The Drowning Girls Read online

  And then at some point I caught what I was doing, and I slammed the lip of the laptop shut.

  No more Kelsey, I promised myself.

  At the time, I thought it was a promise I would be able to keep.

  * * *

  The video camera installation was scheduled for the week of Thanksgiving, when most of the residents of The Palms would be out of town and the clubhouse dining room was closed. Phil planned to stay to oversee its completion, and I put up only the weakest of protests.

  It had been a tradition for all of my adult life to have Thanksgiving with my family in Riverside. I’d come home even when Danielle was young and money was so tight I could pay the gas only one way, and had to beg money from my parents for the return to San Jose. When my dad died, the trip became something of an annual pilgrimage. For the past four years, Phil had come, too, the three of us crowding into my mother’s house, overwhelming her kitchen, eating too much of everything and talking through the Macy’s parade and marathons of Law & Order and NCIS. Most years, Allie could come; this year, with her new job in Chicago, she was only flying out for Christmas.

  Still—I was looking forward to the trip, even though it would be only the three of us. It was four full days away from The Palms—a vacation from the vacation, as it were. Was this how my neighbors felt when they headed off to Aruba for a week, to Napa for the weekend?

  And yes, it was a vacation from Phil, too. Maybe distance was what we needed, an unofficial, short-lived break to put us back on course. I told myself that anyway, as he loaded our suitcases into my trunk on Tuesday morning in a T-shirt and a pair of old sweatpants. He leaned against the driver’s window, double-checking that I had our boarding passes and, for emergencies, the lone credit card we hadn’t maxed out.

  “What will you do without us?” I asked.

  “Miss you horribly.” He leaned in, giving me a quick kiss on the cheek. It was the closest we’d been in a month.

  He waved at Danielle, who was digging her earphones out of her backpack. “Have a good time, Danielle.”

  “Yup,” she said, not looking at either of us.

  * * *

  Somehow, while I mocked the amenities at The Palms, I’d grown used to them. It was a shock to drive down Mom’s street in Riverside, where the front lawns were set close to the street, the lampposts covered with graffiti. She still lived in the bungalow where I’d grown up, although more and more the house seemed to be caving in on itself, the linoleum curving at its edges, cobwebs blooming in the corners. How much longer could she live here, and where would she go when she couldn’t? Since our move to The Palms, I’d been trying to envision Mom there, sunning herself on our deck, walking arm in arm with me on the trail. But I knew she wouldn’t go willingly.

  Over the years, Allie and I had offered to move Mom into our various apartments and rentals, but she had always insisted on her independence. She had a once-a-week housekeeper, but the walls were smudged with fingerprints and the windows streaked from a sloppy effort. Six years since Dad’s heart attack, the walls still smelled like his nicotine.

  Beneath her black tunic, Mom’s body seemed more frail, her collarbone and cheekbones more prominent. With the busyness of our move, Danielle and I had skipped our summer visit, so the ordinary changes of aging were less subtle. We hugged and kissed, and then Mom turned her attention to Danielle. “Very chic,” she pronounced, running her fingers over Danielle’s hair. And then, making us laugh, “But why are you wearing so much makeup?”

  We took Mom to a Mexican restaurant just around the corner, a place where she had a particular booth and a waitress who knew her order. Halfway through the meal I realized I was exhausted, the tension of the past weeks catching up to me. Between the drive to the airport, the shuttle ride, the flight and the hassle of picking up a rental car, it had been a sixteen-hour day. Back at Mom’s house, Danielle and I collapsed into the twin beds in the room I’d shared with Allie. We’d long ago removed our posters and books and knickknacks, but the space held the same creaky furniture, the same plaid comforters. It wasn’t until we’d turned out the light that I realized I’d never called Phil to tell him we arrived, and he’d never called me to check.

