“Jackie?” It was Aunt Diane, and her voice sounded shaky.

I already knew it was about Lexie. She must have done something really stupid. When she was in college, she’d gone off her meds and then lined her dorm room with plastic and piped in water from the girls’ shower with a garden hose, doing twenty-thousand dollars’ worth of damage. Then, there was the time she went missing for three weeks and called from Albuquerque—

“Lexie’s gone.”

“Oh shit, did she leave any clues about where? Remember the time she—”

“Jackie… she’s dead.” Diane’s voice broke. “Lexie is dead.”

I’d misheard. That was it. Some wires in my brain got crossed and delivered the wrong message. I leaned back against the kitchen wall.

“I found her in the swimming pool.” Diane was sobbing, the words barely understandable. “I pulled her out, called 911. Terri and Ryan just got here.”

Terri was one of Diane’s oldest friends. Her mother, Shirley, had been Gram’s best friend. And Terri’s son, Ryan, was the only kid Lexie and I played with during our summers at Sparrow Crest. He was my first crush. I thought he was living down in South Carolina.

The room came in and out of focus. I felt like I was going to be sick.

“Can you come, Jackie?” Diane asked. “Right away?” More crying. “She was so cold. Naked. Her lips were blue. The paramedics couldn’t do anything. They said it looked like she’d been dead for hours. It was just like all those years ago with Rita. Oh, Jackie. Oh God!” she wailed.

I made my living hearing terrible things and always knew what to say, what needed to happen next. But now the floor seemed to ripple like water, and I slid down the wall, my legs giving out beneath me.

I closed my eyes and was back at the pool, watching Lexie practice the butterfly in her blue goggles and cap, watching her become her very own wave, the dark water swallowing her up.

I hung up, hands shaking, and ran for the toilet, throwing up until there was nothing left, then sank to the cold tiled bathroom floor and curled up, sobbing.

Behind me, the bathtub dripped, slowly and methodically, its own rusty metronome.

I tried to steady my breathing, control the short, jagged breaths.

Lexie couldn’t be dead. She just couldn’t.

Denial. Kübler-Ross’s first stage of grief.

I took in a breath, stood up, and looked in the mirror. My face was patchy, my eyes red and puffy. “Lexie is dead,” I said, trying to make the words seem more real. The tears came, blurring my reflection until my nine-year-old face looked back at me, reflected in the dark mirror of the pool.

What now? I asked Lexie.

Gram says the pool will give you wishes.

It was well past midnight, and she’d woken me up, dragged me down to the pool, breaking Gram’s rule. The night air was cool. I got goose bumps under my thin nightgown. The water was black as ever, chilling the air, smelling vaguely poisonous.

When did she tell you that? I scoffed, even as I imagined little Rita sneaking down to this same pool at night years ago.

Tonight, when she was having sherry. You were in the bath.

Gram was always sharing secrets with Lexie. Telling her things she would never tell me. Adults were often confiding in her—like Aunt Diane telling her about Gram’s agoraphobia. Treating her like she was so much older than she was. And Ryan loved to whisper secrets to her, too. I’d even caught him handing her little notes. Notes she just stuck in her pocket and never even read. It wasn’t fair.

Lexie put her face right against the water and started whispering. Her words were fast, determined, and sure. It sounded like she was chanting; repeating the same phrase over and over. I had no doubt that whatever she was asking for, she’d get it, because that’s how things always worked with Lexie.

I leaned down, too, so close that my breath left ripples on my reflection. I whispered: I wish that Lexie wasn’t always the special one. That she wasn’t the best at everything. That things were hard for her instead of always being so easy. I wish something bad would happen to her.

I blinked, and my adult face appeared again in the mirror. And there, just behind me, I was sure I saw my sister, her eyes sad and furious.

How could you?

And I understood, in those blurry seconds, that there are no secrets from the dead.

chapter two

Ethel O’Shay Monroe

June 8, 1929

Lanesborough, New Hampshire

I have a sparrow egg tucked against my breast, softly resting there, a strange secret.

I am a great keeper of secrets, have been since I was a little girl. Oh, the secrets I kept then! The things I dreamed! I was a princess in a fairy tale. I was Sleeping Beauty waiting for the prince to come and wake me with a glorious kiss.

There were other secrets I kept. Terrible things I saw in the dark but knew better than to speak of. Sometimes, to make them go away, I’d scratch myself with a pin. Seeing the little red line, the tiny drops of blood, was a way to ward off evil. The scratches on my skin, hidden under dresses, they were secrets, too.

“You hold things close to your chest,” my friend Myrtle says. “It makes you a fine card player. But at times, a difficult friend.”

Myrtle’s a good deal older than me, and the person I am closest to here in town, the person I share the most with besides Will.

My darling Will. I watch him walk around the Lanesborough town picnic. It’s a picture-perfect day. The children are just out of school for the year, and summer has begun; summer, with all its promise and possibility. Everyone has gathered on the green in the center of town: a colorful patchwork of blankets and quilts laid out across the grass, scattered with baskets full of sandwiches, fried chicken, jars of lemonade and sweet tea. Over in the corner, the brass band is setting up to play on the bandstand, as they will do each Saturday night until September. The whole town comes out to picnic, listen to the music, and dance until midnight. Bootleg rum gets passed around, along with Chester Miller’s hard cider and bottles of beer snuck down from Canada.

I watch Will, and my heart aches a little. He is organizing all the children in a three-legged race, putting them in pairs, binding their legs together, and he has them all giggling. He’s making silly faces, pretending he’s forgotten how to tie a knot, pretending he’s going to tie his own two legs together. The children love him. “Hello, darling wife!” he shouts. I wave back. The children coo and plead for his attention; “Dr. Monroe, Dr. Monroe,” they call, pulling at the untucked tail of his shirt, and he pretends to trip and fall. Children pile on top of him in fits of laughter.