The Girl Who Stopped Swimming - By Joshilyn Jackson Page 0,61
from behind Laurel, coming around to face her again. “I think Shelby feels crushed and watched and stifled, so they were meeting up in the yard to hit the road. But Shelby fell asleep and didn’t show. Shelby’s blaming herself, because if she had come, she and Molly would be famous actresses or hookers in New York by now, or more likely, down at the bluffs in a tent, sharing a single stolen beer, because at their age, running away is a half-assed thing, a call for attention, a ‘Hey! Look, Mom! I can’t breathe under your big, fat thumb and—’”
“Shut up.”
Laurel almost screamed it, so loud that Thalia obeyed, her eyes widening in surprise. The closest crickets and frogs obeyed, too, and the night went still.
“I’m sorry, Bug,” Thalia said. Her voice had lost all its fierce intensity. She came back to the gazebo’s opening and slid herself in behind the table again. “But that’s what I think. You need to ask Shelby. Directly. You say she’s not talking, but you aren’t asking. You don’t really want to know that the most likely cause of Shelby’s silence is guilt. Because she meant to run away from you, with Molly, and it all went bad.”
“Shut up,” Laurel said again, but her voice was small and lost, and she heard no conviction in it.
“You know I could well be right,” Thalia said. “But I do apologize. I didn’t mean to slap your face with it in a middle of a fight about C-3PO down there.”
Laurel half laughed, an odd, sad little bark of a sound. “You meant to say these awful, awful things in a nice way. I get it.”
“I didn’t mean to say them at all. I thought I’d let you tell you,” Thalia said. She tilted her head down toward the board, then lined her fingers up on one side of the planchette. “With this.”
Laurel took one hand out of her lap and set her fingers up in a row of four on the other side. The planchette was dead plastic now. The only energy she felt coming through it was Thalia’s.
“You think you’re haunted, Laurel?” Thalia asked. “The only ghost in this yard is the ghost of my sister. I packed the board, hoping that it would let me talk to you. I thought you would move it and tell yourself these things. But David pissed me off, and I said them myself. Oops. It’s not too late. You should try it. Ask yourself the hard questions, not just about Shelby. Ask the board. Is Laurel happy?”
The planchette jerked, carrying Laurel’s hand with it, moving swiftly and decisively to the black “No” in the corner.
“That was you,” Laurel said, tired and scared and irked all at the same time.
“Maybe,” Thalia said. She tried out her most engaging smile on Laurel. “But maybe that was your spirit horse guide. Or maybe it was you, trying to tell yourself a truth you already know but can’t admit.”
“Every time I’ve seen that planchette move, it was you, Thalia,” Laurel said. “What really happened in my basement?”
“David was making the big sex with a redhead?” Thalia gave Laurel a long assessing gaze and then said, her voice quieter now, “Nothing happened. That’s just it. Nothing ever happens here. He didn’t say one word to me. Like you for the last two years. Don’t tell me that’s not because of him.”
“It couldn’t be because of you, right?” Laurel said. She wanted to say more, but the heat was leaking out of her. She didn’t have the time or energy to settle thirteen-year-old arguments, not when Shelby’s safety was at stake. “I’ll talk to Shel, okay? I will. But not tomorrow. Let’s check these other things. To be sure. Stan Webelow and Bunny. If they didn’t do anything, then I’ll ask Shelby, like you said.”
Thalia nodded, but Laurel wasn’t done yet. “You can’t see into my marriage, Thalia. It’s closed to you. Stop knocking, even.” They each still had a hand resting on the dead plastic of the planchette. “Are we done?”
Thalia pulled her hand away. “I am. I’m going to bed.”
She scooted out from behind the table and walked out of the small ring of candlelight. The dark yard swallowed her. Just over the fence, in Mindy Coe’s yard, Laurel heard a clatter and a muffled curse. It sounded like Mindy’s son, Jeffrey, had stumbled into a piece of lawn furniture. A few seconds later, she heard the splash as he dove into