The Summer We Came to Life

Chapter

54





KENDRA’S HEAD SPRINGS UP FROM HER BED LIKE a punching clown. Her breath stabs the stuffy air in her bedroom, thundering over Michael’s lazy snores. She’s panting, gripping the sheets in fists on either side of her bent knees. Life courses through her body—pumping, sweating, rushing life—and she braces herself to take it all in.

Was it a dream? But she saw it. She could still see it, taste it, hear it—Isabel sinking through the midnight blue water. Sheets soaked in blood. The vision of the dock, Mina’s hair whipping in the wind. Kendra remembers the expanse of endless light. And Mina’s voice, like a song in a snowstorm: Take care of each other, she said. I’ll be watching.

Kendra pounces out of bed and skitters barefoot to the living room. She has her cell phone in one hand and Mina’s clover leaf in the other when she stops short.

She’s listening to Michael’s measured breathing. She looks at the date on her phone. Saturday. The Saturday morning Isabel and I drowned. Two days before her scheduled appointment.

How could—

The phone and clover leaf clatter to the floor.

Kendra puts both hands on her belly and sinks to her knees.