The Night Swim

by Megan Goldin

  Rachel waved at the guard who was sitting in a security booth with a “Sea Breeze Retirement Villas” sign on the side. The familiarity of her gesture gave the impression that she was a regular and the guard automatically opened the boom gate. Rachel pulled her car into a visitors’ parking lot and walked toward a pool area where she could hear splashing and music. As Rachel came in through the pool gate, she saw a handful of women doing low-impact water aerobics while an instructor stood on the edge demonstrating each exercise. Other swimmers swam breaststroke up and down the side lanes.

  Farther along, two men slouched over a chess set. “Can’t believe I didn’t see that coming,” said one of the men, slapping his thigh when the other took his bishop.

  “Excuse me.” Rachel approached them. “I’m wondering if you can tell me what was here before this complex.”

  “You should ask Estelle.” The man gestured toward a woman in her seventies with dyed-blond hair who was lying on a sun lounger. “She knows everything there is to know about the history of this town.”

  “You’re only saying that because she’s your wife, Hal,” said his friend.

  Estelle put down the novel she was reading at the sound of her name. “Take a seat, hon,” she told Rachel, patting a chair next to her with red fingernails that matched her one-piece swimsuit. “What is it you want to know?”

  “I’m trying to find out about the Stills family. I think they lived around here once.”

  “Actually, they lived right here,” Estelle said. “These condominiums are built where Edward Stills’s house used to be. His land ran all the way up to the river. Would have been worth a fortune today. In those days, nobody wanted to live here. When his granddaughter Hope died, the land was sold cheap to a developer to pay for her funeral and debts.”

  “Who was the developer?” Rachel asked.

  “Hal,” she called out. “Who was the developer of Sea Breeze Villas?”

  “It was my old tennis buddy Trent’s cousin,” he called back. “Simon Blair.”

  “That’s right,” she said. “His son was a famous swimmer. Grandson too. Kind of a notorious family right now, if you haven’t already heard. The Scott Blair trial?” She looked at Rachel to see if she’d heard of it. Rachel nodded.

  “Well, in the early nineties, Simon and his son Greg built their first retirement units. Made a lot of money. Enough to build more. And then more. I was at school with Simon. His family was dirt poor. Used to come to school in hand-me-down shoes with holes in them. His dad was a two-bit renovator. These days the family own properties up and down the coast.”

  “What can you tell me about the Stills family?” Rachel asked.

  “I only know bits and pieces,” said Estelle. “Hope came back after Ed Stills died. She had two children, both out of wedlock. In those days, people talked. Hope moved into her grandfather’s house and lived there with her daughters. Everyone thought that house was a health hazard. Ed lived like a hermit. But I heard that Hope fixed the place up real nice.

  “Hal,” she said, handing her husband some coins. “I’m parched. Won’t you get us drinks from the vending machine? What’s your name, honey?”

  “It’s Rachel.”

  “What a lovely name. Very biblical,” she said. “Where was I?”

  “You were telling me about Hope Stills.”

  “Such a shame when she came down with cancer. One of those leukemias. She used to work at my local supermarket. Such a bright, vivacious girl. She was a little, you know, out there. She put pink dye in her hair once. Had butterfly tattoos on her ankle. I asked after her when I hadn’t seen her for a while. The cashier told me that she was sick. They gave her an office job, but she couldn’t manage the hours. A few months later, they said she’d died. I heard her daughter died, too. Jenny. She was the oldest one.”

  “Do you know anything about her daughters?”

  “Jenny had a reputation. Just like her mother. Hope was barely seventeen when she was born. I heard that she didn’t even know which boy was the father.”

  “What do you know about Jenny’s death?”

  Estelle shrugged. “We were down in Florida for my brother’s wedding that summer. I remember it well, though. It was the same summer that we lost two boys in that awful car crash. I played bridge with one of the dead boys’ mothers. She was heartbroken. Her only child,” she said. “I vaguely remember hearing something about how the older Stills girl went swimming one night and drowned. There was talk that she’d been skinny-dipping with a boy,” she said with a meaningful glance. “Apparently she did that a lot.” She paused as her husband returned with the soda cans. She passed one to Rachel and then opened her own and took a sip.

