She nodded, set down the cookie, and dabbed at her lips with a napkin. “My father died a ruined man. That hotel and everything that happened there—it destroyed him financially, physically, emotionally. My grandparents felt we’d been wronged, yes. They were outraged.”

My head was starting to hurt—a little jab behind my left eye that I knew would soon turn into a full corkscrew twist. Cool sweat began to form on my forehead. The room seemed impossibly bright.

“How far did you go to punish my family?”

“Punish them?”

My mind was whirring. “There was someone with my aunt Rita the night she died. My mother heard two voices. Was it you? Did you lure Rita into the water that night?”

“Me?” She looked pained. “Why on earth would I do such a thing?”

“To hurt my family. To get back at them. Did your grandparents put you up to it?”

“No, dear. You’ve got it all wrong.”

The room seemed to waver. I squinted. My left eye was watering.

“What really happened to Lexie?”

Shirley sighed in frustration. “She discovered the truth. But she didn’t listen to my warnings. She didn’t understand how dangerous the situation was.”

This was too much.

“The only truth she discovered was the story you carefully fed her.”

“The stories I told her were all true. Just like what I’ve told you.”

“I don’t believe you.” I struggled to keep my voice calm and level. The last thing I wanted was a bunch of nurses and aides busting in. “I think you talked Lexie into getting off her meds. You and Ryan and Terri filled her head with all the stories about the pool. I think you even hired someone to play the dark-haired woman from the pool.”

She laughed, throwing back her head. “That sounds like an awful lot of work, dear.”

“Was she the one who came sneaking into the house while Lexie was upstairs? Did she lure her out to the pool that last night? I don’t want any more crazy stories. I just want the truth.”

The old woman looked down at her hands, folded neatly on the table. She sighed, then looked up me.

“We were like sisters, your grandmother and I,” she said. She went over to the shelves and pulled out the scrapbook again. “I would never, could never, do anything to harm her or anyone in her family. All I’ve ever done, ever tried to do, was to protect you all. Come sit,” she said, patting the spot next to her, the book on her lap.

She opened it to a photo of a bunch of schoolgirls. “That’s your grandmother, there,” she said, pointing. “Second row, third to the left.”

And there was my grandmother, impossibly young, with dark hair and eyes, smiling into the camera. Shirley had been right: My grandmother and I did look alike.

There were more photos of the two of them: in the pool, on horses, in a canoe on the lake, and Shirley holding a string of fish, my grandmother looking on, holding both their poles. They looked happy and young and reminded me of Lexie and myself adventuring around Sparrow Crest and Brandenburg.

Then Shirley flipped back toward the front of the book and held it open, waiting for me to see. It was the photo she’d shown me of the newly opened Brandenburg Springs Hotel. A small gathering of people stood out front—the employees of the hotel.

“I’ve already seen this,” I told her, not even trying to hide my annoyance. This little trip into the past was getting us nowhere.

“But you’re not really looking,” she said. Now it was she who seemed impatient with me. “There’s little me.” She pointed at the baby.

I looked. There, front and center, were the Hardings, no doubt. Mr. Harding in a black tie and jacket, his dark hair slicked back, a tiny, well-groomed mustache, smiling into the camera. Beside him stood his wife, holding an infant, little Shirley. My breath stuck in my lungs, my blood felt cold, and my heart worked to push it through my veins.

“And that’s your mother holding you? Eliza Harding?”

“Yes, dear,” she said, looking right at me. “Eliza Flemming Harding.”

I recognized her face, her eyes, the little scar under her eye. There was no doubt. “It’s the same woman Lexie drew. The one who visited her at Sparrow Crest, swam with her in the pool. How can that be?”

“Haven’t you figured it out yet?”

I shook my head in disbelief. There had to be a rational explanation. The woman Lexie had drawn was a descendant of the woman in the photograph—a secret sister or cousin of Ryan’s? Or had Shirley shown Lexie this photograph, and Lexie simply imagined this woman back to life? That was the mostly likely explanation—she showed Lexie the photo, planting the idea that Eliza was still there, in the water. Found a dark-haired young woman to splash around in the pool, bringing the legend to life, providing proof that everything Shirley and Ryan had told Lexie about the pool was true.

The pain behind my eye intensified, traveled down my jaw, into my teeth, making my fillings ache and buzz.

Shirley spoke. “My mother died in the springs. She drowned. Anyone who dies in the springs, they become a part of the springs. My mother, your aunt Rita, your sister—they’re all part of it now.”

“Bullshit. I’m not Lexie. I won’t be manipulated into believing something that’s… impossible.”

I heard a whooshing sound, my own blood traveling as my heartbeat quickened.

“The water gives and it takes,” Shirley said, unmoved. “The springs saved your grandmother. Kept her alive. She was born with a heart defect—did you know that? She shouldn’t have lived past her first birthday. But the springs gave her the gift of a long and healthy lifetime, of family. You wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for that water.”

She looked at me. “But then, she’d had enough. She chose to end her life, to sever her ties with the water once and for all.”

I shook my head. Thought of my grandmother dying alone in a hotel room in Arizona. Remembered the postcard I got from her three days after I learned of her death. A Sedona landscape on the front and on the back just one line: It’s more beautiful here than I could have ever imagined.

“She understood,” Shirley went on, “better than anyone perhaps, that the water gives miracles, but it also takes in return. And each time it takes someone, it grows stronger. Do you understand?”