Deep Water by Patricia Highsmith (best books to read now .TXT) 📕

       Vic told him. They had never seen De Lisle, but they had to know all the details, how old he was, whether he had had anything to eat before—Vic didn't know—and how long he had been in the water before anybody found him. Vic said he couldn't be sure, because De Lisle had been swimming around when he got out, perhaps seven minutes before. It was apparently an attack of cramp. The Petersons agreed that it sounded like an attack of cramp.

       Then Vic drove Trixie back home. She was in her Sunday best, because she had just been to Sunday school with Janey Peterson. She was telling Vic about a plastic glider you shot with a rubber on a stick that some of the boys at the Sunday school had. Trixie wanted one, and Vic stopped at the newspaper store in town and bought one for her out of the front window, but he was thinking of something else. There were two things that kept repeating themselves in his mind—the matter of the Wilsons and what Phil Cowan had asked him this morning. Between the two, Phil's question bothered him more. Phil had simply asked in a puzzled way this morning, "Is Melinda in 'love' with De Lisle?" And Vic had replied, "I don't know anything about it, Phil." It was a question that would have occurred to anybody. Certainly Melinda was acting as if she were in love with De Lisle, and Vic had no doubt that people were going to remember and talk about the way she had behaved with Charley all evening, about the duet they had played on the piano, and about Melinda's history of liaisons. It was not guilt or fear of detection that bothered him, Vic felt, it was the sharp pang of shame that Phil's direct question had given him. The Wilson matter was vaguer. This morning Evelyn had said during their coffee and orange juice, "It's a wonder the Wilsons didn't notice anything when they were going home. Don left the house just about the time it must have happened. Don't you remember, Phil?" (But Phil didn't remember.) Evelyn said that the Wilsons had left practically as soon as she and Melinda had come into the house to get the aspirin for Melinda's headache, and that Don had come back a minute later for something—she couldn't remember what—that his wife had forgotten. Vic's question was, if Wilson had gone by on the lawn and seen their struggle in the pool, would he have gone on to his car without saying anything? That wasn't very likely. It was only that Wilson was such an odd, secretive character that the possibility even crossed Vic's mind.

       Melinda was drinking a Scotch and water when Vic got home with Trixie. She did not even say hello to Trixie, and Trixie, though she had seen her mother disheveled and out of sorts in the mornings before, knew that something worse than usual had happened. Rut after a long stare Trixie went into her room to change her clothes without asking any questions.

       Vic went into the kitchen and scrambled an egg with cream for Melinda. He put a little curry powder in it, because she sometimes liked that on bad mornings. He brought it to her and sat down on the couch beside her. "How about a bite of egg?" he asked.

       No response. She took another sip of her drink.

       "It's got a little curry in it." He held some ready on a fork for her.

       "You go to hell," she murmured.

       Trixie came back in overalls, with her glider. "What's the matter?" she asked Vic.

       "Charley's dead, that's what's the matter! He's drowned!"

       Melinda yelled, getting up from the sofa. "And your father killed him!"

       Trixie's mouth fell open. She stared at Vic. "'Did' you, Daddy?"

       "No, Trixie," Vic said.

       "But he's 'dead'?" Trixie demanded.

       Vic frowned at Melinda. "Did you have to say that?" he asked her. His heart beat fast with anger. "Did you have to say what you did?"

       "You should always tell a child the truth," Melinda retorted.

       "He's dead, Daddy?" Trixie asked again.

       "Yes, he drowned."

       Trixie looked round-eyed at the news, but not in the least sorry, Vic thought. "Did he hit his head?"

       "I don't know," Vic said.

       "'No', he didn't hit his head," Melinda said.

       Trixie stared from one to the other of them for a moment.

       Then she went out the front door, in a quiet way, to play. Melinda went to the kitchen to replenish her drink—Vic heard her kick the bottom pantry door shut—then she came back and crossed the room and went into her own room.

       After a minute Vic got up and put the scrambled egg slowly down the sink with hot water. He thought he felt very much like Trixie. Something, he realized, must be holding back his reactions of guilt or horror at what he had done. It was very strange. Lying sleepless on the Cowans' sofa, he had waited for fear to come, for panic, for guilt and regret, at least. He had found himself thinking of a pleasant day in his childhood when he had won a prize in geography class for making the best model of an Eskimo village, using half eggshells for igloos and spun glass for snow Without consciously realizing it, he had felt absolutely secure. Secure from detection. Or was it that he believed he wouldn't be afraid if he were detected? He had such slow reactions to everything. Physical danger. Emotional blows. Sometimes his reactions were weeks late, so that he had a hard time attaching them to their causes.

       The telephone rang. Vic went into the hall to get it.

       "Hello?" Vic said.

       "Hello, Vic. This is Evelyn. I hope I didn't wake you from a nap?"

       "Certainly not."

       "How's Melinda?"

       "Well—not so well. She's having a drink in her room." "I'm sorry, Vic—about last night."

       Vic didn't