Red Lily

that selfish union had been good and strong. Loving. What had come from it mattered.

    So this mattered. Finding Amelia mattered.
    She was probably buried out in the woods, he decided. But hell, why dig a hole in the ground in winter when you’ve got a private pond handy? It seemed right, so right he wondered they hadn’t thought of it before.
    Then again, maybe they hadn’t thought of it before because it was lame. People used the pond, even back then. To swim, to fish. Bodies that got dumped in water often resurfaced.
    Why risk it?
    He moved to another area, skimmed his light.
    Nearly another hour passed in the murk, in the wet. He’d have to finish for the day, he decided. Get his tanks refilled and continue tomorrow. Customers would be coming in soon, and nothing put off retail like hearing that some guy was looking for human remains.
    He trailed his light through the roots of his water lilies, thought fleetingly that he might try to hybridize a red one. Something that really snapped. He studied the roots, pleased with the health and progress of what he’d begun, and decided to surface.
    His light caught something below, and slightly south. He checked his watch, noted he was approaching borrowed time, but he kicked, dived, scanned.
    And he saw her, what was left of her. Bones, filthy with mud, tangled with growth. Weighed down, he saw, with a stirring of pity, by bricks and stones, tied to those bones, hands, legs, waist by the rope he imagined she’d hanged herself with.
    The rope she’d meant to use on her son.
    Still, shouldn’t she have surfaced at some point? Why hadn’t the rope rotted, those weights shifted? It was basic physics, wasn’t it?

    But basic physics didn’t take ghosts and curses into account.
    He paddled a hand in the water, moving closer to her.
    The blow knocked him back, sent him somersaulting and ripped the light from his hand.
    He was in the dark, with the dead, and running out of air.
    He fought not to panic, to let his body go loose and limp so that he would drop to the bottom, and be able to spring off to the surface.
    But another wave bowled him over.
    He saw her, gliding through the water, her white gown billowing, her hair floating out in tangled ropes. Her eyes were wide with lunacy, her hand reaching out, curled like claws.
    He felt them close around his neck, squeeze, though he could see her still, feet away, suspended in the water over her own bones.
    He struck out, but there was nothing to fight. He clawed toward the surface, but she held him down as inevitably as the bricks and stones that had carried her to the bottom.
    She was killing him, as she’d planned to kill her own child. Maybe that had been the plan all along, he thought dimly. To take a Harper with her.
    He thought of Hayley, waiting for him on the surface, of the child she carried. Of the daughter she’d already given him.
    He wouldn’t give them up.
    He looked back down at the bones, tried to find a glimmer of that pity. And he looked at Amelia, eternally mad.
    I remember you. He thought it with all his will. Singing to me. I knew you’d never hurt me. Remember me. The child that came from your child.
    He groped for his diving knife, sliced his palm with theblade. As she had once sliced hers in madness. His blood dripped and clouded in the murky water between them, and drifted down toward the filthy bones.
    That’s your blood in me. Connor blood as much as Harper. Amelia to James, James to Robert, Robert to Rosalind, and Rosalind to me. That’s why I found you. Let me go. Let me take you home. You don’t have to be alone or lost anymore.
    When the pressure on his throat released, he fought the urge to kick straight for the surface. He could still see her, and wondered how it was he could see tears flow down her cheeks.
    I’ll come back for you. I swear it.
    He pushed up, and he thought he heard her singing, the light, sweet voice of his childhood. When he looked back, he saw the beam of his light spear out from the bottom, arrow to her so she was illuminated in its shaft.
    And watched her fade away like a dream.
    Breaking the surface, he ripped his mouthpiece away, sucked in air that burned his scored throat. Sunlight sparkled in his eyes, dazzling them, and through the roaring in his ears there were voices calling his name.
    Through the dazzle, he found Hayley standing on the verge, a hand pressed to her belly. On the wrist of that hand, ruby hearts glittered like hope.
    He swam through the