The Girl Who Stopped Swimming - By Joshilyn Jackson Page 0,12

of the days Thalia had left Laurel exhausted or furious or crying. Angry as she was, she already knew she would make it up with Thalia; David was less forgiving when it came to injuries against her person.

“Did you turn off the alarm?” he asked, and Laurel shrugged, carrying her bundle of dry clothes toward the bathroom. She hoped he would leave things there.

“Thalia turned it off, didn’t she?” he said, making her sister’s name sound like a dirty word.

He didn’t wait for an answer. She heard him climbing out of bed and turned around in time to see him yanking the door open.

“David, no.”

Assuming he didn’t plan to either challenge Thalia to Rubik’s Cubes at dawn or strangle her, David was no match for her sister in an argument. Delivering words was Thalia’s forte, while David thought so strongly in numbers that English seemed almost his second language.

“I’m fine,” Laurel called after him. “David!”

He didn’t hear her. He’d transferred his considerable focus to the space around him, moving through it with an angry precision that boded ill for her sister. Most times David didn’t pay attention to his limbs, but he went out and down the stairs with a scything grace that was almost beautiful. She let him go. Maybe Thalia was the one who should, this time, be worried.

Laurel had finished her good cry in the shower and was in bed by the time he came back up. He was pale and winded, and his eyes were round. He had a spot of red in each cheek, about the same size and shape as his eyes. His mouth was a lipless line.

“She’ll be gone in the morning,” Laurel said, her tone apologetic.

“She’s gone now.”

That was all he said.

Three months later, Laurel felt Thalia’s absence like a lost tooth. She couldn’t stop exploring the hole, and Shelby, who thought her bohemian aunt was the ultimate in cool, was agitating hard to see her. It wasn’t unusual for Laurel and Thalia to stop speaking, but it had never gone on this long before. One night at dinner, Laurel talked around the idea of having Thalia back, and David’s usual rapt focus on her changed into a charged, unhappy silence. Laurel decided to leave him out of it. She and Shelby went to Thalia’s home turf, buying tickets for her latest production and driving to Mobile.

That night Laurel had walked out of the theater midplay, finished with Thalia. Period. Shelby was heartbroken, but Laurel was deaf to all pleas and whining on the subject. There was silence from Thalia’s camp as well. Since then they’d seen each other only at the annual Christmas sojourn to DeLop, where Mother’s presence ensured that all interactions would be muffled by a thick coat of good manners. Even when Thalia slipped in a dig, calling Laurel’s neighborhood “Stepfordianna,” Laurel took an egg from Mother’s basket and refused to notice.

But Laurel could not stop thinking of Thalia now. She imagined her striding across their backyard, her gimlet eye piercing the chaos. Thalia would grab that brisk detective by the ponytail, yank it sideways off its perfect axis, and shake her until her head bobbled loose on her neck and she explained why there was blood at the scene of a drowning.

Moreno had questioned the Hawthornes for what felt like hours, but she’d avoided telling them anything. She’d directed most of her questions at Bet and Shelby. She’d started by asking Bet if she knew why Molly would have sneaked out and visited the Hawthornes’ yard. Laurel had wanted to ask Bet that very question; Bet wasn’t charismatic enough to be a leader, but Laurel had been worried about the DeLop influence ever since the day Shelby invited her. But Bet was genuinely clueless. She’d answered with a guileless “I dun know,” then looked to Shelby. Shelby’s cheeks had pinked, just barely, and her lids had dropped.

Thalia would have taken one look at Shelby’s exhausted face, the lavender shadows under her eyes the size and shape of thumbprints, and stepped in. Stepped in hard. But Moreno’s next question seemed so innocuous. She’d lulled Laurel, following up by asking Shelby if she had planned to meet Molly, perhaps to play a trick on someone?

That sounded plausible to Laurel. Only two months ago, she’d caught Shelby and Molly trying to sneak out during a sleepover with a bag of Charmin double rolls, bent on mayhem. But then Moreno had stepped it up, slowly, inching forward, and she’d focused on