I stroked her hair. “I don’t think so, little sparrow. I don’t think leaving home is a good idea at all.”

She made a sour face at me.

“You don’t want to get sick, do you?”

Her face turned serious, worried. “No, Mama,” she said, cuddling up beside me.

“Let’s plan a special picnic tomorrow, out in the rose garden, just you and me.”

She was a quiet a minute.

“Can we bring the teapot and good china cups?” she asked.

“Of course, my love.” I pulled her tight against me, rocked her like I did when she was ever so little.

“We can put on fancy dresses,” she said. “And make strawberry tarts.”

“I think that sounds like a very good plan indeed,” I told her. “We have all we need right here, don’t we, my sparrow? Why would we ever want to leave?”

chapter thirty-three

June 22, 2019

Dad?” I called, using my key to open the locked front door to Sparrow Crest. “Diane?”

No answer.

“You here?” I called.

Diane’s car wasn’t in the driveway; the house was empty. The kitchen smelled amazing—I found a pot of sauce on the stove, still hot. The sink was full of dirty dishes: knives, grater, a cutting board. There were vegetable scraps on the counter.

My headache was firing up again. I opened the fridge, found a bottle of beer, cracked it open, and swallowed another one of Diane’s pain pills from my purse. I sipped the beer as I walked from room to room, not sure what to do with myself. Upstairs, the bathroom door was open, the shower turned off. I wandered into my room, said hi to the Lexie painting.

Hi yourself, Jax.

I took my dead phone out of my purse and plugged it into the charger. Then I got my suitcase and started packing.

By the time I finished, my head was pounding, and Diane and Ted weren’t back yet. Where were they? I thought of calling them, sending texts, but knew they’d be angry with me for sneaking off. I decided to put off that confrontation for a while longer. I looked over at the boxes, wondered if I should try to bring any of my sister’s papers back home with me. I opened the boxes, started rummaging through, sorting. Another pile of photographs, another stack of journal entries. I pulled out the last one, read it.

June 14

Weeks of research and still so much I don’t know, don’t understand. But maybe I’m not meant to. Maybe none of us are.

One thing I’m sure of: the power of the pool. The pool gives miracles. Grants wishes, just like Gram always said it did. You just have to be prepared to pay a price.

I went out tonight and made a wish. I wished for the thing I want most in this world.

I wished to have Jax back.

Back here at Sparrow Crest.

The X girls, always and forever.

The room got strangely dark, and I saw little lights in the corners of my vision. I worried I might pass out. I closed my eyes, held tight to my sister’s journal page, to her words, to her wish.

“You got your wish,” I said, my words a low whisper, my mouth tasting coppery and acrid, like the pool.

How cruel wishes can be.

I laid down on my bed, closed my tear-filled eyes, still clinging to my sister’s journal entry.

I wished to have Jax back.

* * *

I opened my eyes to discover that it was nearly dark. Reaching for my phone to see what time it was, I saw it was still dead.

It wasn’t even plugged in anymore.

The house phone was ringing. I sat up, listened, wondering if my father and aunt had come back, waiting for one of them to pick up the phone. It stopped ringing. The house was silent. “Ted?” I called out. “Diane?”

I heard tapping on the other side of the wall.

I tapped back.

Then, realizing that the noise wasn’t part of my dream, I bolted upright, raced down the hall to the room next door, Lexie’s old room, where my father had been staying. The room was empty of course. Well, not quite empty. Pig was there, curled up in the center of the bed, purring.

“Did you do that, Pig?” A ridiculous question. He stared at me knowingly, eyes glowing in the dim light.

I sat down on the bed and scratched the cat behind his ears. There was the tapping on the wall again, this time from my room. I put my ear against the wall. Heard Lexie’s voice come through it, muffled, but still clear.

“Ready or not, here I come.”

I went back into my bedroom and I swore I could feel her there. Her image gazed back at me from the painting, taunting: Catch me if you can.

I walked out into the hall, listening for more taps, footsteps, anything.

And there was something, downstairs.

Someone was at the front door. I heard the knob rattle. The whole house was quiet, seemed to be holding its breath just as I was, waiting, listening. Suddenly, the door clicked open, and I heard footsteps in the entryway.

I shouted, “Lex?” down the stairs.

“Hello?” Aunt Diane called up. “You here, Jackie?”

Light-headed but relieved, I let out the breath I’d been holding. “Up here,” I called, making my way down the hallway to the stairs. “Where were you guys?”

“Looking everywhere for you! We were worried sick,” Diane said. “You snuck off without saying anything!”

My father added, “We’ve been all over town!”

“You weren’t answering your phone. We were looking for a wrecked yellow car in all the ditches! We heard you went to see Shirley?”

I nodded. “I saw Shirley, then came right back here. My phone battery’s been dead. I’m sorry if I worried you.”

Diane stared at me. “Well, we’re all here now, and I, for one, am starving. Let’s go get that pasta on.” She was already heading for the kitchen.

My father mumbled, “Good idea,” and followed Diane. I joined them, my eyes bleary and my head aching. The codeine made the world seem dull, fuzzy. My father got down a big pot and brought it to the sink to fill with water. Diane flipped the light switch on the kitchen wall. Nothing happened. She tried it again, irritated. Click, click, click. “I thought you replaced all the light bulbs,” she said, her tone accusatory.

“I did,” I told her, checking the fixture over the sink.

The bulbs were gone.