The Girl Who Stopped Swimming - By Joshilyn Jackson Page 0,27
her. “Is, too. Molly got a featured in the opening!”
“You girls will steal the show.”
Laurel had released the last lock of Shelby’s hair and kissed it. Shelby had been fresh-sweaty from dance, and Laurel had breathed in citrus and the smell that comes in springtime right before a light rain. The smell of things about to bloom.
Shelby had twitched the piece of hair away and said, “Don’t get all mooky. It’s only fall recital. Spring is the biggie.”
David had hung back by the door, following the conversation intently, his dark eyes ticking back and forth between them. Shelby had those same eyes, a rich, bright brown like kalamata olives.
She had gazed earnestly up at Laurel and said, “I have to learn a new lift, and I better not grow any more, Mom. Seriously. I need to start drinking coffee.”
“You don’t even like the smell,” Laurel had said. “I never broke five-five, and I didn’t drink coffee until college.”
“Five-five is practically a yeti.” Shelby had spun away, clicking out of the kitchen with Molly on her heels, calling over her shoulder, “We need to go to Starbucks.”
David had watched them pass and then grinned and said, “Don’t look at me. I’ve been trying to put a book on her head since she was four.”
That was normal. That was regular and real. It didn’t look like a place Laurel could get to from here.
She stepped in closer to her mother, glancing back at Daddy. He was weaving, buzzing little hums to himself out of his nose. Laurel lowered her voice. “I have to know what happened, Mother.” She looked right into her mother’s eyes, willing her to remember, to acknowledge. A long time ago, Laurel had learned for sure and for certain that there was a place inside Mother where her love for Laurel trumped all her careful blindness, trumped silence. The day it mattered most, Mother had chosen to see and speak, if only in a whisper. “I have to know so I can protect her. Like you protected me.”
Mother’s eyelids dropped briefly, and her lips twitched up at the corners. When she looked back up, she was wearing Cowslip’s face. “Laurel, I never once came digging at you like you were a dead worm in a high school biology class.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Laurel said. “Shelby is—”
“Then have at her,” Mother interrupted. Her voice was tart but with none of the indulgence she gave Daddy. “Pester and poke. But I never yet saw a dissection that did the worm a speck of good.”
Laurel heard the faint echo of DeLop in Mother’s accent. Most times Mother talked like a California TV actor trying to sound mildly southern. Her words came out breathy, with an unobtrusive lengthening of vowels, pre-formed into carefully constructed sentences. She’d had a subscription to Reader’s Digest for longer than Laurel had been alive, and she had, God knew, paid to enrich her word power. But with Bet Clemmens in the house, the old DeLop speech patterns were infiltrating Mother’s measured language.
Laurel spoke in a hard whisper. “You can’t expect me to treat today like normal when my backyard is full of police and any minute that detective could come back and start questioning Shelby again. It’s better if I—”
Mother held one finger up, waggling it back and forth to shush her. “Oh, sweetie, no!” she said. “I’m so sorry. You asked Daddy about the detective, so I thought David must have told you before he left. Here you’ve been worrying this whole time, and for nothing. They’re all gone.”
“Who’s all gone?” Laurel asked.
“The police. The coroner declared it an accidental death this morning. They left over an hour ago.”
“Accidental?” Laurel said. She couldn’t stop repeating her mother’s words. She looked down at her hands and shook her head. “No. I touched her. She was bleeding.”
Mother said, “They think Molly was standing out on the diving board. Probably just being silly. We can’t know. She fell, and she cracked her head open on the side of the board. They found the place. She knocked herself out. It’s a tragedy, but it’s all over, and the faster things go back to normal, the better for Shelby.”
Laurel turned and walked as quickly as she could to where Daddy stood, still peering through the crack in the drape as if there were something to see. She pulled aside the cloth; her yard was empty. The tape was down, the lights were gone. Water mizzled down, rippling the pool’s surface. It