Into the Water

Patrick has nightmares about his dead wife and about Helen. He wakes and goes into Helen’s room to watch her sleep. Patrick asks Helen if she took rubbish from the car, and she says yes. Helen says she threw it away. Patrick feels annoyed that he’s in “the ignominious position of cleaning up his son’s mess” (219), thinking that Helen shouldn’t be staying with him. Patrick observes that Helen was his choice for Sean. 

Nickie converses with her dead sister, Jeannie. Jeannie “tells” her to do something about the situation in town, but Nickie is unsure what to do or whom to talk to. While thinking about whom she can trust, Nickie acknowledges that she and Nel fell out over the “truth” of Nel’s stories for her book. She also recalls the last time she saw her sister in town, when Jeannie told her that Patrick had threatened to have multiple men rape her if she “kept on asking questions, if she continued to try to ruin his reputation” (223). 

Jules dreams of Nel talking to her after her rape as a teenager. While waiting for the shower, Jules notices an “LS” on the mirror in steam and wonders why Nel was so obsessed with Libby Seeton in particular. Jules repeatedly mistakes Lena for Nel, and in response she leaves the house, where she sees Louise and Nickie. Louise comes into the house and chastises Lena for not telling her about Katie’s relationship with Mark, saying, “You could have come to me and told me that my daughter had got herself caught up in something, something she couldn’t control, something you knew, you must have known, would end up being harmful to her” (227). Louise further accuses Lena of being selfish for not telling Louise the truth after Katie’s death.

Lena and Louise argue about what Lena should have done about Katie. When Lena tells Louise that Josh knew, Louise “drew back her hand and hit Lena once, very hard, across the face” (228). Louise and Lena continue to argue, now about Josh and what he should have done. Jules recalls a moment in childhood when Nel stood up for her against a teacher wrongfully accusing her of stealing. Lena confesses that she threatened Katie with exposure, which is why Katie ultimately killed herself. After Louise leaves, Lena confesses to Jules that it wasn’t she who threatened Katie, but Nel. 

Lena fills in details for Jules of what happened shortly before Katie’s death. She mentions that Nel didn’t threaten Mark, but still felt guilty, and she “became obsessed with telling the truth” (233). Lena insists that she knows Nel killed herself rather than being killed by someone else, and that Nel accidentally “tipped [Katie] over the edge” (235). Jules wonders if Nel really did kill herself out of guilt. 

Nickie goes to talk to Lena, but, finding Louise at her house, decides to go home again instead. As Nickie goes for a walk by the river, thinking about her younger days, she remembers seeing Lauren Townsend on a day when Patrick had beat her. While Nickie is on the bridge, Patrick comes by, and Nickie tells him: “It won’t be long now” (238). Patrick intimidates Nickie and leaves.

Jules worries about Lena and thinks about Nel’s spin on their shared past: “You were heroic, without context. You didn’t write about how I got there, about the football game, or the blood, or Robbie” (239). Jules believes that Nel tried to drown her first before deciding to save her and laments that that point was never resolved. Jules wakes repeatedly in the night and eventually realizes that Lena still isn’t home. She falls asleep in the window seat and dreams of drowning, then of Lena drowning.