Free The Things We Wish Were True by Marybeth Mayhew Whalen Page B

happened to her son. Lance could hear Zell’s voice, slow and deliberate, relaying the news in a way that was almost businesslike.
    Cailey went back to sobbing, repeating the same words over and over again. “She’s going to be so mad at me. She told me to watch him.” Lance and Lilah looked at each other as, helplessly, Lilah attempted to stroke the girl’s bare back, flanked by two straps of her bathing suit, the little nodules of her spine poking out from beneath her skin. Lance got a towel and wrapped it around Cailey, who turned to see who had done so. She looked up at him.
    “Are you the guy who saved him?” she asked. Her eyes bored into him, unsettled him.
    He nodded and attempted to give her a little smile, but it fell flat. He wanted to offer her something, promise her that her brother would be OK, but he couldn’t say that, not with any certainty. He didn’t make a habit of lying to kids, at least not any more than he had to. He’d had to lie to his own children a fair amount lately, more than he ever thought he’d have to in his entire parenting career. It was for their own good, he told himself. It was so they’d believe there was still some good in the world. Of course that was a lie. Just look at what had happened here, today, in a place that should be reserved for happiness.
    “Will you take me to him now?” Cailey asked.
    He searched for the right words to respond. Trucking over to the hospital with his kids and this girl all in wet bathing suits in search of a little boy who may or may not be dying didn’t sound like the most prudent thing to do at that moment. And yet, how could he say no?
    Suddenly Jencey was at his side. She looked knowingly at Lance, then crouched down and looked at Cailey. She spoke in that same measured, even tone Zell had been using. It must be a mom reflex. Standing so close to Jencey, he could smell her skin. It smelled like Coppertone and sunshine. He inhaled deeply, imagining the scent of her going inside him, inflating his battered lungs. He scolded himself for thinking such a thing at a time like this.
    “Cailey, honey, why don’t you let one of us take you home and wait for your mom to call and let us know what she’d like us to do? I’m not sure that going to be with Cutter right now is the best thing for any of us.” She gestured to the girl’s bathing suit. “Wouldn’t you like to get some dry clothes?”
    Cailey shook her head emphatically. “I want to be with Cutter!” The three of them—Jencey, the woman holding the little boy, and Lance—all looked at one another helplessly. Just then Zell bustled back over and handed the phone to Cailey.
    “Your mama wants to speak to you,” she said.
    “Is she mad?” Cailey asked, her voice gone hoarse.
    “She’s upset, honey. But not at you.” Zell patted her shoulder. She took a few steps away and motioned for the others to follow her. Lance obeyed, as did the rest of them. “That mother is a basket case,” Zell said quietly. “I mean imagine getting news like this in the middle of your workday. I don’t think she even entirely understood what I was telling her. She just burst into tears and didn’t make a whole lot of sense after that. I told her I’d be happy to take Cailey home with me until we can figure out what to do.” She looked into the pairs of eyes looking back at her for confirmation.
    They all nodded dumbly, lacking a better idea. There was no protocol for such things.
    Zell nodded twice. “OK. That’s what we’ll do.”
    Lance had no idea how these strangers had suddenly become a “we.” Zell was his next-door neighbor who had somehow made herself indispensable to him since summer began. The other woman was someone he’d met five seconds before he saw the boy in the pool, and he still didn’t know the other woman’s name at all. He glanced over at Cailey, hunched over in a white plastic chair, her body all but curled into a ball around that phone, and thought of the weight