My father continued. “I struggled, reached the surface.” His breathing was coming in short bursts now, like he was still trying to catch his breath. “Then, she had me by the wrist. She was pulling me down. I saw her face, Jackie. It was Lex. I know my own daughter!”

“Fear and adrenaline can do crazy things to your body and mind,” I said. I wanted to steer us back to solid ground.

He sat up straighter, looked me in the eye. “So you think I just got confused? That I imagined it?”

“That water’s so black,” I said. “It’s hard to see your own hand in front of your face down there.”

He shook his head in frustration.

“I believe you saw something,” I soothed. “But I also know how easy it is to see shapes in the darkness, to imagine things.”

And I did know, didn’t I? Hadn’t I seen things in that water?

Again, I had a flash of standing by the side of the pool at night, looking out into the dark water.

What had I seen?

I went on, “Lexie died in that pool a few days ago. You want nothing more than to see her again. I know I’d give anything to have her back. So your brain—under the influence of booze, and not working at one-hundred-percent capacity—took confusing, scary stimuli and tried to make sense of it in a split second. It showed you what you wished to be true. That’s totally normal, Ted.”

“Sure. Whatever you say, Jax.”

* * *

When I finally went back up to my room, Lexie was waiting for me on the bed. The painting of her, at least. I’d forgotten all about it and jolted. “Idiot,” I mumbled to myself.

Scaredy-cat, Lexie taunted.

I picked the painting up and leaned it against the wall on top of the dresser. Lexie seemed to be watching me, unblinking. I moved closer and saw that there was something in her eyes, in the dark pupils. A reflection. A reflection of her own reflection—Lexie on land reflected by Lexie in the water.

I settled in on top of the covers, Lexie watching me. Between the drinks and the codeine and my father’s unexpected plunge, I was feeling pretty wasted. At least my headache was down to a dull simmer. My cell phone was plugged into the charger, right where I’d left it when we got back from the funeral home. I picked it up and saw two missed calls and voice mails, one from Karen Hurst and one from Barbara. I listened to the voice mails.

“Hi, Jackie, it’s Barbara calling you back. I’m free tomorrow between one and three. Give me a call sometime in there if that works. If not, get in touch and we’ll find another time.”

I listened to the next, from Karen.

“Hey, Jackie, sorry to bother you again, but I was wondering if you’d heard anything from Valerie Shipee? She and Declan never showed up at the hospital yesterday and she hasn’t returned my calls. Hoping you have better luck. I’m really concerned. Call me with an update when you get a chance. Thanks.”

My phone showed no missed calls from Valerie Shipee. Damn. It was late and I was drunk. I’d try in the morning.

I felt restless and emotionally spent, but not tired enough to sleep. There was the stack of white boxes in the corner of my room, stuffed with Lexie’s notes. The lid was still off the top box, dropped on the floor when I’d heard the screams from the pool. I went over, sifted through some of the papers and scraps, wondered how I was ever going to make sense of any of this. But I resolved to try. I picked up the first paper:

June 3

I’ve come to think of the water, the pool, as a living entity all its own. A creature with its own needs, wants, desires. Its own… hungers.

June 6

G11: 1 p.m.—7.4 meters

G11: 5 p.m.—15 meters

G11: 10 p.m.—over 50 meters

I thought back to her rant into my answering machine. The measurements don’t lie. It’s science! The fucking scientific method. Construct a hypothesis. Test your hypothesis. So many pieces of paper had the same codes—a chronology of Lexie’s survey of the depth of the pool? It seemed to change drastically from one time to the next. But how could the depth be one thing at one o’clock, then something totally different later that same night? It couldn’t. I heard her voice, the last words she left for me: She’s here, Jax. Oh my God, she’s here! These measurements, they were what Lexie thought she saw, what she imagined. I looked at my sister’s painting. “What the hell were you doing, Lex?”

I thought of my father, accusing me of always shutting Lexie down; stopping a conversation before it even started.

If I was going to truly try to understand my sister and what was going on with her in her final months and weeks, I’d have to step considerably outside of my comfort zone. I’d have to follow her clues, retrace her steps, no matter how crazy that seemed.

Go see for yourself, Jax. I double-dog dare you.

I turned to the image of Lexie in the painting. “Okay, Lex. Here we go.”

* * *

I padded down the hall, tiptoeing past the closed door to my grandmother’s room where Diane was sleeping. I was a child again, sneaking to raid the refrigerator or meet Ryan for a moonlight adventure. Back then, Lexie always led the way, finger on her lips, shushing me. Making me promise not to make a sound. Mum’s the word, Jax.

When we were teenagers, we flat out broke Gram’s number one rule. Lexie would wake me in the darkest hours of the night, whisper, “Come on, Jax, it’s time,” and I’d follow her down the stairs, out the kitchen door. I could always tell the times my sister had been skipping her medicine, because these were the times we swam at night. Being in the pool settled her, quieted her mind. So we’d slip out of our warm pajamas and into the frigid water. It felt a little like dying each time. But there was a dreamlike quality, too—Lex and I glowing in the black water, swimming side by side as our limbs grew numb and our hearts pounded, alive. One strange and perfect image I have of Lexie: She is seventeen, lounging naked in the dark, hair slicked back, water dripping off her as she smoked, staring up at the rings that drifted up to meet the black clouds covering the moon.

I could almost hear her whisper, Come on, Jax, it’s time, as I made my way downstairs and into the kitchen, not turning on any lights. I opened the drawer where we’d put the flashlight I’d found when we were cleaning. I flicked it on to make sure it worked, and the kitchen filled with light. I walked out the front door, opening and closing it as gently as I could so I wouldn’t wake my father and aunt. I knew this was crazy and that I was a little drunk and loopy. But I needed to see for myself.