Other than giving Felix laudanum for the pain, Will wasn’t able to help. He found Felix’s spine and hips profoundly damaged. “I’m amazed he’s been able to walk at all considering the damage,” he told me. “He’s got a bullet still lodged in his spine. He should have been crippled for life.”

Myrtle has confided in me that she is going to go back to the springs to get water for Felix. Her eyes are ringed with dark circles now and her face is thinner, more lined than when last I saw her. Her husband’s illness is taking its toll.

I tried to talk her out of it. “There won’t be anything there,” I said. “Just ruins.”

“The hotel may be gone, but the springs must still flow,” she said.

“It might be dangerous,” I told her, remembering the newspaper photo of the cellar hole, the still-smoking remains of the hotel.

“I have to try,” she said. “It’s the only hope for my poor Felix.”

She left yesterday morning in the auto she barely knows how to drive.

I find myself staring out at the gray sky, the bare trees like angry stick figures trembling in the cold November wind, and worrying over her. Did she find her way to Brandenburg? What did she find there?

Despite being a churchgoing woman, I am not much for praying. Not in the traditional way, at least. Still, I lit a candle for Myrtle. “Please keep her safe,” I whispered. Then I went into the bathroom, took out my pin, and scratched a little M just above my ankle.

November 12, 1929

Myrtle arrived on my doorstep bundled up in a heavy coat, a wool hat, and a thick scarf. I was so relieved that I threw my arms around her and kissed her cheek. She stood still as a statue and seemed to stiffen at my touch. I led her inside and we settled in the kitchen with a pot of tea and some fresh apple cake. The kitchen was cozy, but she kept her coat on. “I can’t get warm,” she insisted. She gave me a glass jar of water from the springs. It seemed to glow in the jar—only a trick of light, the way the gas light overhead hit the glass, but still, I felt I was holding a jar of stars. A little “Ooh!” of joy escaped my lips.

I had a thousand questions: Was any part of the hotel left? What about the gardens? The peacocks?

Then Myrtle told her story. “The pool was untouched by the fire. There was a fence around it still standing, and it was left locked, but someone had broken the chain. The front gate was open when I arrived,” she said. She paused. “And there was someone there, in the water.”

Her hand trembled as she held her teacup. “Ethel, if I tell you what I saw, you mustn’t think me mad.”

“Of course not,” I said, laying a hand on her arm. I got a chill; cold was coming off her, as if she was her own north breeze.

“There was a woman in the water,” Myrtle said, setting down her cup, the untouched tea spilling over. “She was naked. Splashing around like it was the height of summer. Like the cold did not bother her one little bit.”

“A woman?”

She did not answer, and I was sure she’d decided against finishing her story. And part of me was glad! Some part of me did not want to hear.

I thought, of course, of Eliza’s story of seeing little Martha in the water.

The kitchen, which moments ago felt bright and warm, was now full of shadow and damp.

“Yes. A woman in her thirties. Dark bobbed hair, dark eyes. She had a scar under her left eye,” Myrtle said.

My body grew cold. My heart seemed to stop for two seconds, then three. The baby moved inside me, a soft flutter.

I bit my tongue to keep from letting out a cry.

It wasn’t possible! It couldn’t be.

Myrtle’s face had gone gray. “She helped me fill my jars with water.”

I looked at the jar on the table, the water inside darker now.

“She encouraged me to join her in the pool,” Myrtle said. “To take a dip myself. In fact, she was rather insistent.” Her jaw tensed and her breathing quickened.

“I declined, saying I had to hurry back to Felix. And I thought… no, I was sure—that if I got into that water, I’d never come back out again. It wasn’t just the cold. It was her.

“ ‘Maybe next time,’ the woman said. And then she smiled at me and went under.”

I remembered being in that pool, how stunningly cold it was. How my whole body screamed with it. And that feeling, that feeling of fingers touching me, hands reaching out of the darkness to take hold of me.

“She went under and did not come back up again,” Myrtle said. “There were no bubbles, no splashes. What person leaves no trace like that?” Myrtle’s chin began to quiver. “I stayed and watched until it began to get dark. I told myself I should move, should go in after her or go tell someone. But I just sat, frozen there. The woman did not surface.”

chapter seventeen

June 19, 2019

I sat beside my father in the front row on a plastic folding chair, holding his hand. I’d been a little girl the last time I’d held his hand. My father wore a worn black suit and tie. The same thing he’d worn to my mother’s funeral and then my grandmother’s.

“Lexie had the unique ability to pull people in, draw them to her.” Diane dabbed at her eyes. “She found ways to push me outside my comfort zone again and again. Those of you who know me know I’ve got a pretty wide comfort zone, so this was no small feat!”

Laughter from the attendees.

“She had this unique ability to see through the bullshit. To know what was really going on in your head, in your heart.” Diane’s throat hitched. “Lexie touched so many lives. That’s never been more evident to me than today, as I look around this room.”

The funeral home had had to bring in extra chairs, and some late arrivals stood hovering at the back of the room. It seemed half the residents of Brandenburg had come to say goodbye to my sister. Some I recognized. Some I’d never seen before in my life.

Beside Diane, on a wooden pedestal, sat a tacky gray plastic urn that was supposed to resemble granite. The funeral director had put it there. Inside was a small plastic bag containing Lexie’s ashes. I knew they were in a plastic bag because my father had taken the lid off before the service to look inside. “I want to see,” he said, opening the jar as if Lexie were a genie who might come bursting out. The bag was secured with a metal band and a tag with Lexie’s name. I’d looked at the small bag full of chunky white-gray ash, at my sister’s name on the tag—proof that she was really gone—and let out a small, strangled-sounding sob. Diane put a hand on my arm. My father had run his fingers over that tag, saying only, “There’s so little of her left.”