Sweetwater Creek (32 page)

But there had been something. Down on the little beach there were fresh, deep, wet grooves in the sand, and the water still rocked a little, slapping at the banks. Far downstream a great thrashing died away.

“Oh, we missed them,” Emily cried. “They came early; Elvis knew they were here. But we missed them! I wanted you to see…”

There was a swell and wash of creek water below them, just off the beach, and a large bullet-shaped silver head broke the water and hovered there. The huge, all-seeing black eye regarded them, and the closed, comic-strip smile saluted them, and then there was a great roll of rubbery silver flesh and the dolphin dove under and slid downstream, as silent as a ghost fish, to join his retreating pod.

“He waited for us!” Emily cried, tears and sweat stinging her eyes. “He did once before, when Lulu and I were here; Lulu said she thought they came when they knew you needed them.”

Her father smiled down at her.

“My God,” he said. “The river dolphins. I’d completely forgotten about them. I saw them when I first came here, right here on this bank.”

“Did…my mother bring you here?”

Walter Parmenter laughed, an easy, almost boyish laugh.

“Your mother never willingly went outdoors in her life. It was your Aunt Jenny, before I ever met your mother. They’re really something, aren’t they?”

They sat down on the grass beneath the fringe of willows and small live oaks. His mission completed, Elvis lay down beside Emily, his pink tongue lolling sideways out of his grinning mouth. For a long time they sat in silence.

Then her father said, “Did you know that the ratio of salt to water in seawater is exactly the same as the ratio in human blood? I read that some place. No wonder so many people are addicted to the sea.”

Emily smiled at him.

“Do you remember that time you had to come get me at camp in the mountains, and everybody thought I was just homesick and being a baby? It wasn’t that at all. It was that I just couldn’t breathe away from saltwater, from the river and the creek. I still can’t, really.”

“No,” her father said. “I didn’t know that.” He put his arm around her shoulder and drew her toward him. Emily laid her head on his shoulder, very carefully and slowly, as though the shoulder would of itself heave her off.

“I didn’t know much about you at all, did I?” he said. “I have a lot of catching up to do.”

They sat in silence again. Emily did not lift her head. Beside her, Elvis snored rhythmically. She touched the breast pocket of her shirt and felt the stiff outline of folded paper.

“Tell me about my mother,” she said.

ON A BLUE SEPTEMBER MORNING
, the first one in a long time not to dawn white and thick and breathless, a pretty girl in a long flowered skirt and pink tank top stood before a pair of great wrought-iron gates, looking through them. Inside, on the clipped grass and the white paved paths crossing it, and alighting from a fleet of shining compact buses, other girls almost identical to her laughed and called out to one another.

Emily knew they were not like her, though. Their hearts did not drag; their blood did not fizz with the poison champagne of terror; their tongues were not cotton in their mouths.

Abruptly she turned and ran back to the green SUV parked at the curb, dusty from the rutted driveway of Sweetwater and dappled with the genteel shade of Rutledge Street downtown.

She put her head in the window on the driver’s side and kissed her father’s cheek. It was glassy-slick and pink with fresh razor burn, and his damp hair showed the tracks of a comb.

“You’re going to be late, Emmybug,” Walter Parmenter said. “Run on. Jenny or I’ll pick you up here about four.”

She went around to the other window and leaned in and kissed the dome of a shining coppery, curly head.

“I’ll be back. And I’ll still be me.”

“I know.”

She walked slowly back across the quiet street and up to the gates. Again, she stopped.

“You don’t have to do it all,” Lulu said clearly into her left ear. “Just take what you want and let the other stuff go.”

“Go get ’em, Emmy,” Buddy said into her right ear.

Emily squared her shoulders and spit on her fingers and slicked the unruly hair back off her forehead, and walked into Charlotte Hall.

Jacket design by Roberto de Vicq de Cumptich

Jacket photograph © Caroline Woodham/Getty Images