The Twilight Swimmer (31 page)

Conrad paused after every question to give Cody a chance to respond, but Cody either remained silent or mumbled something unintelligible. Sherri, however, let out a plaintive noise to punctuate each question her husband posed, as if to assure him that even if their son didn’t understand their significance, she certainly did.

When the questioning came to a fruitless end, Brandi knew that her parents had given up for the night. She darted down the hall and waited by her own bedroom door, pretending that she was just emerging at the precise moment her parents stepped into the hall. She strode toward them, mustering a sympathetic frown.

“Has he told you anything? About what he was doing, I mean,” she asked. She meant to sound as baffled by Cody’s disappearance as her parents were, but heard a trace of selfish concern in her voice. She hoped her parents hadn’t picked up on it.

Sherri shook her head angrily, and Brandi expelled a held breath.

“I’ll just go in and say goodnight,” Brandi offered.

“Just let him get some sleep,” Conrad answered. “He’s had a rough night.”

“I’ve had a rough night too, Dad. I want to see him. Just for a second.”

Sherri took Conrad’s arm and led him down the hall, her way of granting Brandi permission to go see her brother and forbidding Conrad to stop her.

Brandi slipped through Cody’s bedroom door with a final glance down the hall to make sure her parents were really headed downstairs. She didn’t want them striking the same pose outside the door as she had struck moments earlier, their ears pressed against it to hear every word spoken on the other side. Satisfied that she could speak to Cody privately, she shut herself inside his room and hurried to his bed.

“Cody, I know you’re not sleeping. Open your eyes.”

Cody’s eyes fluttered open. He hadn’t been faking sleep so much as hoping for it. The color had returned to his face, and he didn’t look like he had suffered any real damage from his harrowing experience in the river.

“I wanted to see him. Your friend.”

“I know you did. But Cody, that was stupid. That was so stupid!”
              “He didn’t want to hurt me. It was my fault.”

“What happened?”

Cody pushed himself up on his elbows, his eyes now wide with boyish excitement. He couldn’t stop a smile from forming, despite Brandi narrowing her eyes in swift disapproval of his attitude.

“When I got there, it was real dark and quiet and I thought there wasn’t anybody there, but it seemed like there was somebody even though I couldn’t see him or hear him or anything, and I was yelling for him to come out and that I was your brother and that I just wanted to meet him and that I wouldn’t hurt him and that I just wanted to take pictures and I had a camera and that I was your brother—”

“Not so loud, Cody. In case they’re listening.” She glanced at the bedroom door, picturing her parents outside with cups pressed against the wood for acoustic amplification.

“I started feeling real dumb, cuz he wasn’t there, or at least I thought he wasn’t there cuz he was probably back out in the ocean where he’s from. That’s where he’s from, right? He’s from the ocean, right? You have to tell me, Brandi. Come on, you have to tell me!”

“Yes, that’s where he’s from.”

“That means he’s a mermaid!”

“Mermaids are female. He’s a mer
man
. And I said keep your voice down!”

Cody pulled his covers up to cover his mouth, stifling an excited burst of laughter. He was so excited he lost control of his body and started thrashing his legs under the blanket. The bed was vibrating underneath them, one corner actually lifting off the floor and thundering back down with a thud. Brandi threw herself across Cody to keep him still, certain that her parents would storm through the door any minute.

“Did you tell Mom and Dad about him?”

Cody shook, his head ‘no’.

“Did you tell
anyone
about him?”

Cody shook his head ‘no’ again.

“Well what happened out there? How did you end up in the water?”

“I was trying to take his picture.”

“No you weren’t. I found the camera by your backpack, up by the cabin. Nowhere near the water.”

“I mean before then. I was trying to take his picture before then. I was hiding in the shadows, up by the cabin. But he saw the flash.”

“Wait a minute, you said there wasn’t anybody there. You were calling his name, but nothing happened.”

“Yeah, at first. And then I gave up. And then I sat down and I ate a cookie. I took the whole box from the cupboard, the ones Mom likes, cuz she always says get these cookies away from me or I’ll eat the whole box so it didn’t seem like stealing. And besides, they’re my cookies too. They’re for everybody.”

“Focus, Cody.”

Cody took a deep breath before continuing. “It was like ten minutes, and it was kind of cold and a little scary. And I was going to give up and walk back to the fair, and tell Mom and Dad that I was there the whole time.”

“Like they would have believed that. Go on.”

“But then I heard splashing.”

“Splashing.”

“Yeah, in the river. So I backed up into the shadows—”

“Before you were calling out to him, but when he finally showed up you thought you should hide?”

“I didn’t think about it, really. I just hid. And I took out my camera. And I started taking photos. He was just sort of floating in the water, just his head sticking out, and it was really hard to see him cuz it was so dark, even though there was a pretty bright moon and everything. And I noticed I wasn’t using the flash, and I knew that would help, and I thought I’d just get one photo maybe, cuz when he saw the flash he’d probably get scared and disappear.”

“No, he’s not scared of the flash. I used it.”

“But he knows you.”

Brandi shrugged.

Cody shrugged back, then continued. “I put on the flash, and I took a photo. And instead of scaring him, it was so weird, it made him come right out of the water! And when he came out, he was smiling! Like the flash made him smile. I think he saw it and he thought it was you, cuz he knows you and you love him and everything.”

“Just tell what happened, please.”

“He walked right up toward the cabin. And I was hiding even more, like around the corner, cuz the smile was kind of creepy and I thought he’d be mad when he saw it wasn’t you. But when he got close I got brave and just jumped back around the corner again and took another photo! And he was standing right in front of me, like five feet away, and he stopped when he saw it was me, not you, and he stopped smiling. And I said to him, I asked him what his name is.”

