Read Online Water Steps by A. LaFaye - Free Book Online

You want to hear stories about water?”
    I pulled away, shaking my head.
    She brought me back into a silky hair hug. “That’s what I thought.”
    What an idiot. All this time, I thought Mem and Pep had been keeping secrets, but as always, they only wanted to protect me. To save me from my own stupid fears. Why did I still have to be so afraid of water? Why couldn’t I just dissolve it down to nothing and live like everybody else? Mem could tell me all about her life on the Irish coast. We could swim together. Laugh as we splashed in the water.
    Just thinking about it brought a burst of memory laughter into my head. I could feel the sun on my face, see beads of water flying in the air, hear a child laughing. Was it me? Did I see a beach and a woman half-turned, splashing in a bright white suit with berry red dots?
    Who was that lady? It couldn’t have been Mem, she didn’t own a berry dot suit. I hadn’t gone near water since, since . . . when I thought of that awful day on the boat, I realized just who it could be. Mom. I’d remembered my mom. Just a smiling woman in
a picture to me on most days. I closed my eyes to hold onto the feeling of her. Then I remembered the photograph of my mom and me sitting on a dock, me in a frilly pink suit and purple floaters on my arms, her in a sail white suit with little red dots.
    Mem tapped my nose. “A memory got you?”
    I smiled, feeling the warmth of it just flowing through me like hot milk on a cold night. “Yeah.”
    â€œWell, there’s proof water can be a good thing. In my childhood and yours.” She gave me a squeeze.
    Maybe so. But my memories of life with my first family are just flashes, broken pieces of sound and half pictures. I didn’t have any real good memories of water. Just that one awful memory. I had to hold my breath to keep it away.
    Mem tapped me with the brush. “No falling down on the job there, lass. Get to brushing. This hair won’t let go of its tangles without a fight.”
    â€œYes, ma’am.” I saluted, knowing Mem tried to distract me. And I needed it or I’d sink back into the dark memory of a watery world with no air.
    So I set to brushing and forcing myself to think of other things. But my mind had fallen into a bit of a rut. I went from one bad memory to another, recalling Aunt Rosien storming off down the steps leading to the lake.

    Had my mind spinning with the worry of why she might be mad at Mem.
    â€œWhy was Aunt Rosien so mad when she left?”
    Mem closed her eyes and relaxed her shoulders—a sign she meant to keep Rosien’s anger from settling inside her. “Sometimes sisters see things a bit different. Rosien sees her duty to the lake.”
    So it was something to do with saving the lake or the critters that lived there. “She’s a conservationist?”
    Mem laughed. “I’d say she is. I do my bit when I can, but I see my greatest duty as being a mother to you.”
    Why did keeping the lake clean and safe have to be so important that a person couldn’t have a family, too? Maybe Rosien just took it all a little too seriously. And that’s what made her a “package.” After all, she was a lady who thought it was wrong to pick leaves. But it still didn’t feel right, so I asked, “Aunt Rosien thinks you should be saving the lake instead of raising me?”
    Mem pulled me into her lap to give me a neck nuzzle, which made me laugh. “Well bosch on her if she can’t see all I’ve gained in raising you, my sweet.”
    â€œLike what?” I asked, seeing us in the mirror. Mem’s hair flowed over the both of us like strands of kelp, her eyes shone so dark and round, mine all blue and spinky.

    â€œLike a darn good hair brusher for one thing.” She rubbed my head with the brush.
    I laughed. “No, really.”
    Squeezing me, she said, “Selfish as I am, it’s the growing that