The Drowning Girls (29 page)

PHIL

The new job was going well. It was a relief to be away from The Palms, to have the shame of failure behind me. I was part of the builder’s marketing team, tasked with making million-plus-dollar homes look attractive to buyers. It wasn’t that hard; once you were committed to living in a certain zip code, the rest was just details. The difference was that I wasn’t one of them, not this time. I wore my suits and I flashed cheerful smiles and I shook hands with a hearty confidence, and I left them at the end of the day to drive to the condo where I ate a TV dinner on a lawn chair in the living room and fell asleep on a mattress on the floor. I hadn’t taken a vow of poverty; I was waiting for Liz to say she was coming, too. I pictured the three of us renting a U-Haul and driving it south on I-5, over the Grapevine, into the smog that was LA.

I was right to get out when I did—I knew that. It wouldn’t have ended with Kelsey Jorgensen otherwise. She would have found new ways to worm herself into my life, the way she’d wormed herself into my thoughts. It took at least a month before I stopped waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, ashamed of what I’d been dreaming.

I begged Liz to come down, even for a visit, but was met with her stubborn silence, even when the Jorgensens came for her job. That was my moment, I figured. If she had to leave the school she loved, she might as well start completely over with me. I sent her links to job postings all over LA, but she never replied. I talked to her about the school I’d found for Danielle, a science magnet not far from my condo, and she gave me only a noncommittal grunt. When she stopped taking my calls, I sent her text messages.
I miss you. I love you. I want the two of us to start over together.
Her responses were chilling, they were so practical.
What do you want me to do with that old Greek rug?

She told me she planned to be out of The Palms by the end of June, but wouldn’t give me any specifics about where they were going. I couldn’t handle the idea of her going wherever it was without me.

And so, one Friday at the end of June, I rented a car for the six-hour drive to The Palms. I wasn’t concerned about the wear and tear on my SUV, but I didn’t particularly want to be recognized by my former neighbors. I imagined Myriam calling the police, the Jorgensens arriving with stones and pitchforks. I stopped on the way for lunch, then at a Trader Joe’s in Pleasanton for a bouquet of flowers.

The Palms looked the same, the lawns bottle green despite the fact that the drought was a real thing now, not just a worrisome theory. Helen’s white BMW was parked in her driveway; Mac’s ridiculous truck was parked at the Sieverts’. Even the guest access code had been the same—I’d simply punched in the four digits and the gates had rolled back for me, although I wasn’t exactly the prodigal son.

When I passed Liz’s house—
our
house—all three of the garage doors were open, and I caught a glimpse of Liz bending over a cardboard box, dark hair falling into her face. I could have parked right there, but something told me to keep going, to take my time with the approach. I ended up at the far end of the clubhouse parking lot, shaking life back into my muscles. I was wearing khaki shorts and a white polo, the leather flip-flops I’d bought since moving south. I didn’t recognize any of the golfers who came zipping past in their carts, but I put on a floppy fisherman’s hat just in case, a relic from my years in Corfu.

I rounded the corner on the side of the Berglands’ house, their front yard littered with giant plastic toys. I would stand in the driveway until Liz looked up. She would be glad to see me, relieved. I could almost feel her in my arms.
It’ll be a new start
, I would promise her.

But I stopped short on the sidewalk when I recognized who was standing in the driveway, who had beat me to my own punch. I’d managed to forget about her for the most part, although it had been difficult in Southern California, where every girl had her same long blond hair, her golden tan.

I couldn’t hear what Kelsey was saying, but Liz was practically screaming.
You need to leave now.
I heard the garage bays closing, one after the other, over Kelsey’s protests.

I turned, heading back in the direction of the clubhouse.
Don’t run
, I told myself. A man in a floppy hat with a bouquet of flowers running down the sidewalk was sure to bring attention to himself. I went back to the rental car and sat there, slumped low, watching for Kelsey. Eventually she would have to go home, and that meant she would have to pass in front of the Sieverts’ house. I waited, the car baking-hot, but she didn’t come. Was she still standing in front of our house, waiting for Liz to open the door? Had Liz relented, allowing her inside?