“I don’t think he has one.”

“He didn’t answer me. He just backed up and walked back down to the water. And I yelled at him to wait, and tried to look at the picture I took, but I dropped the camera. And he was almost back in the water, and I wanted to still talk to him, so I left the camera and just ran down there. But he was already in the water. And it was muddy and my shoes were slippery and I just slipped right into the water.”

“Did you hurt yourself? Did you hit your head?”

“No, I just fell in. But it was so cold. Way colder than I thought. And it was deeper than I thought, and it was moving fast. From the rain last week I guess. So I was instantly so cold, and I couldn’t really swim cuz my legs and my arms wouldn’t move really, so the water just dragged me under, I think.”

“Then what?”

“I don’t know. Then I was in the cabin with you and with Officer Dallas.”

“That was later. You were unconscious after you fell in the water.”

“Mom and Dad say Officer Dallas saved me from the water.”

Brandi took a deep breath, trying to decide if she should tell Cody the truth. If he knew that the Swimmer saved his life, he might become that much more determined to see him again, to thank him, even. If he was crazy enough to run off from the fair with nothing more than a backpack
before
he knew the Swimmer would protect him, what would he do now?

The backpack. There it was, in the corner of Cody’s room. She went to it and removed the digital camera. It took a minute to turn on, probably from dirt clogged in the works when Cody dropped it on the ground outside the cabin. She sat at the edge of Cody’s bed waiting for the camera to come alive. Cody leaned over her shoulder to get a look, his eyes wide with anticipation.

              The camera did turn on. And on the screen, there was proof that Cody’s story was accurate. A photo of the Swimmer, from only a few feet away, smiling as he had smiled at Brandi the night she took photos of him for hours. She cycled backwards through the photo, seeing one blurry shot of the Swimmer’s pale head emerging from the icy water, and a series of similar shots taken without a flash, so granulated that it was difficult to make out anything at all if you didn’t already know what you were looking at.

             
“I told you,” said Cody in a satisfied whisper.

             
“I never doubted you,” Brandi answered, pulling Cody in for an embrace.

             
That moment, a knock on the door. Brandi deftly hid the camera under Cody’s blanket as the door swung open, Sherri at the handle.

             
“I think that’s enough sibling bonding for tonight. Cody, you need to rest.”

             
Cody nodded and faked a yawn, but his eyes strayed to Brandi. Under the covers, she was fiddling with the camera casing. She managed to extract the memory card from the camera and palmed it, so that when she rose from the bed and headed past her mother and out the door, Sherri didn’t notice that anything was amiss.

             
“Night Cody, I’m glad you’re all right,” said Brandi as she exited.

             
“Good night,” he answered through another unconvincing yawn.

              Brandi found her father sitting at the bottom of the stairs. She wanted to turn around and head back up, to disappear inside her bedroom and not come out until she had thought through all the lies and half-truths she would need to convince her father she had nothing to do with Cody’s impromptu adventure. But Conrad looked over his shoulder and waved for Brandi to come closer. He scooted over on the step to make room for her, and she obligingly sat down beside him.

             
“If I could talk sense into you, I would,” said Conrad, his voice shaky. “If I could force you to be sensible, I would. If I could convince you that as brilliant as you are, you’re still just a child, not yet ready to deal with every complex question and complex choice, if I could convince you to trust me and let me help you, Brandi, that’s what I would do.”

             
Brandi felt tears welling up in both eyes. She wanted to wipe them away, but suddenly had not even strength in her arms to raise a hand to her face.

             
“Your brother almost died tonight, Brandi. That’s a hard reality that goes way beyond your desire to be secretive. Way beyond your pride.” He turned to Brandi, his own eyes wet with forming tears. “Whatever is that you’re doing, I’m asking you to stop.”

             
A tear slid down Conrad’s cheek. He didn’t wipe it away. Instead, he brushed Brandi’s bangs from her forehead and leaned down, kissing her gently just above her eyebrow. At the soft pressure of her father’s lips, Brandi’s tears began to flow in earnest. She had nothing to say to him, and wasn’t sure she could get out the words even if there was something to say. So she leaned against his powerful chest and allowed herself to cry, openly and honestly, for the first time since Jenny’s funeral.

             
“I miss her,” she said at last, her voice so soft it was barely audible.

             
“I know you do, sweetheart. We all do,” Conrad whispered in her ear.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

             
The weeks leading up to Jenny’s drowning, the two sisters had fought a lot.

             
It started out as nothing more than petty bickering. Jenny complained that Brandi left her clothes all over the floor of the bedroom they shared. Brandi complained that Jenny was snoring to spite her. The arguments themselves were always silly, but any sort of argument between two girls who had always been so close was unsettling to them, and to the rest of the family. That the arguing seemed to come from nowhere was even more unsettling. Sherri suggested to her husband that their girls were merely going through the normal chemical upheaval of puberty, but Conrad wasn’t so sure. He thought he detected a different sort of tension between his girls, and lost hours of sleep trying to determine its source.

             
The tension finally boiled over one night, at the dinner table, when an argument over whose turn it was to wash the dishes escalated. At first, Conrad ignored the bickering and went about finishing his meal. Sherri tried to mediate, tried to encourage the girls toward a compromise that would see them share dishwashing duties tonight, then draw up a schedule for the rest of the year. Neither Jenny nor Brandi was willing to listen to any such suggestions, both of them determined to establish for the benefit of the room that there was a correct answer to the question of dishwashing responsibility and that she, not her sister, was the sole possessor of that answer.