  On Wednesday we went grocery shopping and baked pumpkin bread in Mom’s galley kitchen, bumping into each other and apologizing and backing out of each other’s way. Her kitchen made me feel nostalgic for the one Phil and I had left behind in Livermore, where we’d brushed against each other constantly, where he’d stood behind me, humming some off-key tune, arms around my waist while I chopped a pepper. At The Palms, there was no need to bump into each other, ever.

  Once the bread was in the oven, Danielle excused herself to lie on the couch in the living room, where the cushions were indented from Mom’s daily use, the corduroy worn shiny.

  Mom poured me a cup of coffee, expertly gathering cream and sugar and a little tray of cookies. “Does Danielle want something to drink?”

  “Let me see.” I peeked into the living room again and reported that Danielle was napping—mouth open, one arm draped over her head.

  “She didn’t even get up until nine thirty,” Mom commented. “It must be rough being a teenager.”

  I laughed. “I bet she could sleep for twelve hours at a stretch, every day.”

  Mom smiled, wetting a cloth in the sink. “You were like that, too.”

  “I was?”

  “Of course. You and Allie both, always in your bedroom after school, napping before dinner.”

  I closed my eyes, instantly gutted. It was impossible to remember my own teenage years without a guilty lurch. Payback’s a bitch, Allie had written to me after Danielle’s grounding—and I agreed. If there was any what-comes-around-goes-around karmic fairness, I had more coming to me.

  “It was like you’d run a marathon each day,” Mom continued now, and I remembered all the times she’d stood in the doorway of our bedroom, whispering, “Allie? Lizzie?” It was easier to pretend I was asleep than to explain that I was reading or scribbling in my journal, guarding my thoughts from her as if they were possessions that could be snatched away at any time.

  Still, I reminded myself as Mom bustled around the kitchen, wiping off countertops and door handles, it had been surprisingly difficult to keep secrets from her. Since she couldn’t see what we were up to, her other senses were on constant overload. By smelling one of Allie’s shirts, she deduced there was a boyfriend; hearing me laugh late at night, she somehow figured out my plans for an upcoming party. And then there were her hands—roving, finding, assessing, on a persistent search to find evidence about our lives.

  It was uncanny how she knew that something was wrong, even now, when I was standing still next to her. Maybe there was the scent of failure about me, an aura of sadness. I hadn’t intended to tell her anything about Phil. Where would I have started? Mom loved Phil; she’d seen him as a sort of savior, appearing out of the blue with his charming accent to rescue her single daughter. It would break her heart to hear that we were having trouble; it would shatter her to learn what I suspected and what still lingered as a nagging doubt.

  I saw that her head was cocked, as if she were listening to all the things I wasn’t saying. “Well,” she said, “are you going to tell me?”

  I took a sip of coffee and cleared my throat. “Tell you what?”

  “Oh, honey,” she said, with the voice that could always make me melt, even at thirty-four. “Aren’t you going to tell me what’s wrong?”

  “What do you mean? There’s nothing...” But my voice cracked, and I set down the mug with a clank. Of course there was. Since we’d moved to The Palms, everything had been sliding away, the ground continually shifting beneath my feet.

  She wiped her hands on the dish towel hanging from the oven door and came to me, touching my forearms first and working her way up, until her thumbs were
tracing over my cheeks, gently tapping away my tears.

  * * *

  Our flight was delayed on its return, and it had taken a while for our suitcases to come tumbling down the baggage claim, so it was dark when Danielle and I pulled up to the entrance of The Palms on Friday. After the coziness of real life with my mom, The Palms felt impersonal as a movie set. Beyond the giant security gates, there was hardly a leaf on a front lawn or a weed that dared to poke itself through the mulch in a flower bed.

  Maybe because The Palms always looked perfect, it was easy to spot the fliers affixed to the lampposts, their edges fluttering, like one of those “What’s Wrong?” picture pairs Danielle and I used to look at together on the back of Highlights for Children. I knew the HOA had a rule about posting fliers, like they did about lemonade stands and garage sales and inflatable Santas.

