Agnes paddled up to Jake and the Twins. They hopped on their tiptoes in a circle, looking up into the sky, then down into the clear water.

Agnes could see all their toes scraping the sand. The water felt oily, but when she lifted her hand out, it slipped off cleanly and left nothing behind but her cold taut skin. No silt. No slime. Pure. She swam a few strokes to where the bottom dropped away and dunked her head and looked down. Far, far, far below, the lake-bottom dunes looked as though they shifted with every kick of her feet. Above her head a sheer rock wall sloped as vertically as a slope could and still be considered a slope.

Agnes scanned the water’s surface and spied her mother doing somersaults farther out. Just her head, then the curve of her upper back, her bottom, then crossed ankles and feet. It was graceless. It looked fun. Her mother looked like the little girl she probably was the last time she did a somersault underwater. She came up, spouting water from her mouth and grinning.

Once, back in the City, after one of the breathing lessons her mother had given her in the tub, her mother had gotten into the tub with her.

“Okay, sit like this,” her mother had said, crossing her legs, sitting up very straight. “We used to do this when I was a kid. It’s stupid. But funny. I don’t know if it will be as funny in the tub. But let’s try.”

“Okay,” Agnes had said in her reedy, high voice. Her mother seemed hulking across from her in the tub. There was so much more of her. So much more skin, so much more face and leg. So much more hair. Agnes remembered feeling like ten Agneses could fit inside her mother. And then she was reminded that she had come from there. That she’d lived there, breathing water in her mother’s guts.

“Just imagine we’re underwater,” her mother said. “Our hair is floating all around, like it does when you lie on the bottom of the tub.” Her mother tussled her own hair so it was wild and looked like it could be lilting in water. She tussled Agnes’s hair.

“Imagine that we’re holding our breath,” her mother said, bulging her cheeks out and widening her eyes. “And then,” she said, “hold your hand like this,” and she put her left hand out flat, palm up. “And your other hand like this.” She pinched all her fingers together except for her pinkie, which jabbed out. “It’s like you’re holding a teacup,” she said. “And now you drink your tea like this.” She lifted her pinched fingers to her puckered mouth. “It’s an underwater tea party,” her mother said, sipping imaginary tea from the imaginary teacup, the bathwater barely to her hips.

It was a ridiculous game because neither one of them was underwater. The absurdity made them giggle, and whatever Agnes was doing with her face—she was only trying to imitate her mother—made her mother laugh until she had tears in her eyes.

Agnes smiled at the memory of such an easy time between them and tentatively paddled her way over to where Bea was tumbling.

When she reached her mother, Bea stopped flipping and treaded water cautiously. Her eyes countered Agnes warily. Agnes had avoided her since Glen. She thought her mother had avoided her too. She didn’t know what to say to make anything better. To be sorry. To be forgiven. So she had said nothing at all. But for the first time in a long time, the thought of her mother had made her happy. She had to do something with that.

“Do you want to have a tea party?” she asked shyly.

Her mother spit water out of her mouth like a fountain. She smiled, looking relieved. “Do I ever!” she said. “Do you remember how?”

“I think so,” Agnes said, and placed her hand out flat and pinched her fingers and rounded her lips to sip, treading frantically.

Her mother laughed. “You have to sit cross-legged too.”

Agnes pulled her legs up into a knot. She toppled, sank, laughed. She splashed her hands to right herself.

“Okay, now try it underwater.”

Agnes dropped below the surface.

Her mother dropped too and looked at Agnes trying hard to stay upright with the teacup in her hand. She smiled and pointed down, down, down and launched herself deeper. Agnes surfaced to get more air and then followed her mother.

The weight from the water above and around her kept Agnes upright and allowed her occasional moments to sit and sip without needing her arms to stay under.

Her mother’s sit-and-sip was effortless. Her hands slid up and down to her lips. Her cheeks were not puffed out with air, but rather she kept all the air deep inside. Her mother’s eyes were glassy like the water around her. She looked like she was sitting at their table at home. Except for her hair. Her hair curled like sage branches. Her mother was more beautiful than the mermaids in the fable from her favorite lost book.

Agnes looked to the bottom. The sandy ripples were still. She became aware of how everything was still and quiet. She could only hear a thumping in her ears. Her own heartbeat. She looked across at her mother and saw the artery at her throat pulsing. With each thrum in her mother’s neck, she heard a thrum in her ears. The only sound beneath the water was the beating of their own hearts together, the coursing of their blood. And then, when her mother laughed, the bubbles spilled from her like it was her very life escaping. Agnes wanted to grab all those bubbles and gobble them up so she could have it forever.

She felt a mournful longing for her mother, as though she were far away, untouchable. The water made Bea look like she was behind a plate of glass. Agnes reached for her, but she was just far enough away that she couldn’t grab hold. She tried again, and her mother dodged her hand and smiled. She thought it was a game. So Agnes shook her head no and thrust both hands out anxiously to show her how much she needed her, and finally she caught a handful of her mother’s wisping hair and pulled, trying to catch her.

Her mother’s face grimaced, and a moan full of bubbles escaped her as she pried Agnes’s hand away. She scowled back at Agnes. But then her face turned panicked and she yanked Agnes to her, grabbed her by the waist, kicked her up to the surface.

At the surface, Agnes sputtered and coughed and realized she’d been trying to breathe underwater. She hadn’t been aware, so fixated she’d been on reaching her mother. She felt like she’d been asleep. The only proof it hadn’t been a dream was everything around her. The water. The cliffs. Her mother’s arms were around her, pulling her back to shore. She looked around her in a daze at the sun glinting off the basalt rocks, the white and black obsidian. The waxy clusters of pine needles. It was as though the whole Caldera glittered.

Celeste and Patty and Jake watching her be pulled to shore.

“Good job, Agnes,” said Celeste. “Real nice form.” The Twins snickered.

Agnes didn’t care. She just let herself be dragged, weightless in the water, her head safely above, her body cool, her mother’s arm around her, like in the rivers of those early days, when she was just her mother’s little girl, who had just grown out of being her mother’s little baby. She felt like a baby again. She dangled her arms and legs and burbled her lips across the surface as she was dragged along.

Bea got Agnes to the fire and put her coat around her. Everyone was still swimming. Agnes could hear all their voices echoing off the Caldera walls, sounding as far away as ghosts.

“No more swimming for you,” her mother said.

“Okay,” Agnes said.

Her mother’s eyebrows went up. “Okay? Well, then, okay.”

Her mother had expected an argument, but Agnes didn’t want to argue anymore. She let her mother tend to her as she slumped and stared into the fire. It reminded her of being sick. Feeling this warmth flitting around her, draping blankets across her shoulders, brushing the hair out of her eyes. Wiping away drool or snot, blood if she’d been coughing. Feeling that her hand was being held when she was somewhere between awake and asleep. Being sick had been awful, but being cared for felt nice. She missed it. She knew her mother was still caring for her all the time. But it was behind the scenes. It was secret. It was strategic. It wasn’t the same.

Many in the Community were floating now. Their arms out, heads bobbing. They looked asleep. The sun glided across the sky on its daily path. How did it feel about going the same way every day?

Agnes laid her head against her mother’s shoulder, still cool from the water.

“Are we going to have to leave here?” Agnes asked. Saying the words made her chest hard.

“Why do you ask that?”

“I wondered if the study would end with Glen gone.” She felt her mother’s body stiffen under her head.