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to discuss. Knew and didn’t want to know. He was his
mother’s son. She heard her teeth clicking again, chat-
tering as if against the cold. Following Henry’s lead was
not always as easy as it sounded.
Downstairs, she tried her sister again. Would Shelley
ever pick up? The machine clicked on and Lane left a
message. “Mom told me you and Dad are coming. Is
that true? Call me.” She hung up and waited, fooled for a
moment into convincing herself her sister would actually
call right back. Some wishes were hard to quit.
She found relief in her laptop, in a letter from the Sooner file. A veterinary technician ranting about people who
brought their dogs in to have their nails clipped. I am not a groomer, the technician complained. I’m a caregiver for animals. Every minute I spend clipping the overgrown nails of a lazy owner’s dog is one less minute I have to spend with a sick animal who needs my care. Maybe a person who can’t clip their own dog’s nails shouldn’t have a dog. And it was off to the races, Lane disappearing into the world of someone else’s problems.
h h
h h
The next morning, she found her mother at the kitchen
table. She eyed the single slice of dry toast on her mother’s plate. “Are you feeling okay?”
“I’m a bit under the weather.”
Under the weather. Like Uncle Albie. “What’s wrong?”
Lane asked.
“I told you. I’m under the weather.”
Henry walked in, rubbing his eyes. “What are we
having for breakfast?”
“You’re having waffles,” Lane said. “I’m eating later,
after I swim.”
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Her mother smiled at Henry and Henry smiled at
her and they all continued on in their fake tableau of
domestic peace.
h h
h h
When she got back from dropping Henry off, her mother
wasn’t in any of her usual perches, not in the kitchen, not out on the deck, not in the reading chair in the living
room. When she went upstairs and saw the guest room
door was shut, she knocked.
Her mother called out, “Can’t a person have some rest?”
“Sorry.” Lane slipped into her bedroom and put on
her bathing suit. As she crossed the lawn to the edge
of the pond, she tried to put everything—her mother,
her sister, Aaron’s dimple, Henry’s drawings, Sam, Bert,
Summer, summer—out of her mind. The water was cool.
She waded in up to her knees, stood up, splashed her legs
and arms and dove in.
Her first lap started slow. Summer popped in, first
in line in her mind. Last night Summer had sent two
emails that sounded different. Her chirpiness was gone.
She sounded almost gloomy. What was happening with
her? What was going on with Sam?
Shelley joined her next. Why wasn’t her sister sharing
her plans? If her mother hadn’t mentioned she was coming,
Lane would never have known. When was Shelley coming
and why? The temperature dropped. She was approaching
the middle of the pond where water was deeper.
Her father popped up next. That he had gone to
London to see Shelley was completely confounding. Had
her parents negotiated these trips, one going to Lane, the other to Shelley? Had they decided to divide and conquer?
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Why would they do that? Her mother continued to avoid
answering the question of whether she was on a prolonged
visit or staying for good. If she was staying, there were
things they needed to talk about first. There was no way
she could just—
She lurched forward, her pace quickening as suddenly
as if someone had pushed her to hurry her along. But no
one was pushing her. She accelerated on her own and
her mind responded to her quickened pace by quieting.
The sound of her breathing matched the rhythm of
her stroke. Her body calmed. Her shoulders felt loose.
Her limbs felt fluid. And then—a sudden spasm, her
foot, an unexpected cramp. She opened her mouth in
surprise and gulped water and then had a fit of spitting
and coughing. It took a moment of flailing before she
and looked around. With relief, she saw she was alone.
She continued to tread for a moment, concentrating on
slowing her racing heart and then—another spasm, this
one worse. The cramp that started with the toes on her
left foot traveled down to her sole and then up her calf.
She bent down and grabbed her foot to fight the curled
toes, treading with one leg as best she could.
She took a breath—the main thing was to stay calm—
and assessed the situation. The last time this happened, in New Jersey, she’d sidestroked to the nearby edge of the
pool. But there was no nearby edge here. She flipped onto
her back into a dead man’s float. The cramp returned,
spreading up into the muscles of her calf. How long did
these cramps last? She had no idea. She hadn’t paid at-
tention to that in the pool because it didn’t matter. In
the pool she could swim to the edge and heave herself
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out. Maybe it would only last a minute. A minute could
feel long but it was just a minute. She could float for a
minute and then swim. She could float for five minutes
and then swim.