  “Grab one of those for me,” I said, pulling in front of the Browerses’ house.

  Danielle unfastened her seat belt and hopped out. Down the street, I spotted Phil’s SUV in our driveway and felt the uneasiness return. In four days, we had exchanged a few texts, but only one phone call, made postfeast, while I was stuffed with turkey and buttery yams. You can work it out, Mom had told me, knowing only the barest of details. Everything can be worked out when you love each other.

  She almost had me convinced.

  “Here,” Danielle said, handing me the flier as she got back into the car. “It’s that dog.”

  MISSING

  Virgil Zhang

  Virgil is a three-year-old Bedlington Terrier, white, 18 pounds, with a recently groomed and trimmed coat.

  He was last seen on Thanksgiving Day in our backyard at approximately 8:30 p.m.

  $1,000 reward

  The bottom half of the flier was dominated by a picture of Virgil, a fussy, expensive-looking animal, more lamb than dog, and four different contact numbers for the Zhangs. They had doted on Virgil, taking him for walks twice a day and to the groomer every other week.

  “Maybe it got out the back,” Danielle said. The Zhangs’ house was another one on the fairway; a low fence separated their property from the golf course, same as ours. “It could be anywhere, poor thing.”

  We parked in the driveway and hauled our suitcases up the path, using the front door. For a moment, sliding the key into the lock, it felt as if we were visitors, here with our luggage for a night at a colossal B and B.

  Phil was on the couch in the den, a few empty beers on the coffee table in front of him, an open bag of chips. I recognized Marlon Brando as Don Corleone on the TV, paused midsentence. Phil was wearing the same sweatpants from earlier in the week, and his patchy beard suggested that he hadn’t shaved since then, either.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Hey.” I bent over the back of the couch and planted a soft kiss on his cheek. And then I joined him, putting my feet up on the table in front of us, not caring if my shoes scuffed the finish. On the flight home, I imagined telling him every little detail of the trip—the expired cans I’d tossed from Mom’s pantry, the game of Trivial Pursuit we’d played, Danielle and me no match for Mom. It had been so long since we’d really talked, since we’d been the real Liz and the real Phil. I’d been packing my head with a mantra about new beginnings, about all great relationships being tested, about not throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

  But we didn’t reach for each other. We didn’t talk about how much we’d missed each other or the minutiae that had filled our time apart. For a long time we said nothing, and then I commented, “It looks like Virgil Zhang got out.”

  Phil took a sip of beer and said only, “That stupid dog.”

  PHIL

  I stayed behind over Thanksgiving, telling Liz that Parker-Lane wanted me to remain on-site for the installation of the cameras. This was true, although I’d been the one to suggest it to them in the first place. The main reason was that I needed a bit of time alone.

  I made sure Liz and Danielle wouldn’t be coming back for something they’d forgotten, and then I got in my SUV and drove to San Francisco to meet with an attorney. I had a folder with the letter I’d written and revised, the flash drive with Kelsey’s emails and tucked away in the bottom of my old briefcase, a Ziploc bag with the underwear I’d rescued from the backyard the morning after my fight with Liz.

  I had three appointments lined up, and I went from one to the next, telling my story. These were free consultations, but I had two thousand dollars in cash with me, filched from our slim savings account. If there was a bottom line to sign, I would sign it.

  One cut me off with a raised hand and said he didn’t want anything to do with a case involving a minor and sexual harassment. Another looked from Kelsey’s thong to me, disgusted. He was probably ready to report me to CPS then and there. The third only cringed and commented that he was glad it wasn’t happening to him.

  “What do you recommend that I do?” I asked.

  “Are you serious about this? Go to the police. File a report.”

  I shook my head. Did he think I hadn’t considered this a thousand times over? “She’ll deny it and claim that I’m the one harassing her.”

  He looked thoughtful. “I have a buddy from law school who handled a case like this. Lives in Atlanta, though.”

