Free The Drowning Tree by Carol Goodman

Christmas although she had heard from her sister, Beth, who still works at Briarwood (Ruth had worked there in the kitchen before she’d injured her knee and retired on disability) that Christine had been nosing around up there last month. “You’d think she could have spared a minute to visit her mother.”
    I murmur something noncommittal—the alternative being to point out that fifteen years ago Mrs. Webb hadn’t been able to
spare a minute
to come to Christine’s graduation. Christine had graduated
summa cum laude
and
Phi Beta Kappa
without a single family member in attendance. Since I had just given birth—and Bea was still in NICU because she’d been born prematurely—she also missed having her best friend there.
    I WISH I COULD SAY I SPENT THE REMAINDER OF THE WEEK TRYING TO FIND C HRISTINE but although I was worried about her, I didn’t really see what I could do.When I asked her mother if she would file a missing persons report she responded that Christine had vanished like this before and turned up
when she was good and ready to
. I could tell from her tone of voice that she assumed Christine must be drinking again. Maybe she was right. When Christine was drinking she would often disappear for days at a time. Nathan said that he would notify the police if she didn’t show up in another twenty-four hours. In the meantime I had my own work on the window to start and Bea’s end of school and upcoming rafting trip to think about.
    Every time I looked at Bea I thought about not seeing her for eight weeks and I’d have to stop myself from saying something absurdly sentimental or hugging her, so instead I’d bring up the number of extra socks she was taking or how many protein bars she would need to subsist on her new vegan diet and we’d end up fighting. By Friday we were barely talking. I didn’t want her to go away like that so on Saturday I gave in to a request she’d been making for almost a year.
    “I thought maybe we could go kayaking together,” I mention casually over breakfast (eggs and coffee for me; a protein bar and Japanese twig tea for her). “Kyle says I’m making a lot of progress.”
    Bea looks up from her mug of murky brown tea. “Really? You mean like out on the river?”
    I shrug. “Water’s water, right? Whether it’s chlorinated pool water or Hudson River water—” I’m about to say
you can drown just as easily in both
but stop myself. “—it’s the same drill flipping yourself back up. Besides, I hardly ever tip.” This part is true. During the lessons Kyle has given me at the college pool he’s had to push me to make me learn how to capsize and right myself. Otherwise I’m so rigidly still the minute I slide into the shallow boat that it would take a tidal wave to swamp me and, as far as I know, the Hudson is relatively free of tsunami.
    Bea gets up from the table and heads barefoot out onto the roof with Paolo and Francesca close at her heels.
    “It’s a beautiful day,” she calls to me. I get up and follow her, trying not to look quite as slavishly attentive as the dogs. Her palms flat to the railing, Bea leans out toward the river and sniffs at the morning air. Her red hair, loosed from its braid, fans out in the mild breeze. Francesca rises on her hind legs, paws on the railing, and muzzles Bea’s hip. Above the hills on the western bank the sky is bright with only a thin line of cloudshovering over the Catskills. The river, which looks suddenly wider to me, is a shade of slate blue stippled with white caps.
    “It looks kind of windy,” I say.
    Bea turns to me, her hands already working in her hair to braid it. For a moment she reminds me of Christine standing in the same pose last week twisting her hair up, but then I realize the similarity is more in their expressions: the same shadow of worry that I saw in Christine last week has fallen over Bea. She’s worried I’ll be too afraid to go out on the river because of the wind. She’s right; I