Dismantled by Jennifer Mcmahon

Author:Jennifer Mcmahon [Mcmahon, Jennifer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, General, Suspense, Thrillers, Mystery & Detective, Crime, Mystery Fiction, Suspense Fiction, Psychological, Psychological Fiction, College Students, Vermont, Girls, Parent and Child, Crime - Psychological Aspects
ISBN: 9780061689345
Google: ZDd5erO7tY4C
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2009-01-02T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 33

“IT LOOKS WORSE THAN it is,” Henry promises.

Tess has come into the kitchen and found Henry and Emma playing rummy at the table. Emma, as usual, is keeping score very methodically, in neat rows of carefully printed numbers.

Tess has missed Winnie by only about fifteen minutes.

“What on earth happened?” Tess asks, touching Henry’s bandaged head gently, tenderly. She looks as though she’s about to lean down and kiss it better. He shuts his eyes, waiting. Wishing.

“I almost drowned,” Emma tells Tess. Henry opens his eyes and sees his daughter grinning from ear to ear.

“What?” Tess asks. She jerks her hand away from his head, draws back, the compassion in her eyes now clouded by fury. Henry looks away, reaches into his pocket for the bottle of aspirin.

“I was a frog and I tried to jump through a hole but I got stuck. Stuck like dolphins get stuck.”

Put the two halves together to make a whole, Henry thinks. He smiles. Can’t help himself. He dumps three aspirin into his palm, tosses them into his mouth.

“Do you mind telling me what is so goddamned funny?” Tess asks him. “Come here, baby,” she says to Emma, pulling Emma to her. “You okay?”

“Fine, Mom. The lady saved me.”

“What lady?”

“The lady from the picture,” Emma says.

Henry watches Tess hold her breath. It’s almost painful. Poor Tess. Maybe she believes in ghosts after all.

“Winnie,” Henry whispers.

“Where the fuck were you?” Tess asks.

Emma flinches at Tess’s curse. She looks down at the rummy scores and starts adding and subtracting, then just penciling in a new column of numbers. Her lips move as she writes them. Nine. Eighteen. Twenty-seven.

“I fell down,” Henry explains. “Emma flipped over in the inner tube. I was running to the pool and tripped over a chair.” As if he can put some of the blame on the chair. The blame that rests, he knows, entirely on himself for getting too drunk to walk. Too drunk to watch their child. “I cracked my skull and I guess I blacked out for a second. Then Winnie appeared. She jumped in and pulled Em out.”

He leaves out the part about how Winnie was dressed as Suz. Just like she was last night when he met her at the lake. There are details Tess is better off not knowing.

“It was a miracle,” Emma says, looking up from her rows of numbers.

“But where did she come from?” Tess asks. Her voice sounds high and desperate. As if Winnie were the ghost.

“I don’t know. The road. She said she parked by the road and walked through the woods. She wanted to surprise us,” Henry says.

“Did she stay?”

“Only for a little while.”

“What did she want?”

What was wrong with Tess? Her every question was an accusation. Winnie appears from nowhere, saves their daughter’s life, and all Tess can think of to say is What did she want?

Henry bites the inside of his cheek.

“To visit, Tess. To see how we were.”

Tess nods. Turns to Emma. “Sweetie, can you go up to your room for a few minutes? I want to talk to your dad alone.

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