The Girl Who Stopped Swimming by Joshilyn Jackson

Author:Joshilyn Jackson
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
Tags: Ghost, Family secrets, Ghost stories, Mystery & Detective, Horror, FIC000000, General, Literary, Mystery fiction, Southern States, Fiction
ISBN: 9780446579650
Publisher: Hachette Digital, Inc.
Published: 2008-03-04T02:41:24.086000+00:00

CHAPTER 10

It was going on eleven when Thalia slipped back into the keeping room through the glass door.

“We’re set up out there. Those candles stink,” she said.

“They keep the bugs away,” Laurel said from the kitchen. “Anyhow, I like how they smell.” She wiped her damp hands on the dish towel. The kitchen was clean, the dishes were loaded, and the girls had gone to bed. Shelby had asked to sleep on the trundle bed again, so they might well be awake, whispering back and forth. Laurel hoped so. Better if Shelby talked to someone, even if it was only Bet Clemmens. She was certainly not talking to Laurel. She’d hardly spoken at dinner. “Maybe we should wait. Give the girls time to fall asleep.”

Thalia stared right through Laurel in a way that let Laurel know she saw all the way down to the cowardice at her roots. “Shelby’s in the guest room. That window faces the front yard.”

Laurel nodded, squaring her shoulders. “I saved one of the brownies out for David.” The rest were packed into a Tupperware for the Dufresnes. She peeled the Saran off the dessert plate. “Let me run this down to him, and I’m ready.” Ready as she would ever be. Though she’d just wiped her hands, her palms felt damp again.

“David’s home?” Thalia said. “When did that happen?”

Laurel raised her eyebrows. “A couple of hours ago. While I was making the brownies? You were reading on the sofa. He came through the room and said hello to you.”

Thalia shook her head slowly back and forth and said, “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” Laurel said. “I’m positive. He’s been working in the basement. I took him his dinner down there.”

“The invisible husband,” Thalia said.

Laurel cocked her head to the side and said, “You don’t get it. He’s being nice, Thalia. He’s got a deadline at work, and the last thing he needs is more stress, but I went and got you anyway. He’s making room and not fighting with you. It’s like a present he’s giving me.”

“Big man, eh?” Thalia said. She cocked her head, too, same angle, mirroring Laurel. “Give me that brownie.”

“No,” Laurel said. She was already walking toward the stairs down to the basement, but Thalia intercepted her, gripping the other side of the plate. Laurel didn’t let go of her side.

“I can be a big man and give you a present, too.” Thalia tugged gently at the plate, and when Laurel still held on, she stopped tugging and spoke in a voice so subdued she hardly sounded like herself. “I’ve missed you, Bug. Let me make peace.”

Laurel let go, but as Thalia started down the stairs, Laurel couldn’t help calling after her, “Please be nice.”

Thalia paused on the top step and said, “I’ll be fluffy as a bunny tail, sweet as cotton candy. Head on out. I won’t be a minute.”

She went down with the brownie held in front of her in both hands, as if it were a shield or a sacrifice.

Thalia had said to go on out, but Laurel didn’t want to.

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