Page 56 of The Silent Waters (Elements 3)

“She tried to drown herself, Eric!” Mama said. Daddy’s eyes grew heavy and he asked her to repeat herself. “I told you. I told you this was all too much for her.”

I shook my head. No, Daddy. My hands were ghostly pale. I wouldn’t do that. I wouldn’t kill myself. I’m happy. Remember? I’m happy.

I needed paper. I needed to write to them. I needed to let them know.

I wasn’t trying to kill myself. They were both crying now, and Daddy could hardly breathe as his stare met mine. He looked away from me. He needed to know Mama was wrong. She’d made a mistake. She didn’t know all the facts. She had pulled me up for air, not knowing I could breathe best beneath the water.

They were fighting again.

Cheryl and I sat at the top of the steps, once again watching. My hair was still soaked from my bath, and Cheryl brushed it as we listened.

“You still don’t believe me?” Mama cried, stunned.

“You’re overreacting,” Daddy said to Mama. “She said she wasn’t trying to—”

“She didn’t say anything, Eric. She doesn’t talk, but her actions were loud and clear tonight.”

“She was taking a dip under the water when you crashed in! She was holding her breath! Jesus, Katie! This is Loren talking, not you.”

“Don’t put this on her. Don’t put this on my friend. I know what I saw. Your daughter was drowning herself.”

“My daughter?” Daddy huffed, blowing out a low whistle. “Wow.”

I felt it too, Daddy—the punch to the gut.

“You know what I mean.”

“No, I don’t think I do. Lately I have a hard time understanding anything you say.”

Mama rolled her eyes and walked off, coming back with a glass of wine. “She’s sick.”

“She’s getting better.”

“She’s getting worse, and I know it has to do with Brooks. I know it does…”

I studied Mama.

I studied every single movement she made. Daddy didn’t see it, because he only heard her paranoid chorus, and he was too busy spitting out his angered verses. He didn’t see her fidgeting fingers, her trembling legs, and the tiny twitch in her bottom lip. She was scared. Horrified. The level of fear in her body was more than a reaction from that afternoon. The fear in her movements had been in place for years, it seemed.

But what was she so afraid of?

Daddy tossed his hands on the back of his neck. “We’re running on a hamster wheel, here, Katie. What is it that you have against Brooks and Maggie being together? Because you didn’t seem to have an issue until the fantastic four came to visit. I swear, you talk so much crap about Maggie not talking, you can’t even find a voice of your own. You run off to your friends for their bullshit opinions on our family, and then you drink a bottle of wine each night. Tell me, Katie: who’s the one who needs help?”

Mama’s eyes widened, shocked by his words. Daddy seemed just as flabbergasted by his own sounds. She stormed toward their bedroom, and Daddy called after her to apologize, but she was already charging back toward him with pillows and blankets.

“You can stay out here until I get the help I need,” she snapped. “And by the way, when she ends up in the same shape as Jessica, know that you did it. Know that you caused it to happen.”

Who’s Jessica?

She left and didn’t return. Daddy stormed out of the front door. Why did everything feel like it was falling apart when for the first time in my life I felt as if I was finally falling back together?

“I know I used to never be home at night but…did they always fight like this?” Cheryl whispered. I shook my head. She kept brushing my hair. “It’s almost like they’re strangers.”

That was heartbreaking.

“Maggie?” Cheryl whispered, her voice cracking. “Did you, though? Did you try to…”

I flipped around so I was facing her, took the hairbrush from her hands, and placed both of her palms against my cheeks. I started shaking my head back and forth, staring her dead in the eye. No. No. No. No.