Chapter 25 - The cloudy pool
Two years after the incident, Emily asked:
“Were there bodies?”
I stared.
“What?”
“In the pool.”
“No.”
“I know. But did you think there were?”
There it was.
“Yes.”
“What did you think?”
“That one bag looked like it might contain a person.”
Her face tightened.
“It didn’t.”
“No.”
“What was it?”
“Paper and a computer.”
She laughed once.
Not because funny.
Relief arriving two years late.
Then:
“Why did I tell you not to look?”
“You were scared of what Warren put there.”
“I thought Mom was in one.”
My stomach dropped.
I had never understood that.
She had seen Warren drive away with Laura.
But in the confusion, part of her thought maybe Laura had come back.
Maybe Warren had put her in the pool.
A child mind filling gaps.
I pulled her closer.
“She wasn’t.”
“I know now.”
That explained the terror in her original whisper.
Mommy tried to stop him.
The pool had not held a body.
Emily’s imagination had.
For years.
May you like
We worked on that in therapy.
Truth can arrive late and still matter.