I called Liz, but her phone went right to voice mail. Typical.

The Zhang boys passed, swinging their rackets. The Asbills came by, their twins walking with the thick, trunk-like steps of toddlers.

I dialed Liz again, hanging up without leaving a message.

What if she had left the house? It was a Saturday; maybe she had errands to run in Livermore.

Eventually, I decided to go around the back, via the walking trail. I wondered if Parker-Lane had found anyone to monitor the surveillance cameras, if some poor schmo was sitting in my old office right now, flipping between surveillance screens and a game of solitaire. I heard the music before I saw our house—the bass line thumping. A stereo was sitting on the table under the giant orange umbrella that we’d barely used last summer. The back door was open, and then Hannah Bergland came out, still a bit pudgy, her reddish curls wet against her head.

From inside the house, someone—Danielle—called, “Which kind do you want?” Over her shoulder, Hannah called, “Pepsi’s fine.” She grabbed a beach towel off a deck chair and tied it around her hips before heading back inside the house, sliding the door shut behind her. I felt a bit dazed, maybe from the heat or the long drive. It was as though I’d stumbled into an old memory, a scene of déjà vu. Here were the people from my old life, moving right along without me.

“I knew you’d come,” someone said behind me, and I dropped the flowers.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” I told her. “Didn’t my wife just tell you that a few minutes ago?”

Kelsey smiled at me, coming closer. “I didn’t know she was still your wife.”

“Get away from me, Kelsey. I’ll call the police.”

“I live here,” she said. “I’m allowed to be on the walking trail. You’re the one who’s not supposed to be here.”

I reached for the gate latch and found the stubborn knot of twine I’d tied there months ago.

She smirked. “What’s the problem? Does someone not want you here?”

It wasn’t a tall fence; I hooked one foot on the lower beam and vaulted over, landing on grass higher than my ankles. Liz must have stopped the lawn service.

“Why are you running away from me?” Kelsey called. “That was your big mistake, you know. You could have been with me this whole time. I would have gone with you, wherever you went. We could have gone to Vegas and gotten married in one of those little chapels.”

“You’re crazy,” I said over my shoulder. “You’re absolutely insane.”

I expected someone to spot me from the house—Hannah or Danielle, maybe, or Liz, if she wasn’t in the garage anymore—but no one came. I turned around to see Kelsey climbing over the fence after me. “Wait, wait!” she called, as if we were meant to be doing this together.

I skirted around the side of the pool, where two soda cans were perched on the edge. In the long grass, I stepped on a bottle of sunscreen, nearly twisting my ankle. When I looked up, my eye caught the slight mound in the planter bed, under which I’d buried Virgil Zhang, not so expertly, after all.

“Remember that first night, when you went skinny-dipping?” Kelsey called. She was right behind me now, and I turned around, swinging my arm wildly to ward her off. She stepped out of the way, laughing. “We could do that now. We could do that together.”

I looked up to my bedroom window, expecting to see Liz there staring down at us. She probably couldn’t hear us over the thumping of the music. What was this music, anyway? When had Danielle started listening to rap? I just needed to make it to the back door. It would be open and I could step inside, or it would be locked and I’d have to bang to get someone’s attention. Either way, I needed to get away from Kelsey.

We were on the deck when she grabbed the hem of my shirt, yanking me backward. I swung my elbow behind me and felt the crunch as it connected with her jaw. She let go and stumbled to the ground, cradling her face in her hands.

“I’m sorry,” I said, kneeling beside her. My heart pounded. It was a mistake, this whole idea.
Abort, abort.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you. I was just trying to get you off me. I don’t need this trouble right now. Can you stand up?”

I helped her to her feet. The lower half of her face was red. I knew what was coming next. It was the same nightmare it had always been, just a different version.

