Free Pieces of the Heart by Karen White

about?”
    Those eyes were so disconcerting, Caroline faltered in her resolve as she stared into old eyes set in such a young face. To pull herself together, she took her time pouring her drink into the glass before taking a fortifying sip. She smiled. “I was wondering if I could use your phone.”
    Jewel looked at her for a moment in confusion. “Is yours out? I’ll have to check, because ours is probably out, too. . . .”
    “No, there’s nothing wrong with our phones. I just needed to use one . . . in privacy.” She smiled again. “My cell phone doesn’t work out here, and my BlackBerry’s at the bottom of the lake. I need to call my office in Atlanta, but my mother . . . Well, it’s complicated. To avoid a conflict, I just thought I could pop over here on a semiregular basis to use your phone. I have a phone card, so there’d be no long-distance charges, and we could just sort of keep this between the two of us.”
    Caroline waited expectantly for a simple “fine” or “great,” but instead Jewel sat across from her with a frown on her face and began gnawing at her bottom lip as if she were really contemplating a more complicated answer than “yes.”
    “I don’t know. . . .”
    “Well, I guess you could tell your dad if you’d prefer not to keep anything from him. Just as long as he knows not to mention it to my mother. I know Rainy would let me use her phone, except then I’d have to get in a car and drive instead of just walking next door.”
    Jewel continued to stare at her as she worried her lip. Then she smiled. “I think we can work something out.”
    “Work something out?”
    “Yeah—like a bargain or trade or something.”
    Caroline narrowed her eyes. “What do you mean, ‘a bargain or trade or something’? It won’t cost you anything. All I’m trying to do is make some phone calls in peace.”
    “Oh, I understand that. I’m just seeing if I can somehow work this to my advantage.”
    Caroline almost smiled. “I see,” she said, nodding her head slowly. “Sort of like, ‘I’ll scratch your back, and you’ll scratch mine’?”
    “Exactly.” Jewel smiled broadly. “Except it would be more along the lines of you get to use my phone, and I get coaching.”
    For a long moment Caroline felt as if her head were being held underwater and she couldn’t fill her lungs with air. “No,” she finally managed.
    “I’m a good swimmer. I know my dad doesn’t think so, but I am. I just need a coach to help me be a more competitive swimmer so I can make the swim team. And I’d be a quick learner. . . .”
    Caroline shook her head. “No. It’s not that. It’s just that . . . I can’t. I haven’t been in the water in almost thirteen years.”
    Jewel regarded her silently, her eyes probing where Caroline didn’t want to go. “Why?”
    Why? How could she explain something she didn’t really understand herself? Because I have a horrible scar that will show in a bathing suit? Because it reminds me of my dead brother? “Because I haven’t had time. I don’t think I could even float now, so I couldn’t possibly be the right person. . . .”
    Jewel leaned forward. “I’ve seen your trophies. I think you’re the perfect person to coach me.” She smiled angelically. “Especially if you need to use the phone in peace.”
    Caroline stood abruptly, knocking over her empty Coke can. “I’ll have to think about it.”
    Jewel stood too. “My mom died while swimming, you know. But I don’t think she’d want me to stay away from the water. She’d have been the first person to kick my butt and push me into the lake and tell me to get over it.”
    A corner of Caroline’s mouth turned up. “Yeah. That sounds like Shelby.” And then she thought of the water again, of the cool weight of it against her bare skin. She could feel her heart beating heavily in her chest, the feeling of restlessness falling on her again. She needed to get outside. She needed to breathe. “I need to go.