The pain sharpened. Now her entire leg was in a
clench. She forced herself to open her eyes and concen-
trate on the clouds above. The sky was gray, the same
gray as the sky on the day Shelley and Ivy climbed onto
the roof. The cramp released.
She flipped to her side but after a single stroke the
cramp was back. She looked toward the shore—too far—
and toward the house—same distance. She was in the
middle. The median. The mode. She forced herself to
take several long strokes, muscling her way through the
pain. Her chest tightened. Panic.
Okay. Panic was not helpful. She needed to keep her
focus on making it to the shore. She could backstroke
her way to the shore. Henry wanted to teach Uncle Albie
the backstroke when they were in Florida. There was so
much her mother didn’t say in Florida. And what she did
say was not true. The story about Uncle Albie on vaca-
tion? Why had Lane believed that? Of course he wasn’t
on vacation. He was probably in a hospital for—what did
her mother used to call it?—a tune-up.
Her toes curled again. She could swim through this
pain, for Henry. She just had to breathe. That’s what she
told readers who wrote about panic attacks. Her readers
had lots of panic attacks. They had them on planes and in
cars, while giving presentations and planning weddings,
while dealing with divorce and death.
After Ivy fell out the window, Lane had ended up on
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fainted because she stopped breathing. Breathe, her
mother said then. Breathe, she wrote to her readers. Breathe, she told herself now.
Slow breath in. Think of Henry. Slow breath out.
Think of Henry.
The cramp moved upward. Now it was in her stomach.
She tried to make her body go limp to see if that would
release the pain. She let herself sink, let go of all tension, all thoughts, except one: Breathe.
It happened fast. First there was a shadow, something
big, too big to be a fish and then there was a body, a body at her side. The body lifted her. The body was a man
with strong arms and hair slicked back. The body was
Griffin, holding her with one arm as he swam through
the water. She let herself become a fish, fluid and bone-
less, as he carried her to the shore.
When he finally rose, dark eyes blinking, sunlight
catching the water at the edges of his lashes, he held her in his arms and walked out of the pond like he was the
creature from the Black Lagoon, and she his bride.
h h
h h
Someone must have seen her in the water because by the
time Griffin placed her, gently, on her dock there were
several people waiting. She recognized Aggie first, who
ran as she called out to her son. “Griff. Are you okay?
Good,” she said with relief, after he nodded.
she slowly rose. She saw that her mother’s face was lined
with worry. “I’m fine,” she told her. “I had a cramp.
That’s all.” Her mother’s hand was over her mouth as
she eyed Griffin.
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“Did he come after you?” The woman speaking looked
unfamiliar. “I’ve heard he does that. Just rears up out of the water to scare people.”
“No,” Lane told her. “He was trying to help me.
To save me.” She looked toward where Aggie had been
standing but now she was gone. She and Griffin were
both gone, vanished into the woods as if they’d never
been there at all.
379
CHAPTER THIRTY
Henry was painting a mural for Eclipse Day called Oh
Henry’s Galaxy. His mom didn’t know about it because it was a secret. The good kind of secret. The Surprise
kind. Everyone at camp was making a Surprise for their
mom to see at the end-of-camp party. Or for their mom
and dad. His was just for his mom. He was pretty sure his
surprise would make her happy, but it was hard to know.
He didn’t understand all the rules of Happy.
Esther and Russell’s surprise was a play called, Esther and Russell. The play was about a brother and sister trying to figure out what happened to the Gemini constellation.
In the play, the Gemini constellation falls out of the sky and no one can find it. Esther and Russell like the Gemini constellation best because it means twins, which they are.
Jonah and Penelope’s Surprise was a concert they made
up on the piano. Dylan told them not to do that surprise
because the piano was Out of Tunes but he was wrong.
Penelope and Jonah found lots of tunes on the piano.
Because his mural was big, Henry was painting it in
the room called the Back Office, to keep it a surprise.
His drawing friends were helping him. At first Dylan told
them they couldn’t help because, “It’s called the Oh Henry Galaxy for a reason. Only Henry can paint it.”
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Someone told Amanda what Dylan said so she asked
Henry if he wanted to paint with his friends, Yes or No,
and he said, Yes. He didn’t say that in out-loud words,
though. He said it in sign language. Every time he used
sign language, it made Amanda’s smile Extra Happy.
His friends helped paint the planets and the sky but
they let Henry paint all the constellations by himself.