  “Any chance you might know the name of the boy who went swimming with Jenny that night?” Rachel asked.

  “I don’t think I ever knew his name,” said Estelle. “It was a long time ago. I was a different person then. Younger. Prettier. And with a better memory. Wasn’t I, Hal?”

  “Nah, you look just as pretty now as you did then,” he responded.

  “He’s a born liar. Used to sell life insurance,” she told Rachel conspiratorially. “Honey, you’re asking me about things that happened a lifetime ago. Anyway, you’re talking to the wrong people. You should be speaking to Jenny’s school friends.”

  “Can you give me some names?”

  “Let me see,” said Estelle, closing her eyes as she thought back.

  “The kids those days were thick as thieves. They spent the summers down at Morrison’s Point. My daughter may have some names. I can ask her tonight when she gets back from work. How long are you around for?”

  “Two, three weeks,” said Rachel. “I’m here for the Scott Blair trial. So till whenever that ends.”

  “Well, there you go, honey,” said Estelle, clapping her hands together with excitement. “You know who you should be talking to?”

  “Who?”

  “That lawyer. What’s his name? Hal”—she turned to her husband—“who’s that handsome young lawyer who was in today’s newspaper?”

  “Mitchell Alkins,” he said.

  “That’s right. Mitchell Alkins knew Jenny Stills. They were at school together. In fact, everyone said he was sweet on her. You should ask him.”

  33

  Hannah

  Earlier today, I visited our old house. It’s gone, of course. The land has been turned into a retirement home. How Mom would have laughed to know that people are swimming where our living room used to be. She wouldn’t be so happy to know that they pulled out the lemon tree and asphalted over her vegetable garden. The only things that haven’t changed are the daisies. The field that was below our old house is blooming with them.

  Going there reminded me of something that I’d long forgotten. I was sitting on the front porch, reading a book, when I heard a car approach. It was a pale car. Green, I think, with a dent in the back. The driver was the boy with dark hair and athletic build whom Jenny had swum with at the beach. He was wearing jeans and a button-down shirt. I could see the leather necklace around his neck.

  He nervously slicked back his hair as he headed up to the front door, swinging his car keys in one hand. The other hand held a bunch of white and yellow daisies that he must have picked in the field. He tossed the flowers on the ground as he climbed the porch stairs. I guessed that he felt self-conscious.

  “Hey,” I said, tossing my book aside as he reached the front door.

  “Is Jenny around?” His eyes flicked away from me to look for Jenny through the ripped netting of the screen door.

  “She’s in the back garden. Come this way,” I said, leading him into the house and then out again through the back porch.

  Jenny was getting in the laundry from the backyard when we came out. She wore shorts and a candy-striped T-shirt. Her cheeks flushed and her eyes sparkled when she saw him.

  “Hey, Jenny,” he said, putting his right hand in the back pocket of his jeans. He stepped off the porch onto the gras
s and stood awkwardly next to her as she took clothes off the line and tossed them into a wicker basket.

  “I tried to call. Got a message saying the phone was disconnected. So I stopped by,” he said.

  “We’re having problems with the phone line,” Jenny lied. She didn’t tell him our telephone line was cut because we’d forgotten to pay a bill and it was too expensive to get the line reconnected.

  “What did you want to call me about?” Jenny tossed a bedsheet into the laundry basket.

  “I thought maybe you’d want to get pizza.”

  “When?”

  “Now?”

  “Sure.” Jenny took down the last of the laundry and carried the basket inside under her arm. “I’ll be ready in ten minutes.”

  He went outside and leaned back against the hood of his car, tapping his fingers against the metal until Jenny emerged in a cloud of honeysuckle. It was the perfume we’d given her for her sixteenth birthday. She was dressed in jeans and a sleeveless button-down apricot shirt.

