The Girl Who Stopped Swimming - By Joshilyn Jackson Page 0,28

was as if nothing had ever happened.

But her yard did not look right. It wasn’t only the dark skies and the rain damping the colors. There was a deeper darkness there, with the fence as a perimeter. The tops of the neighbors’ trees and the roof of Mindy Coe’s tower looked fine, standing in their perfect places, at ease in the world. But Laurel’s trees and pool and patio furniture, everything, looked as if it had been shifted one tenth of an inch left. It was the same, yet infinitesimally wrong. Chill went trickling down Laurel’s spine in a droplet, and she found herself tucking her hand inside her father’s.

As a little girl, she used to stand like this with him on the porch, watching fireflies buzz around the yard. In the pearl-gray dusk, the bugs themselves were visible. They were ugly and busy, but their lights were deep tangerine, flashing in slow motion. As the sky got darker, the bugs disappeared onto the velvet black background of night, only the lights showing.

“Fairies,” Daddy had told the girls once.

Thalia had stared up at Daddy’s face as if it were more interesting than any thousand fairies, but Laurel had peered hard out at the fireflies and seen the curved body of a girl, slim as filament, glowing in the heart of every light.

“Stop your nonsense, Howard, before I end up with jars and jars of creepy-crawlies in my house,” Mother had said from behind the screen door. “Come in and have cocoa before the mosquitoes eat you alive.”

“Sec, Junie,” said Daddy, and then asked Laurel and Thalia, “Do you see them?”

“No,” Laurel said, and went inside with Mother.

Thalia had said, “I see them, Daddy,” without even looking. He had smiled down at her lying face, turned up toward his, as open as a morning glory.

Standing quietly now with her hand in his, watching the rain on the pool’s surface, Laurel wanted to whisper that she had seen them, the fairies, that one time, and ask him what he was seeing as he peered into her yard.

Her yard was looking back at them with ghost eyes. Molly or Marty, she couldn’t tell, so she couldn’t ask. She never talked to Daddy about Marty. No one in her family ever did. She never so much as said his name in front of her father. Marty had raised him. Daddy had loved Marty best, and Daddy had held the gun.

“Come away,” she said to him, tugging at his hand. She didn’t want to look anymore. Perhaps Mother was right. She should pull the curtain closed and give her yard time to shift back into its normal self. It ought to.

If Moreno was gone, then Laurel wouldn’t have to invite Thalia back into her peaceful life. Surely that sharp-eyed Moreno and her CSIs would not have missed a single trick, rain or no rain. Molly had come to Laurel, led her to the window, and then drifted down to model her own body as if she were Vanna White, showing Laurel what she’d won. But perhaps she’d wanted only to be found.

Marty on his kite string was just a dream, a reaction to seeing a ghost again after all these years. She’d been seeking him, so she’d dreamed him. Her yard probably looked wrong because the floodlights had been on stands and their bases had cut into the grass. She could feel the sleepy tug of Mother’s will; she was sliding into it. She took a step back, trying to pull Daddy with her, but he stood fast.

“What’s that?” he asked, pointing out into the yard.

The air got out of her in a long, soft braying ha-ha noise that sounded suspiciously like a laugh; Daddy was a middle-finger pointer. Thalia used to make Daddy point when she was in junior high. When she was angry with Mother, Thalia would ask Daddy where something was, an object in plain view that was close to Mother. Then she’d waggle her eyebrows at Laurel while Daddy gave Mother her bird-by-proxy.

It was genetic, because when Shelby was a toddler, she’d pointed like that, too. Laurel would read with her in the glider rocker, and Shelby would shoot the bird at pictures of dogs and dump trucks, lisping, “Awe you my muzzah . . .” Laurel would take her hand and gently fold the naughty finger away, uncurling Shelby’s index finger from her tightly fisted hand. Now Laurel felt an urge to do the same for Daddy as he stood