“No, it’s not too much. I love it. What other reflections did she paint?”

“Women and girls. One of them was your grandmother. Another, your mother.”

Now that I would like to see.

“Sometimes people I didn’t recognize.”

“And where are those paintings now?”

“She gave them away. Or sold most of them. I know for a fact that each one in the craft fair sold. It’s mesmerizing, isn’t it?” she said, looking down at the watercolor in my hands.

“Do you know any of the buyers? I’d love to see more of her work.”

“Not offhand. But I’ll ask around and let you know what I find out.”

Aunt Diane joined us. “Have you seen your father—oh my God,” she said, looking down at the picture. “I’ve never seen this one. It’s incredible!”

We looked at the painting together in silence, Lexie holding both of us in her gaze. I covered the painting back up and said to Marcy, “Thank you again for this. It means so much to me.”

“It’s my pleasure, dear. And I’ll be sure to let you know if I find out what happened to any of her other paintings.”

“Thank you,” I said again.

I carried the painting upstairs to my room and laid it down on the bed for safekeeping. My eyes were fixed on Lexie’s, so many questions filling my head. What was she doing out at the pool that last night? What were all the strange coded notes she’d left behind? What had led her to believe Rita’s drowning all those years ago might not have been an accident? One question tumbled into another like a row of dominoes.

I thought of what Diane had said—that we’d never know what had led Lexie out to the pool or what was going through her head in her final days. But I knew that wasn’t true. She’d left clues. Insights into her thinking. I turned and looked at the white cardboard boxes we’d stacked in the corner of my room, full pages of notes, strange codes, journals, and photographs she’d left behind. I couldn’t have my sister back, but maybe if I looked through them, really looked through them, I’d get some insight into her last days. Maybe I’d find some of the answers I was looking for.

I was taking the lid off the first box when I heard a scream from outside. By the pool. I ran downstairs and toward the kitchen door, then remembered I couldn’t get out that way. I glanced out the kitchen window and saw a small gathering at the edge of the pool, and at least one person flailing and splashing in the water.

I dashed out of the kitchen, through the living room, to the front door, nearly knocking over a few guests. I plowed through the front door, around the corner, and through the open gate.

My father was beside the pool, soaking wet and coughing. Ryan was next to him, on his knees and also soaked. He had his arm around my father; his eyes were focused on the pool. Diane was crouched beside them. “Someone get us some towels!” she ordered. Two women I didn’t recognize hurried past me through the gate.

“Your father fell in,” Diane said, seeing me. “Ryan pulled him out.”

My father stopped coughing. “I’m fine. And I did not fall in!”

I saw the large bald spot on the back of his gray-haired head. His soaked clothes clung to his gaunt frame. He looked so sad and old, like a strange, broken bird. It frightened me to see him so vulnerable.

I looked at the water. There was something there, floating just along the edge. “What’s that?” I asked.

Diane leaned down, scooped it up. It was a paper boat folded together from a sheet of lined notebook paper. Diane shook her head, crumpled it up. “A piece of trash,” she said.

“Did you fall in trying to get that paper boat?” I asked my father.

“No! And like I keep saying, I did not fall in. I jumped.”

“Why?” I asked.

“There was someone in there,” he said. He lowered his voice. “It was Lexie.”

chapter eighteen

December 12, 1929

Lanesborough, New Hampshire

The baby is doing well. Growing, tapping out codes inside my steadily swelling belly. She wakes me up in the middle of the night to say, Hello, I am here, floating inside you.

I have been staying busy. Church on Sunday. The sewing circle Monday. Auxiliary meeting on Wednesday. Bridge with the ladies on Thursday. Times are hard. The foundry closed down, and the paper mill cut its hours in half. A lot of Will’s patients barter for his services these days, paying him with fresh milk, eggs, butter, homemade hard cider, snow shoveling. We aren’t as hard-hit as some, but it seems everywhere I turn I see signs of trouble.

I have been keeping myself busy, but mostly, I wait. I sit by the fire and I wait for winter to be over and for spring to come. For our baby to be born.

Poor Myrtle has not been the same since her trip to the springs. Will has given her pills for her nerves, but I don’t believe they’re helping. She’s lost more weight—her dresses hang on her like a scarecrow woman. She’s fidgety, can’t seem to sit still. She jumps at her own shadow. Felix has been doing better. He’s out of the wheelchair (Will can’t understand how it’s possible!) and now he’s the one caring for her. She continues to attend church and confessed to me that she has nightmares about the woman she believes she saw in the water that day. I told her that the best thing is to forget about it. “Put it out of your mind,” I said. “Felix is well again. Concentrate on that!”

As for myself, I wish I was able to forget the story Myrtle told. I keep playing it over in my mind as the days grow shorter and colder, and the winter shadows play tricks on me. I am nearly as jumpy as poor Myrtle these days.

It’s worse when I’m alone in the house. That’s when I put a Bessie Smith album on the phonograph Will got me for my birthday last year, turn up the lights, and make myself busy. I bake loaves of bread, mend clothing, work on my quilt, cook savory stews and roasts. I sing a little song to myself: I am Mrs. Monroe. I am going to have a baby. Everything is fine. I am happy, happy, happy.

And I clean. I clean until I am exhausted and my hands are red and chapped. I scrub the walls and floors, polish the woodwork. I wax the wood floors. Our house has never been so spotless!

I keep myself busy, but all the while, as I knead the bread or dip my scrub brush into a pail of hot soapy water, some part of my brain is mulling over the question: Could Myrtle truly have seen Eliza Harding in that water?