  She looked prettier than I’d seen her in weeks. Glowing with happiness. Her long hair hung loose down her back. She wore pink lipstick and tiny blue crystal earrings. He opened the car door for her before going around to the driver’s seat. I thought to myself that Mom, who was asleep in her room, would have liked that boy if she’d seen the way he treated Jenny.

  I fell asleep watching television and woke with a dry mouth and a wooly head when I heard a car approach. I lay back on the sofa, pretending to be asleep, when the screen door creaked open and Jenny came inside. A moment later, I heard a car drive away.

  I watched Jenny through half-closed eyes as I lay still as a log. Her hair was messy and stuck with pine needles. The flushed excitement that I’d seen when she’d left had disappeared. She seemed numb and sad. She tossed her house keys onto the hall table and collapsed on an armchair where she buried her head in her hands. I thought she was tired until I saw her shoulders shudder as she swallowed her sobs.

  Jenny never said a word to me about what happened on the date to make her cry. As for the boy, he never stopped by again.

  Jenny went into town the next day and came back home to tell us that she’d been hired to pack shelves in the supermarket where Mom used to work.

  After that, she was barely home. She left the house early for work and came back at dusk most days. With Jenny away, I was stuck at home. Frustrated and bored.

  Mom found an old blow-up swimming pool, which she inflated and filled with water. I spent days lying in that pool, watching wisps of clouds drift across the otherwise clear blue afternoon sky like flotsam. Mom lay on a sun lounger and threaded beads onto nylon strings. She had an idea to make beaded necklaces and sell them down at the Sunday market. She said that would give us an income. She’d be able to string beads even when she felt ill and was confined to bed. She said that Jenny and I could do the selling.

  Sometimes I’d sit on the front porch stairs and look out longingly toward the sea. One afternoon, Mom saw me and said she was feeling well enough to drive me there.

  We arrived late in the afternoon when the light was low and there was nobody around except for surfers out by the headland. I paddled around in the foam near the edge of the water while Mom floated on her back with a straw hat on her head. When I got bored, I flopped down on my towel and drew pictures in the sand with the edge of a broken shell.

  “How’s that sister of yours?”

  I looked up to see the driver from the pickup and his friend Bobby, whose eyes seemed grayer than usual. The driver tossed his cigarette onto the sand, not bothering to extinguish it. Bobby kicked sand over it as if it was his job to clean up the mess.

  “I asked how’s your sister,” the driver repeated.

  “She’s fine,” I answered.

  “Haven’t seen her for a while,” he continued.

  “She doesn’t come to the beach.”

  “Why not?”

  “She has a job,” I answered.

  “Where’s she working?” I sensed there was nothing casual about the question.

  “I don’t know,” I lied, kicking myself for mentioning the job. Mom, who was in the sea, had stopped swimming to watch me.

  The driver stared at me and Mom and then walked off. Bobby tossed me a piece of gum before rushing after his friend. I saw them later with a group of boys by the headland. They were sitting on rocks, drinking from liquor bottles hidden in paper bags.

  We stopped at the gas station at the Old Mill Road after we left the beach so Mom could buy me ice cream as a treat. Rick was at the counter. This time he was nice as pie. Told me he’d known my mother since she was knee-high. It was only when we were waiting our turn at the old bridge that Mom asked me what those boys wanted.

  “Nothing,” I said, licking the last of my ice cream off the stick.

  “They sure seemed to have something to say to you.”

  I shrugged.

  “I know those boys,” Mom said. “I knew some of their dads, too. They’re trouble. The one who gave you the gum follows his friends around like he’s their shadow. I reckon he’d do anything they tell him to keep in their good books. He’s the only one whose daddy isn’t a ‘somebody’ in this town. The only one with something to prove. That makes him the most dangerous of all.”