She gave me that smile, the same one she’d given me a year before, when she came into my office and told me she was bored. She was so helplessly bored. Was that all it was with her? If she’d had a hobby like painting or macramé or horseback riding, would that have done the trick? She touched me on the arm, as if she were feeling my biceps, and she said, “If you don’t take me with you, I’ll tell everyone you attacked me. I’ll say I saw you sneaking into the backyard and I tried to stop you, and you attacked me. I’ll scream. Everyone will believe me.”

I didn’t think—I just reacted.

* * *

Later, on the long drive back, sweat pouring off my face, I did all the thinking I couldn’t do then. I told myself it was for the best, for everyone. Kelsey would never have been satisfied; she would have schemed and planned and ruined everyone she came across. I thought about how easy it had been, how miraculous that none of the nosy neighbors in the The Palms had been passing by on the walking trail. Liz and Danielle and Hannah must have been upstairs, the scuffle at the pool drowned out by lyrics that were incomprehensible to me. I thought about how light Kelsey’s body had been in my hands, how easy she was to maneuver, like a puppet or a rag doll. She went over the edge of the pool headfirst, turning to face me in the middle of the motion, her eyes surprised as her head struck the handrail, and then she was gone, sinking into the shallow end, wisps of blood blooming on the water like tiny, beautiful jellyfish.

JUNE 19, 2015
8:42 P.M.

LIZ

Once upon a time, I’d been a sneaky little kid hiding secrets from my blind mother. Once upon a time, I’d been nineteen years old, staring at the blue lines on the pregnancy kit, my hand rank with my own pee, knowing for certain what I’d refused to know for weeks, for months. Once upon a time, I’d had too much to drink at a hockey game and kissed a man with a sexy accent and let myself believe in a fairy tale.

Once upon a time, I’d sat in my office with a diploma on the wall behind me, host to a parade of mothers and daughters, holding my cattiness in check, biting back judgment. I’d cringed when mothers told me that their daughters were their
best friends
—a comment that had always reduced, rather than elevated, my opinion of the mother. You’re in your late thirties, and your best friend is a fifteen-year-old girl?
Poor you
, I’d thought.
Poor her
.

Once upon a time, I hadn’t understood those parents, the ones who had sat in my office and defended their children to me:
this is so unlike her; he’s always been so responsible
. There was something fierce about that love, a wild urge to defend, to protect, to believe, to deny, deny, deny.

Once upon a time I’d been disgusted by the Texas cheerleader mom.

I’d thought it would be so different with my own daughter when she was a teenager. I would be able to see her clearly, without being clouded by sentimentality, without pushing her to live out my own dreams. We’d survived middle school, which had a tendency to make previously lovely children into monsters, and I’d thought that we could make it the rest of the way, through tough classes and first love and heartbreak and college applications, the way we’d made it through colic and the bumps and bruises of learning to walk and day care and skinned knees on the playground.

Once upon a time, I’d told a lie and a lie and a lie, and here we were: sitting in two chairs in the waiting room, watching as people in blue scrubs and white coats hurried in and out of swinging doors marked Emergency Personnel Only
.
We’d checked in with the attendant at the front desk and been told to wait, and we’d sat through most of
The O’Reilly Factor
playing on an overhead screen, lip-reading the anger and indignation and scorn.

Then we were called into a windowless room within the interior of the ER and Penny Fausset, the hospital social worker, took notes on a clipboard as she listened to our responses. I strained, but couldn’t see what she was writing. I imagined the checked boxes as a series of appraisals of innocence or guilt, truth or falsehood, good mother or bad mother.

I asked if Kelsey was going to be okay.

Penny Fausset said that unfortunately she didn’t have any information.

We were asked to wait in the small room, and I looked everywhere but at my daughter—at the artwork on the walls, which reminded me of a cheap motel: beach scenes, a few brushstrokes meant to evoke an eternity of ocean. There was a poster that explained the risks of heart disease, and I felt Kelsey’s heart again, immobile beneath the pulsing of my locked hands.

I closed my eyes.

