Rita, the youngest, is most like my Maggie. Dark hair and eyes. Otherworldly. She slips up the attic steps into my room and crawls into bed with me at night, asks me to tell her stories, to braid her hair. The stories she loves most are about her mother when she was just a little girl. “I called her ‘little sparrow’ because when she was born, she looked like a little bird,” I tell Rita.

And sometimes, Rita tells me stories. She came to me last week, telling me all about her friend Martha who lives at the bottom of the pool.

“She says she’s lonely,” Rita told me. “She likes it when I come to play.”

“Stay away from her,” I said, my voice stern. “Stay away from the pool.”

But no one listens to me.

I tried to protect her. I did. I took out the needle I keep hidden in my mattress and scratched a little R into my thigh. My skin is so thin, fragile as trace paper. It bled and bled.

* * *

I heard howling this morning, Maggie’s desperate wailing just after dawn. I heard and I knew what had happened. And the knowing split me open inside. I can no longer get down the stairs on my own. So I waited for them to tell me the terrible news, tell me what I already knew.

Maggie came upstairs hours later, after the sirens came and went, after the loud voices and footsteps of strangers left the house. Her dark hair was unkempt. She was still in her robe and nightgown, even though it was afternoon. Her eyes were black and wild.

“It’s happened,” she said, her voice sharp as a knife, her eyes swollen from crying. “What you warned me about. Accidental drowning, they say. But you and I, we know different, don’t we?” Maggie was sobbing, her whole body shaking.

I nodded.

“And do you know who I blame, Mother? Who I feel is truly at fault?”

I opened my mouth to say that we don’t know its true name, this thing that we have carefully balanced our lives around. It has many faces, some familiar. But whatever is behind it all, we have never known what to call it. Maybe the power isn’t singular, but a thing of many. Maybe the water is the spirits in it; a collective being of shared yearnings and hungers.

“You,” Maggie said. “You are to blame.”

She stared at me then with such loathing, such hatred, I felt my heart seize, shatter in my chest as if it were made of glass.

“If you had never come to this place, if you had let me die when I was an infant…” Her voice trailed off, lost to sobs.

I promised my delicate little sparrow the world. And in all the years that followed, I tried to give it to her. I reached for her, my beloved, my angel, the little girl I had wished to life. I touched her face before she flinched, pulled away as if she’d been burned.

“Miracles are not without their price, my darling,” I said.

epilogue

June 5, 2020

Sorry we’re late,” Diane said, setting the two bottles of wine she was carrying on the counter. “Terri’s appointment ran over.”

Ryan was standing in front of the stove in the kitchen sautéing garlic and onions. Jazz played softly from Lexie’s old turntable in the living room. Candles glowed and flickered around the room.

Pig was curled up on one of the kitchen chairs, keeping his eye on us, on me in particular.

“How’d it go?” Ryan asked, stepping away from the stove to give his mother a hug and kiss on the cheek.

“Great,” Terri said. “He says to keep doing what I’m doing and not change a thing.”

“And he agrees that a month in Spain is a wonderful idea,” Diane added, stepping up behind Terri and wrapping her arms around her. “I think he was a little jealous that we didn’t invite him along.”

“I’m a little jealous you didn’t invite me along,” Ryan teased.

Diane and Terri looked so happy together. I was thrilled they were going to Spain and loved listening to them plan their itinerary and practice the Spanish they’d been learning. Viajo a españa con mi amada.

“Smells amazing,” Diane said, peering into the pot Ryan was stirring.

Friday dinners at Sparrow Crest had become a tradition over the last few months. Sometimes, when she was up to it, Shirley joined in. My father and Vanessa had come up from Florida to stay a couple of times and planned on a longer trip this fall. They’d gotten married, of all the crazy things, and adopted a one-eyed pug to go with their one-eyed cat.

Ryan got down glasses while Diane opened the wine. She poured everyone a glass, then settled in at the table, leaning in to whisper something that made Terri blush. I glanced out the window, through my own reflection, at the pool. It shimmered there in the darkness, beautiful and waiting.

Dinner, as usual, was perfect. Diane and Terri went upstairs to bed a little after eleven, and Ryan stayed until midnight, cleaning up.

Then I stood in the hallway, watching him pull out of the long driveway.

I always felt a stab of regret when I saw his taillights move down the street, toward town and his well-lit house, his alarm clock waiting to wake him at five to get to the bakery.

I went to my room in the dark, knowing the way by heart. Moonlight filtered in through the windows. I looked at the Lexie painting that hung on the wall above the dresser. The pool and Lexie. Each reflected in each other so perfectly. Together they went on into infinity. I laid down on top of the covers, listening to the house breathe and shift and settle around me.

My great-grandparents built this house to keep their little girl alive. They would have sacrificed anything, gone to any lengths, to keep her with them. They made a pact with the springs to keep her safe. Gram’s whole life revolved around Sparrow Crest and the pool. She was trapped, yes, but she must have been so grateful for all she had. And heartbroken by all that had been taken. Heartbroken enough to walk away knowing it would kill her.

Me, I was too heartbroken to walk away at all.

* * *

I tapped on the bedroom wall. You and me, Jax, we’re like twins. Yin and yang. One can’t exist without the other.

She tapped back. Once, twice, three times.

I heard her bedroom door creak open and footsteps in the hall.

I closed my eyes. Listened as my door opened and she walked into my room, stood above my bed. I could hear her breathing. Smell the tang of minerals, the dampness, that green primordial scent. She smelled like wishes. Like birth and death. Like possibility.