  34

  Rachel

  Dr. Katrina Lawrence made a terrible witness, thought Rachel, watching the jury grimace as the thin falsetto of Kelly’s therapist came through the sound system so high-pitched that the sketch artist sitting next to Rachel winced as she drew. In her sketchbook was the rough drawing of a tall woman with long straight hair and a tightly buttoned burgundy jacket.

  Dr. Lawrence made an affirmation used by atheists instead of taking her oath on the Bible. It was a misstep. It wouldn’t have mattered if it were a trial in a big city, but Neapolis was a conservative Southern town with a significant Evangelical population. It antagonized the jury from the start. Rachel suspected that Mitch Alkins had done his best to convey that fact to Dr. Lawrence, who seemed remarkably obtuse for someone who made her living studying the human psyche.

  Alkins could see his witness was grating on the jury from the moment he asked her about her credentials. But he needed her testimony. She was, after all, Kelly Moore’s therapist. By the same token, he couldn’t afford to lose the jury in the process. He skipped whole pages of questions, flipping through his notepad to elicit her key testimony so he could get her off the stand as quickly as possible.

  For her own selfish reasons, Rachel hoped Dr. Lawrence’s testimony would end quickly. She wanted to corner Alkins at the lunch recess and ask him what he remembered about Jenny Stills. When Rachel returned to her hotel the previous afternoon after talking with Estelle, she immediately tried to contact Alkins. She’d left several messages with his personal assistant but hadn’t received a call back from him or his staff.

  Rachel stifled a yawn. Alkins worked through his questions, growing increasingly frustrated as the psychotherapist gave long, dry responses when short answers would have both sufficed and gone down much better with the jury.

  Rachel took notes as the psychotherapist testified that Kelly had been a well-adjusted teenager before that night with Scott Blair. Afterward, Kelly exhibited all the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, which Dr. Lawrence said was common among victims of sexual assault. The effects ranged from anxiety and depression to panic attacks and nightmares.

  “Dr. Lawrence, what is the normal reaction of a victim in the aftermath of a sexual assault?” Alkins asked.

  “It depends,” she responded, leaning into the microphone.

  “On what?”

  “On the victim,” she answered. “There’s no typical reaction. Some victims become hysterical, cry and so on. Others seem calm and normal, as if nothing happened, and only later show the effects. Others are in shock. They’re numb. They don’t cry, but they can’t cope.”

  “Dr. Lawrence, is it normal, for instance, for a sexua
l assault victim to get on a bus, buy a bus ticket, and sit alongside other people without showing any indication of having been assaulted hours earlier?”

  This was a crucial question. Dale Quinn was expected to call to the stand the bus driver and several passengers from the bus that Kelly took home that day. Already, some of them had publicly said that Kelly acted normally that day, smiling at the driver when she disembarked, and they didn’t believe she’d been raped.

  “It’s common for the emotional and psychological effects after a sexual assault to be delayed by hours, days. Even weeks,” Dr. Lawrence responded. “I believe Kelly was trying to hold herself together emotionally until she was in a safe space. Indeed, once she arrived home, she broke down.”

  “In your dealings with Kelly, have you found her to be truthful and credible?” Alkins asked.

  “In every way,” she said.

  “Is there a chance that she misinterpreted what happened? Or exaggerated, maybe even lied about some details, or all of it?”

  “I’ve spent more than ten months seeing Kelly as a patient. I have found her account of what happened and her emotional responses to be consistent throughout. I have absolutely no reason to doubt her word on what she says happened that night. No reason at all.”

  Dale Quinn bounded out of his seat to cross-examine Dr. Lawrence. He happily dragged out his questioning for as long as possible, knowing that the longer she was on the stand, the less the jury liked her, and by extension, the less they’d believe anything she said. He effectively gave her enough rope to hang herself as a witness, thought Rachel. When Quinn was ready, in his softest, folksiest voice he reeled her in for the kill.

  “Dr. Lawrence, did you work for an organization called the Women’s Rape Network after college?”

  “Yes, I did.”