  I jotted down the buddy’s name and contact information, but tossed it into the trash on the way past the receptionist’s desk. Atlanta? That would never work.

  * * *

  At first, residents at The Palms were divided over the video cameras. Rich Sievert wondered if the feed could be hacked by the NSA, if the private comings and goings of residents would be a matter of public record. Myriam wanted to know who exactly would be monitoring the cameras, as she had done some research and objected to a number of companies who had received poor customer service ratings.

  Until that issue was settled, I was the only one with access to the footage. The software had been installed on my office computer and on my personal laptop, and when I activated it, the screen sprang to life with the live feed from dozens of cameras, each visible through tiny rectangular boxes.

  “No one expects you to spend much time on that,” Jeff Parker had assured me. “Just installing the cameras goes a long way toward easing anxiety. If something happens, we can look back on the record. That’s probably enough to deter most of the crime around here, anyway.”

  I found the video feed to be strangely addictive, my own private reality show.

  Until their lives were on display for me, I hadn’t been interested in the comings and goings of my neighbors. Most of them had cleared out for the Thanksgiving holiday, but I watched the rest of them go about their daily lives—the joggers, the yoga enthusiasts, the tennis players, the golfers, the retired couples, the nannies taking kids to the play structure. Video cameras had been installed in conspicuous areas, and at first the residents were aware of them, sometimes glancing in the direction of the camera or even waving. But after the initial interest, they resumed their regular lives. I caught husbands and wives arguing or kissing; I caught joggers stopping to adjust their bras or pluck a twisted piece of fabric out of a crotch. Brock Asbill patted his nanny on the ass and outside the clubhouse, Mac Sievert smoked a joint with a friend.

  I watched for evidence of Kelsey, since the Jorgensens had stayed home for the holiday. They were hosting Sonia’s side of the family, blond and blue-eyed, the lot of them. There was a camera trained on the hallway outside my office; if Kelsey passed by, it would catch her. Another camera was trained on the walking trail behind our house, and if she decided to play Peeping Tom again, it would catch her then, too.

  * * *

  The night before Thanksgiving, I went to bed with a biography of John Adams that I’d been trying to read since before we moved to The Palms. When I woke, the room was quiet, the moon a sliver outside the window.
Then I heard it again, the sound that must have woken me in the first place. It was a slight ping against the window and as I waited, it came again, then again.

  I flicked on the bedside light and stumbled toward the window, yanking back the sash. Kelsey was down below, standing next to the pool in her black bikini. I shook my head, ordering myself to wake up.

  She waved and stepped onto the diving board. It was a dream, I thought—I’m dreaming of that first day she came to the house. I watched as she took a little hop and did an easy swan dive into the water, which barely rippled. I held my breath, counting, but she didn’t surface. Ten seconds, twenty. I was about to charge down the stairs, dive into the water and get her, when she emerged from the far end of the pool, naked.

  She must have been freezing, but it didn’t seem as if she were in any hurry. Looking up at my window, she twisted her hair behind her head, wringing it free of water.

  Stop, I ordered myself. Look away.

  Before, it had been a glance at her cleavage, a kiss full on the mouth—things I hadn’t asked for, things I had to keep reminding myself I didn’t want. Now there was the full sight of her—firm breasts, a narrow waist, the dark V of her crotch. Too late, I remembered I was collecting evidence and grabbed for my phone. She had on a pair of sweatpants by the time I snapped her picture. A moment later, she had pulled a sweatshirt over her head and slipped her feet into a pair of shoes. Without looking in my direction again, she exited through the back gates and disappeared.

  I raced downstairs to grab my laptop and looked back through the feed. There she was, passing the camera in her sweats; there, less than ten minutes later, she passed in the opposite direction, her hair hanging wet on her back. After leaving my house, she’d taken the walking trail past the clubhouse and disappeared onto the Jorgensens’ street. How had she explained her absence, then her reappearance a short time later dripping wet, in the middle of a house of relatives?