When the door opened, a police officer was there, pausing in the doorway as if he were taking in the scene—the smear of blood on my forearm, the sunburn pinking Danielle’s skin. He introduced himself as Officer Ahearn, and before he took a seat his hand went casually to the holstered weapon clipped to his belt. He thanked us for waiting. I said it wasn’t a problem. We were happy to help in any way we could.

He asked what happened.

She wasn’t allowed on our property, I explained. There had been some grievances. She’d come to the front of the house earlier and I’d turned her away. But she was determined to talk to us for some reason, and so she must have gone to the back gate. She’d been taking antidepressants, I told him. There had been two previous suicide attempts.

Maybe that’s what this was, I suggested. Or maybe it was an accident, and she just slipped and hit her head.

It was funny the way things seemed more true the more often they were repeated. Mantras worked like that, and mission statements.

“Is that right, what your mother says? You don’t have anything to add?”

Danielle shook her head, glancing over at me.

“It’s true,” I said. “She didn’t even know Kelsey was there until they spotted her in the pool.”

He left the room at one point, and in the diminishing triangle as the door closed, I recognized in the hospital corridor Tim Jorgensen’s back: his gray suit, his neatly trimmed blond hair. I didn’t see her, but I heard Sonia’s voice, a high-pitched wail. “But eighteen minutes? What does that mean for—”

We waited, listening to snatches of sound from the corridor—a machine beeping, a voice over the PA system. I stared straight ahead at the beach print, seeing nothing.

“Mom,” Danielle began, “you know that—”

I cut her off. “Don’t tell me. Don’t ever tell me.”

“There’s nothing—we didn’t—”

“I mean it,” I said, my voice sharp, echoing off the tile.

Danielle whimpered, but I didn’t look at her.

My little life had slipped away. There was no more Phil, no more giant house, no more twisted neighbor girl. In many ways Danielle was gone, too, no longer the daughter I could trust, no longer a girl I could recognize. I tried to imagine the two of us in our new apartment, politely sidestepping each other in the narrow hallway. I couldn’t do it, not day in and day out, not for the three years before she went off to college.

Officer Ahearn returned to say that he’d been in touch with Hannah Bergland, who confirmed Danielle’s version of events, and we were free to go. His face was expressionless as he told me this. His eyes held mine. “Someone from the department will likely be in touch,” he said.

I asked how Kelsey was doing, if she would be okay.

He said it was too early to know for sure, but I could tell that he knew and wasn’t going to say.

When I stood, I bumped my injured toe against a table leg and let out a gasp. Not understanding, Officer Ahearn put a hand on my shoulder and said, “You’re to be commended for the CPR. You did the absolute best you could.”

There were more people in the lobby now, the chairs filled and people standing near the doors. A man held an ice pack to his face.

Danielle looked at me. “What are we going to do now?”

I shook my head, imagining the drive back to The Palms, the massive entry gates, the stares of our neighbors, the boxes upon boxes that held the scraps of our lives. I thought about Phil, the missed calls on my cell phone. At the very least, I could cash in on the IOU from Christmas, the promise to take me anywhere in the world.

* * *

We were ushered outside without seeing the Jorgensens. It was dark by this time, and our stomachs were growling. My foot ached, but I’d been afraid to ask the nurses for an aspirin, knowing it would lead to paperwork and another hour of waiting.

Until she spoke, I didn’t recognize the woman who came up to me, even though her thick hair and falling-apart shoulder bag looked familiar. “I was wondering if that was you,” she said. “I heard it on the police scanner, and I recognized the address.”

“Keep walking,” I told Danielle, pushing her in front of me.

“I’m just trying to gather information, Mrs. McGinnis,” Andrea Piccola said, following us through the parking lot. Danielle took a few steps forward and stopped beneath a light post. She looked worried, her eyes bright with tears. She was so young, so shortsighted. Her whole life was ahead of her.

And so I turned to Andrea Piccola, and I told her that Kelsey had sneaked into our yard and hit her head when she fell into the pool. It was a horrible accident.

And it was, as far as I knew, the truth.

* * * * *

Keep reading for an excerpt from
THE MOURNING HOURS
by Paula Treick DeBoard