Free The Girl Who Stopped Swimming by Joshilyn Jackson Page A

can.” Thalia shook Laurel’s hands out of her hair and crossed the room to her bookshelf. She ran her fingers across the spines of her paperbacks and then pulled one out and passed it to Laurel. It was
Watership Down.
“Mother is Cowslip,” Thalia said.
    It was a thick book, intimidating, but Laurel had to know what Thalia meant, and once she’d begun it, she couldn’t put it down. Cowslip turned out to be a fat healthy rabbit in a warren of equally fat and healthy rabbits. Laurel thought the whole bunch of them were smug. They had things the regular rabbits didn’t have: feasts and poetry and art. But she ended up feeling sorry for Cowslip. The feasts, the poems, all turned out to be distractions. A farmer was putting out the food and, every now and again, setting a trap and having rabbit supper. Underneath, Cowslip knew, but he loved his peaceful life. So he willfully stopped knowing, and he made every other rabbit in the warren stop knowing, too. Laurel read that part of the book with a faint shock of recognition.
    Thalia was right: Mother was Cowslip.
    From then on, Thalia used it as a verb, whispering “She’s Cowslipping” whenever they saw their mother’s face blank itself, her closed lips stretching into a wide smile, quelling whole rooms into submission with her mighty blindness and her will.
    And this was the person David had called in to help her. Laurel buried her head in her hands. There had been a day, just one, when Mother had taken a stand for Laurel, but she’d done it covertly, in her own sly way. Mother would not want to hear that Molly Dufresne had walked through walls to visit Laurel’s bedroom. She would not be interested in getting Thalia to come over and soak that detective in words, then twist her and wring out answers. She wouldn’t want Laurel to run around asking her neighbors if they could confirm the presence of a pervert lurking on the Deerbolds’ lawn last night, and Laurel could not remember a single time in her life when she’d pitted herself against her mother’s love of decorum and won.
    Still wishing for a toothbrush, Laurel squared her shoulders and went on upstairs.
    Shelby and Bet Clemmens sat side by side on the sofa, watching a movie. Shelby’s mouth was turned down, and her eyes were tired. She had her feet tucked up and her arms looped around her legs, as closed up as a shoe box full of secrets in the very corner of the sofa. Bet slumped beside her, looking like Bet. Someone—Laurel’s money was on Mother—had closed the drape over the glass doors, and Daddy was standing at the end, peering out at the backyard through a narrow crack. He glanced over his shoulder and said, “Morning, sugar,” as Laurel came up.
    Laurel’s scrawny daddy looked like he never got fed enough when he was growing. He had a body that wanted to be strapping, but it had failed and dwindled on him. His arms, ropy with muscle and dark veins, were too long, and his head and hands were too big. He turned his head away to peer out again.
    “Sweetie,” Mother said, and came immediately to give Laurel a decorous peck on the cheek. “What an awful night you’ve had. Would you like coffee? Or an egg? I’m making lunch soon, but you could have an egg.”
    “Just coffee,” Laurel said.
    “Come away from there, Howard,” Mother said. Her tart, fond tone was back. “And no more about mermaids or the water calling people. It’s morbid.” She sailed off toward the kitchen to get Laurel’s coffee. Daddy stayed where he was.
    “There was a detective. Moreno—” Laurel said. Daddy was nodding. “Is she still out there with them?”
    He shook his head without turning around.
    Fine. Maybe she could get Mother out of here before Moreno came back.
    Shelby was walled in between Bet Clemmens and the sofa’s arm. Laurel went and squatted on her haunches in front of her.
    Bet leaned sideways, her eyes glued to the TV.
    “Whatcha watching?” Laurel asked.
    “Nothing, now,” Shelby said.