The Drowning Girls Read Online Free

her pointedly. “You just got back from Hawaii.”
    “Right, but it was just Hawaii. We go there all the time,” Deanna pouted. Her effusiveness was both familiar and uncomfortable—a slightly more polished version of a high school student. “You’ve been to— Where did you just get back from?”
    “Corpus Christi,” Sonia said. “Hardly exotic.”
    “Still,” Deanna whined.
    Sonia turned to me, her eyes crinkling in a smile. “Liz. Is that short for Elizabeth?”
    There was something engaging about her, something that made me lower my guard, my mouth relaxing into its first genuine smile of the night. “No, just Liz. I always wanted to be an Elizabeth, though. I used to sign my name that way on my papers in elementary school.”
    Sonia’s laugh showed teeth so straight and white, they might have belonged to a dental hygienist. “What did your parents think about that?”
    “Oh, you know, typical kid stuff.” I took a careful sip of wine. Of course she didn’t know; it wasn’t the sort of situation a person could guess. My mom was fully blind by the time I was in elementary school, so she never saw my name on any work sheets or permission slips or report cards. And my dad wouldn’t have noticed—he was too busy seeing everything else. Elizabeth had been my own private rebellion.
    “So, Liz , then. What do you do?”
    I finished the last drop of wine in my glass. Funny—but after all the introductions tonight, Sonia was the first person to ask about me. “I’m a high school counselor,” I said. “Miles Landers High School, in Livermore.”
    Sonia’s eyes widened, and I braced myself for the cocked head, the subtle up-and-down assessment. Was she calculating my salary, my overall net worth? Was she recalling the sudden appearance of my seven-year-old Camry in the neighborhood, remembering that most of our clothes had been packed in black plastic garbage bags, toted from my trunk to the house? But she surprised me by grabbing my arm. “Oh, my God. That’s wonderful.”
    “Well...” Wonderful was overstating it a bit, although I did love my job. In seven years, I’d never had the same day twice. “This year will be interesting, because my daughter will be there, too. She’s going to be a freshman.”
    “Oh, this is fantastic. You don’t understand... My daughter, Kelsey, is starting there in the fall. She’ll be a sophomore. She used to go to Ashbury Prep, but...well, that’s a story for another time. It turns out those other kids were such bad influences. But this is such a fantastic coincidence. It’ll be so nice for Kelsey to have some friendly faces at Miles Landers, not to mention another responsible adult in her life.”
    Her touch was warm, as if we’d known each other for years. I recognized it as the mom connection , a bond that had always been elusive for me. I’d been a single mom for most of Danielle’s life, those early years spent shuttling between her day care and my internships, and later between the carpool lane at her elementary school and the counseling office. There had never been time to get to know the other moms, and I’d envied their chummy closeness at back-to-school nights and honor-roll assemblies.
    “That will be nice,” I agreed, allowing myself to get sucked into the moment. Of course, there was no guarantee that our daughters would be friends. Danielle spent most of her days with her nose in a book. Kelsey, from what I’d observed, was years ahead of her socially. I remembered her walking past in her microshorts and tank tops, her bra straps winking like a dirty secret.
    “So, would it be weird...” Sonia began. “I’m just thinking out loud here, and you can feel free to say no. But maybe we could plan some kind of get-together for them?”
    I grinned. “Like...a playdate?”
    Sonia laughed. “Well—I don’t know. Is that silly? It could just be a little thing. I’d be happy to host.”
    Deanna returned, as if she’d been listening in from