“You look great, too, Jax,” he said.

“Seriously, Ted. You kind of look like hell. Are you okay?”

He leaned back in his bench seat. “One of my kids just died, Jax. And I’ve been on a cleanse. Macrobiotic. I’ve been dating a woman—Vanessa. She wants to purify my body and soul.” He leaned forward, elbows on the table, and dropped his voice. “So what do we know? What happened to Lexie?”

“She went off her meds…”

He took a long sip of the margarita, twirled the plastic straw, rattled ice cubes, ran his finger along the edge of the glass, picking up salt. “She shouldn’t have been all alone in that place,” he said. “That house…” He shook his head.

“Gram left it to her. And Lexie loved Sparrow Crest.”

“She had a hard winter there, Jax,” Ted said. He looked at me icily, his eyes saying, Not that you would know.

“Diane said she was doing well,” I said, defensively.

“Diane saw what Lexie wanted her to see,” Ted said. He stared at his drink, then looked up at me. “When was the last time you talked to her, Jax? Really talked to her?”

Guilt gnawed at my insides like an angry rat. I didn’t answer.

“She called me,” my father said now. He sounded hesitant. Like he wasn’t sure he should be telling me. As if he was betraying some confidence, even now. He’d always been like this when talking about Lexie. He was protective of their relationship, of the secrets they shared.

“When?”

“Three nights ago. The night before she… before it happened, I guess.” He settled back in his vinyl bench seat.

“How did she sound?”

“A little manic. Not bad. Not off the charts. I’ve heard her much worse.”

Lexie had the kind of relationship with him that I never did. They understood each other. She called him when she was off her meds, he called her when he was in a three-days-with-no-sleep painting frenzy. And both of them always picked up the phone.

“What did she say?” I asked.

“She was asking about Rita. Anything I could tell her about Rita. But mostly, she wanted to know…” He paused, looked forlornly into his glass. “If it was possible that what happened with Rita wasn’t an accident. She said she’d found something, something that made her believe Rita might have been murdered.”

“Murdered?” The word came out too loud, too angry. I bit my tongue to keep from saying the next words that flew into my head: You’ve gotta be fucking kidding. I took in a slow breath to calm myself.

Be objective, I told myself. Use your listening skills. Take everything in and gather all the information you can before forming any opinions.

“Okay,” I said, voice level. “What else did she say? Did she tell you what she’d found?”

He shook his head. “She was talking fast. Saying she was onto something. Something big.”

I nodded. “And what did you say to her?”

He looked down at his hands on the table. “I told her the truth.”

“Which is?” I steeled myself.

“That your mother knew Rita wasn’t alone at the pool that night. That she’d met someone down there.”

“What?” I’d certainly never heard this part of the story. I was used to Lexie and my father keeping secrets from me, but the idea that my mother had kept a secret like this was too much.

“The way Linda told it, she woke up, noticed Rita was gone. She went to the window. She couldn’t see the pool because she was in the room you always slept in—her view was blocked—but she heard voices. Rita and someone else. Linda wondered if Rita was just playing with Martha.”

I nodded. I’d heard a few stories about Rita and her imaginary friend, Martha. How Rita would insist Gram make an extra plate at dinner that Rita could bring outside for Martha. They’d all hear her talking to Martha, giving the imaginary girl a high, squeaky voice. I thought of the drawing inside the Snakes and Ladders game: Martha W. 7 years old.

My father continued. “But apparently, it didn’t sound like Rita talking to herself, you know, doing her Martha funny voice. This was different. Linda wanted to see who Rita was with, but she didn’t want to get in trouble or get Rita in trouble. So she went back to bed.”

“And Rita drowned that night.”

Ted nodded. “Your mother always blamed herself. And she never told anyone else what she’d heard. Not her mother or sister or the police when they came to ask questions. She was afraid they would blame her—ask her why she didn’t get out of bed to go check on Rita, to bring her back inside. I’m the only one she ever told.”

I tried to imagine it: My mother living with that kind of guilt. Always wondering if things might have turned out differently if she’d gone out to the pool that night. And the pool, of course, was a constant reminder not only of what happened to Rita, but of the fact that she might have been able to stop it. No wonder she hated Sparrow Crest. No wonder I never once saw her swim.

“But who was Rita out there with?” I asked. “Who could it have been?”

“Maybe no one.” He shrugged. “We’ll never know.”

I blew out an exasperated breath. “And you told all of this to Lexie?” I couldn’t believe it. It wasn’t like Lexie needed help getting crazy ideas in her head.

“What choice did I have? We were always straight with each other. And you know how she was—she knew there was more to the story than she’d been told. And once she got hold of an idea and it built up in her mind into an obsession—there was no stopping her.” He flagged down the waitress, signaling for another margarita.

chapter twelve

September 2, 1929

Lanesborough, New Hampshire

I feel her, swimming like a little tadpole, growing bigger and stronger each day. I eat spinach and liver and raw eggs to help her grow. I walk down to the river behind the church every day and sit on the grassy bank and talk to my child, my hand resting on my belly. I tap as I speak: Knock, knock, are you home, little one? Do you hear my voice, my one and only? Dragonflies flit around us like fairies with jewellike wings, the crickets sing their end-of-summer song. I kick off my too-tight T-strap shoes, push my toes through the tangle of warm grass. You are my wish come true, I tell the baby. My words mix with the soft burble of the current, and sometimes it seems I leave English behind and speak to her in another language: the language of water.