young, with dark hair and eyes, smiling into the camera. Shirley had been right: My grandmother and I did look alike.

There were more photos of the two of them: in the pool, on horses, in a canoe on the lake, and Shirley holding a string of fish, my grandmother looking on, holding both their poles. They looked happy and young and reminded me of Lexie and myself adventuring around Sparrow Crest and Brandenburg.

Then Shirley flipped back toward the front of the book and held it open, waiting for me to see. It was the photo she’d shown me of the newly opened Brandenburg Springs Hotel. A small gathering of people stood out front—the employees of the hotel.

“I’ve already seen this,” I told her, not even trying to hide my annoyance. This little trip into the past was getting us nowhere.

“But you’re not really looking,” she said. Now it was she who seemed impatient with me. “There’s little me.” She pointed at the baby.

I looked. There, front and center, were the Hardings, no doubt. Mr. Harding in a black tie and jacket, his dark hair slicked back, a tiny, well-groomed mustache, smiling into the camera. Beside him stood his wife, holding an infant, little Shirley. My breath stuck in my lungs, my blood felt cold, and my heart worked to push it through my veins.

“And that’s your mother holding you? Eliza Harding?”

“Yes, dear,” she said, looking right at me. “Eliza Flemming Harding.”

I recognized her face, her eyes, the little scar under her eye. There was no doubt. “It’s the same woman Lexie drew. The one who visited her at Sparrow Crest, swam with her in the pool. How can that be?”

“Haven’t you figured it out yet?”

I shook my head in disbelief. There had to be a rational explanation. The woman Lexie had drawn was a descendant of the woman in the photograph—a secret sister or cousin of Ryan’s? Or had Shirley shown Lexie this photograph, and Lexie simply imagined this woman back to life? That was the mostly likely explanation—she showed Lexie the photo, planting the idea that Eliza was still there, in the water. Found a dark-haired young woman to splash around in the pool, bringing the legend to life, providing proof that everything Shirley and Ryan had told Lexie about the pool was true.

The pain behind my eye intensified, traveled down my jaw, into my teeth, making my fillings ache and buzz.

Shirley spoke. “My mother died in the springs. She drowned. Anyone who dies in the springs, they become a part of the springs. My mother, your aunt Rita, your sister—they’re all part of it now.”

“Bullshit. I’m not Lexie. I won’t be manipulated into believing something that’s… impossible.”

I heard a whooshing sound, my own blood traveling as my heartbeat quickened.

“The water gives and it takes,” Shirley said, unmoved. “The springs saved your grandmother. Kept her alive. She was born with a heart defect—did you know that? She shouldn’t have lived past her first birthday. But the springs gave her the gift of a long and healthy lifetime, of family. You wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for that water.”

She looked at me. “But then, she’d had enough. She chose to end her life, to sever her ties with the water once and for all.”

I shook my head. Thought of my grandmother dying alone in a hotel room in Arizona. Remembered the postcard I got from her three days after I learned of her death. A Sedona landscape on the front and on the back just one line: It’s more beautiful here than I could have ever imagined.

“She understood,” Shirley went on, “better than anyone perhaps, that the water gives miracles, but it also takes in return. And each time it takes someone, it grows stronger. Do you understand?”

I said nothing. The whooshing sound was like water slapping, waves threatening to overtake me. I had a coppery, metallic taste in my mouth.

“The people who die in that water can come back,” Shirley said. “When it’s dark, they can come out of the pool, talk to you, walk around, touch you. Leave footprints. They have physical form. I’ve visited with my own mother many times. She said if I wanted, I could come, swim down, stay with her forever. But I had too much holding me to this world.”

“Please,” I said, backing away, closing my eyes, wanting to cover my ears. “No more.”

Listening to her, it hit me that these weren’t just stories Shirley made up to scare me and Lexie. She actually believed all of it. I was sure. The question was, how far did she go to make Lexie believe, too?

“Your sister is down there. You’ve seen her, haven’t you?”

I shook my head, the pain sickening.

“Just be careful of her, Jackie. She’s still Lexie, but she’s doing the spring’s bidding now.”

“Enough!” I said, opening my eyes, glaring at her. “You actually expect me to believe that the pool is full of dead people?”

“Lexie believed.”

“And look where it got her,” I said.

“Lexie made one final wish to the pool. The thing she wanted most. Did she tell you? Do you know what she wished for?”

I turned and walked away, pushing my way through the air, which felt thick and heavy. The smells made my stomach flip—boiled vegetables from the dining hall, bleach, floor wax, the sour smell of old people. “I’m done with the stories,” I said over my shoulder.

I hurried away as quickly as I could, nearly knocking over some poor old woman pushing a walker with tennis balls on the front legs. Out in the parking lot, I gulped at the fresh air, willing myself not to throw up. I got into the Mustang, locked the doors, slipped my sister’s keys into the ignition, and slammed the car into reverse. My hands clenched the wheel as I navigated my way out of the parking lot, my left eye closed and watering. Breathe, I told myself. She is just trying to scare you. Scare you like she scared Lexie.

Are you so sure?I could see my sister out of the corner of my eye beside me in the passenger seat.

I turned and she was gone.