‘Outside, both of you! Now!’
They both jumped in shock or fear … or a little of both. Apparently they knew I meant business as they darted out the back door without another word. I returned to the kitchen to finish cramming whatever I could in the only box I could find.
The creak of a gate drew my gaze upward to the window facing the inground pool. The wrought-iron fence that surrounded it was overtaken by wisteria where crispy vines clung to it in dead patches. Once upon a time it had been tenderly maintained with gorgeous landscaping and trellises of knockout roses and fuchsia mandevilla. Now, weeds jutted up between fissures in the concrete around the algae-infested pool that resembled a wild habitat. Vacant and neglected, much like my soul.
A movement caught the corner of my eye. Jackson wandered the perimeter of the pool patio, then paused at the deep end, staring at something in the water below. I imagined all the frogs gliding through the murky water. Jackson had always held a fondness for creepy-crawlers … until recently, when he simply stopped caring. I understood this but, because I was a mother, I didn’t have that same liberty to simply give up. They say kids bounce back, that they’re resilient. Maybe for Elise that was the case, but they’d never met Jackson. No one could anticipate the toll of death on him, how it left him hollow.
I envied my son for that freedom to empty himself. Though what darkness it would eventually fill him up with instead, I didn’t know. I was too lost in my own grief to pull him out of his.
I watched as Jackson opened his arms wide, as if catching the breeze and sun that both cooled and warmed the spring air. Maybe some of his childhood innocence had been salvaged after all.
Glancing down at the sink, my gaze was transfixed at the way the chrome sparkled beneath tiny water droplets clinging to the metal. I felt myself slipping, my sight glazing, my senses numbing, my brain shutting off, Elise’s chatter from the porch slurring into garbled nonsense. I missed Ben. I missed our old life. I couldn’t do it anymore – the single mom thing, figuring it out all on my own. How to pay bills. How to keep moving forward. How to fix Jackson. How to push through my depression. How to float upward instead of sinking under. For a long moment I hung between reality and mental space, until something dragged me out.
Screaming.
My name.
‘Mom!’ Elise shrieked, her voice distant.
Blinking away the tears I felt coming, I scanned for her out the window, not seeing her bright pink shirt on the porch. My eyes darted, searching the backyard. I was used to hearing my name called for the slightest offense. Elise calling me to tell me Jackson was staring at her, as if I controlled the boy’s eyeballs. Or Jackson yelling about Elise calling him names, as if I could duct tape her mouth shut. My name got more traction than a Hollywood scandal.
‘Mom!’
Splashing.
Then the word that always got my immediate attention: ‘Help!’
Elise’s voice was shrill and panicked, and I followed it toward the edge of the pool where she crouched down on her knees, arms outstretched. Through the floating debris I saw arms flailing at the water’s edge, then sinking into the green waves. A ripple along the surface, a few bubbles, then … nothing. It took only a second … a second too long.
Jackson.
My mind sprung to life, urging me to run, to save my son. But my feet … my legs … they wouldn’t move, as if they had been tiled to the floor. My breath caught as a dread surged through me, but my body wouldn’t cooperate. I stood there, my mouth mute and my legs crippled.
Another splash later, this one bigger, as Elise dove into the water headfirst. I watched it all unfold in my frozen state, a deer in headlights, my fight-or-flight instincts on pause. Adrenaline must have snapped me out of it because suddenly I ran, throwing open the back door, catapulting off the porch and through the gate. By now, Elise held Jackson up against the pool’s edge, pushing him up onto the patio. I grabbed his arms, hauled him up, then pulled Elise up after him. Jackson coughed up water, sucking in breaths as I leaned him forward and patted his back.
Elise, sobbing on all fours next to me, wiped water off her face.
‘Mom, where were you?’
Where was I indeed? Why didn’t I react?
‘I’m so sorry, honey.’ I wrapped my free arm around her, holding a child in each, as if I could keep us together and safe with these arms. If only I was stronger. ‘I didn’t hear you. I’m so so sorry, sweetie.’
Her tears dripped from her chin, melting into the pool water puddling at her knees.
‘He fell on purpose, Mom. Tell her, Jackson.’ Elise’s voice held an edge of anger.
Jackson fixed his eyes on the concrete.
‘Is it true, Jackson? Did you fall on purpose?’
He ignored me, so I placed my finger under his chin and lifted his face to mine. He looked up at me sadly.
‘Tell me the truth.’
‘I don’t know,’ he answered. It was his answer for a lot of the strange things he had been doing lately.
‘Did you mean to fall into the pool?’ I needed to know.
‘Yes,’ he whispered.
‘Why?’
He didn’t answer at first. Just stared at me with blank, lifeless eyes. ‘Because I wanted to know what it felt like to drown.’
That one sentence brought a torrent of emotion. Did Jackson want to die too? Kissing his mop of black hair again and again, I pressed his head to my chest and wept. Elise wept. But Jackson … nothing. ‘Jackson, don’t ever do that again. Promise me you’ll never hurt yourself. You