The counselors put a countdown on the easel next
to the door to show how many days were left until the
Eclipse Party. Before the countdown, what the easel said
was the weather, and if it was a holiday like National
Merry-Go-Round Day, and if could they Swim in the
Pond, hooray or no, and the name of everyone who saw
the Snapping Turtle under the Dock. He saw the turtle
the first time he went in the lake, but he couldn’t tell
anyone so his name didn’t make the list.
The first day of the eclipse countdown it said, ten days
and counting. The day it said, five days and counting,
was the day Henry forgot to wash the constellation paint
off his hands at the end of camp. He didn’t notice until
he was home in the kitchen with his mom, who started
making dinner and asking questions about his day like,
“Did you have a good day?”
Even though he hid his hands behind his back, his
mom saw them and wanted to know why they had paint
on them. He tried to look surprised that his hands had
paint on them because he did not want to tell his mom
about the mural. If he told her, it wouldn’t be a surprise and he’d have to make up a new surprise because the rule
at camp was Everybody Has to Have a Surprise for Eclipse
Day. Henry didn’t think he could come up with another
Surprise he liked as much as a mural of Oh Henry’s Galaxy.
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The paint on his hands made his mom’s face looked
Worried. But she had looked worried for a lot of days
in a row so maybe it wasn’t because of the paint. Her
worried face started on the night she asked if she could
talk to him about something and he pretended to be
asleep so she didn’t. He wasn’t sure what she wanted to
talk about, but the look on her face didn’t match I Have
Something I Want to Talk About. It looked more like, I
Have Something I Do Not Want to Talk About.
While he was looking at his painted hands he got in
idea about what she might be worried about. His idea
was, maybe she found the letter from his dad that was in
the box under his bed. That letter might make her say
she wanted to talk while her face said something else.
He waited till she was doing dishes and then ran
upstairs fast and pulled out the box to check and, phew.
The letter was still there. He was shoving it back under
his bed when his mom came in for Tell Me That Story.
Now her face looked Worried and Disappointed.
He picked the story but instead of listening to her tell
it he thought about, if he gave her the letter from his dad now, would her eyebrows go Unslanty or More Slanty?
Even though he was a good guesser, he couldn’t guess
the answer to that.
He was still trying to decide whether he should show
it or not show it when he noticed his mom had stopped
talking. Her eyes were closed. Not resting closed. Sleeping closed. Probably sleeping. He put his hand under her nose
to make sure she was breathing. She was. Breathing and
sleeping. Falling asleep in the middle of Tell Me That
Story used to happen Never. Then it happened Sometimes.
Now it happened A Lot.
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On the day when the ecl
ipse was three days and
counting, Henry asked his mom if instead of Tell Me
That Story they could have Show and Tell. She said, Yes.
Then he asked if it was okay to do a Show and Tell if the
Show part might make the other person sad.
His mom’s face got Very Serious. “What a good ques-
tion. I would say sometimes that might not be okay. But
with me, it’s fine. You can share anything with me.” She
said, Anything, a second time and then, “Okay?”
He nodded and asked if she wanted to go first or
second. She said he should go first because she hadn’t
figured out what to show him yet. He reminded her that
she had something to Show him and then he reminded
her about the night they ate clams, when her teeth were
clicking and she was going to show him something and
then she forgot.
Her face got Surprised. “Aw buddy. I didn’t forget. I
thought you didn’t want to talk about it. And I didn’t want to force you talk about something you didn’t want to.”
“Oh,” he said. “What is it?”
Her eyes looked like they were itchy. She rubbed hard
on the itch and then gave him a squeezy hug and said,
“That will be my Show and Tell. You go first.”
He pulled the box out from under his bed and told his
mom he was sorry he broke rule five. “I didn’t unpack
this in New Jersey so it should have stayed in New Jersey.”
She wrapped her finger around one of his curly-qs.
“I’m starting to think Grandma Sylvie’s rules aren’t really right for us,” she said. “What do you think?”
He wasn’t sure what he thought so he said, “Thank
you.” Then he pulled the letter out from underneath the
flashlights. Seven constellation caps flew onto the floor.
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He scooped them up fast so she wouldn’t get Mad. Her
face stayed Waiting.
He handed her the envelope and pointed to her name.
“For you. From Dad. I know it’s from Dad because…” He
pointed. “Crunchy handwriting.” She didn’t say anything.
“My guess is he put it in the box so he could save it for
the right time to give it to you. But then he ran out of
time. You can read it later.”
At first nothing moved on her face and then her mouth
moved and she said, “Thank you.” And then her eyes
moved, Blinky and Sad.
That made him feel sad so he changed the subject to,
“Where’s your Show and Tell?”