Page 139 of Not Quite Dead Yet

‘When we finished playing soccer, Dad was starting the grill and Luke was going home. But then Luke realized he’d forgotten a key and wasn’t sure if any of the doors were unlocked at yours. Mom said she’d walk Luke back, make sure he got in OK. I went too. Followed my mom everywhere back then.’ He sniffed. ‘We tried the front door first. Knocked. No one answered. We thought Emily had probably gone out. So Mom walked us around the side to try the doors at the back. It was open, that side door.’ He pointed to it, the one into the laundry room. The same one Jet’s killer had walked through. ‘Me and Mom were just about to leave when Mom looked over here and …’ He trailed off, eyes flickering over the covered pool.

‘You saw Emily,’ Jet said, not a question.

‘You couldn’t really see her,’ Billy said. ‘Just the colors. The shape. On the bottom of the pool.’

Jet swallowed.

‘Mom screamed when she realized. Screamed so loud. Luke ran back over. Dad heard, across the road. He came running. So did Mr Griffin, from next door.’ Billy closed his eyes, like he could see it all again, unfolding in front of him, seventeen years gone in a blink. ‘Dad was the one to jump in, right away, all his clothes. He swam down to the bottom. Those were the longest few seconds I can ever remember. He came back up without her. Said that her hair was stuck in the drain and he couldn’t pull her up. He told Luke to run inside and find some scissors. Luke did, fastest I’d ever seen him move. He jumped in the pool to get the scissors to Dad. Dad went under. Even longer this time. Came back up with Emily in his arms, hair ragged, half cut away.’

Billy moved closer to the pool.

‘He got her out, right here.’ He bent to touch the exacttile. ‘Luke helped, pushed her legs up. And then Dad started CPR. But … she was already blue. I remember thinking that – that it was too late. Mr Griffin called the ambulance. And Mom, she was hugging Luke. And I watched. Right here.’ He stepped back and pointed at his feet, where he’d stood as a little boy. ‘Dad refused to stop, the whole time, even though I think we all knew. The ambulance arrived maybe ten minutes later, took over. And then it was only a couple of minutes until you got home with your parents.’

Billy looked over at her finally, back here and now.

‘You were still holding your little trophy.’ Billy choked up, coughed into his fist. ‘I’ll never forget the sound your mom made, when she saw Emily. People don’t scream like that, it …’

Jet remembered it too. But people did scream like that. Billy had, when he found Jet.

‘So it was your mom who found Emily?’

That pit of guilt opening up in Jet’s gut again.

‘Yeah,’ Billy sniffed. ‘She was the first.’

‘Did she … did she ever talk about Emily after?’

Billy looked at the sky. ‘We sometimes talked about what happened, about that day. She always got upset.’

‘But did she ever mention … did she know what Emily wanted to tell her, or that she wanted to tell her something?’

‘What are you thinking?’ Billy asked her.

Jet wasn’t sure what she was thinking, hoped she’d figure it out as she was speaking.

‘Well, Emily’s message said she’d started to tell your mom on that Friday, but then your mom had to leave. So maybe your mom knew something, a part of it, if it wasn’t just a school thing, if it was the secret about Luke, what Emily overheard. And, with Emily dying the next day, maybe she would have thought it was more important, I don’t know. Told someone what she knew, wrote it down or …’

Billy’s bottom lip folded up. ‘She never said anything to me.’

‘But you were a kid,’ Jet countered. ‘Do you … do you still have any of her stuff?’

Billy glanced back at Jet’s house, his own childhood home hidden behind it.

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Dad wanted to throw most of it out, but I made him keep it. It’s all boxed up in the attic. Not her phone or her laptop or anything like that. She took those with her when she left.’

‘Any of her work stuff, from school?’

‘Yeah, I mean there were her work diaries, some calendars, things like that.’

‘From 2008?’ Jet asked, a tiny trickle of hope, filling in that pit in her gut.

‘Probably.’ Billy was still looking toward his house, eyes faraway, farther than that. ‘Mom liked to keep things like that. Had memory boxes from each year, ticket stubs, pressed flowers – you know, that kind of thing.’

‘Can we look?’ Jet asked, treading carefully. ‘See if she kept anything, wrote anything down, about Emily?’

‘Yeah.’ Billy turned his back on the pool. ‘I’m not sure we’ll find anything, but we can look while we wait for your mom to come home.’

‘Reggie!’ Jet called, the dog appearing in a flash of orangey fur, now sockless, front paws stained brown from digging. ‘Come on.’