Watery Graves Read Free Page A

“Sorry, but we need to talk.”
    Emmy knew how it was. She had been watching her mother all day. Her face was tight and twitchy. It was a sign her mum was on some inner rant. And it didn’t take a genius to work out what was on her mind.
    As soon as they were alone together in the sitting room of their bedroom cabin, Emmy tried to soften the blow. “I’m sorry Mum. I know I messed up.”
    Ingrid was lighting the candles. She was so aggressive with the matches they kept blowing out before she could get the flame to the wick, “Messed up? What makes you think you’ve messed up?”
    “Oh God. Don’t make me say it please.”
    “Do you want me to follow you around all day like you’re three?”
    Emmy knew to keep her answers short. “No.”
    “Of course not. But I will if that’s what it takes.”
    “You don’t have to.”
    “You know what? You would have your uncle still alive today, if he hadn’t snuck away from me to ride the rapids in the flood. All for a stupid dare, listening to other kids and not doing what he knew was the right thing. I was supposed to be looking after him but he took off. How do you think that makes me feel?”
    Emmy opened her mouth to speak but Ingrid wasn’t finished.
    “His little body was impaled on a log and carried way down the river. I don’t know whether he was killed instantly or what. I don’t want to think about him stabbed right through, flailing around, drowning, the log rolling, fighting for one stupid breath. All the kids smart enough not to get in the river watched him die.”
    “Please Mum,” Emmy begged quietly. She hated it when her mum got graphic.
    “Well, that’s what I was thinking today. It’s stuck in my memory on replay. And you brought it all back.”
    “There hasn’t been a flood in years. The river is so low and slow it barely moves.”
    “You took off and all my mind could think about was the day that Pete died. The river may as well have been raging.”
    Emmy took the matchbox from Ingrid and lit the candle first try. “I wasn’t near the water.” She went to light the others.
    “He was only eight.”
    “I’m sixteen, Mum. You’ve told me my whole life not to go near the river on my own.”
    “And what you did today Emmy, it wasn’t smart. Crossing the footbridge.”
    Emmy saw her mother swipe at her cheeks. She was crying. “I feel bad Mum.”
    “I want you to.”
    Emmy shook her head. Short answers weren’t working. “If you’re so scared about drowning, why live beside a river? I don’t get it,” she blurted out.
    Her mother’s lips pressed together. Red marks splashed across her cheeks as though she had been slapped. All were signs she was caught up in the heat of panic.
    Emmy lowered her gaze to the candle between them . “I’m sorry Mum, really I am.”
    “Freak accidents with that river left me completely alone. I had nobody. No one.” Ingrid jabbed her finger at the open window. “The world can be crazy and frightening when you’re left in it all alone, Emmy. I didn’t even know how to pay a bill. Worse, I didn’t have money to pay one. All I had was a part time job in a fruit shop. I was just a kid. I was pregnant. And your dad had just died. What would you do if that happened to you?”
    “I’m not sure I would go and live by the river that killed my family if I thought I could be the next to die.”
    “Maya was all I had left in the whole world. When your father drowned, she came down to the house to see me. I hadn’t left it in days. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t eat. She packed my bag and took me away.”
    “I don’t know what I would do if you all died and left me here alone,” Emmy mumbled, willing for her to stop with the insults and accusations, and the stories of hopelessness and death.
    “Yeah well, anything is possible. Don’t think it can’t happen.”
    But it wasn’t enough to appease Ingrid. Emmy wasn’t sure if her mother could hear her. She watched helplessly as she stomped up the