Page 76 of The Summer Guests

Jo shuddered. “No, thank you.”

“Apnea,” said Owen, getting up to pour coffee. “Now, I was just a high school biology teacher, but I know that’s not usually considered a good thing.”

“In a medical sense, it’s not good, because it means you’re not breathing,” said Finn. “But we’re talking about diving, where you consciously don’t breathe. It’s an ancient skill, and humans have been doing it for thousands of years. Think of those women pearl divers in Japan. They can go sixty feet, even deeper, on one breath of air.”

Sixty feet,thought Jo.That would have been more than deep enough.

Owen filled their coffee cups and sat back down to face his daughter. “You going to tell us what this has to do with your case?”

“I’m trying to explainwhysomeone tried to kill Zoe,” said Jo. “I don’t think it was for the usual reasons. She wasn’t robbed. There’s no evidence she was sexually assaulted. She was just abducted and left for dead miles away from the pond. And she was found wearing her bathing suit.”

“So she’d been swimming,” said Finn.

“That’s my guess. How deep was the water where you found that skeleton?”

“About twenty-one feet.”

“If Zoe was practicing apnea dives, she could have made it to that depth.”

“Oh yeah. Plus, it’s fresh water, which makes it easier to dive, because she’d be less buoyant.”

“You think that’s what happened?” said Owen. “She found a skeleton when she was diving?”

“A skeleton that someone didn’t want anyone to find. Which meant Zoe had to be silenced before she could tell someone what she saw. And he used her backpack and her cell phone to draw our attention away from the pond, so we wouldn’t search it.”

“But you did search it,” said Owen.

“And we found the bones. I think this is all abouther,” said Jo. “The lady in the lake.”

Through the cubicle window, Jo saw Susan Conover slumped in a chair at her daughter’s bedside, her head lolling forward, her eyes closed. She hated to wake the woman, but she had questions that only Susan could answer, so she stepped into the cubicle and softly called her name.

Susan jerked awake and dazedly blinked at her visitor.

“You’re still here,” said Jo.

“Where else would I be?”

“At home, in bed?”

“I couldn’t stand it anymore, being in that house. With those people.”

“Your family, you mean?”

“Not my family. Not really.” Susan gave a sad shake of the head. “That sounds awful, doesn’t it? But even Ethan doesn’t feel like part of that family. He said he feels like just a summer guest in that house. Oh, they’re polite enough, and they try to be sympathetic, but it all comes out as ... forced. I guess I understand it. Zoe’s not really one of them. Not a blood Conover. Just like I’m not.”

Jo pulled over another chair and sat down. “How is she doing?”

“They started tapering the drugs, and she’s breathing on her own. They’ve taken her off the ventilator, so that’s good. But the doctor said we won’t know the extent of any brain damage until she wakes up.”

“She’s young. And strong enough to make it this far.”

“But will she remember what happened? Will she even remember that I’m her mother?” Susan ran her hand through her hair, pushing it off her face, and strands of silver glinted in the harsh cubicle light. Jo had not noticed those gray hairs before; it seemed the past few days had aged this woman, silvering her hair, engraving new lines in her face. “I wish you’d met her, before this happened.” Susan looked at her daughter. “She was so full of life. Ready to do anything, try anything. And give it a thousand percent.”

“Like swimming?”

Susan smiled. “Yes. My little mermaid.”

“I wanted to ask you about that. Zoe and swimming. I went back through her Facebook page and saw that she and her friends shared several articles about something called apnea diving. Do you know anything about that?”

---