Into the Water

Jules realizes, after the police have left from questioning her about Lena’s disappearance, that Lena is Robbie’s daughter. 

Jules figures out that Robbie must have Lena; she looks him up online and goes to confront him. On the way, she finds that “Some old part of me, some furious, fearless relic, had surfaced” (251). Once she arrives at Robbie’s workplace, Jules’s fearlessness deserts her. Jules asks for Robbie to meet her outside, which he does. Through questioning, Jules realizes that Robbie doesn’t have Lena: “He didn’t know where Lena was. He didn’t know who she was” (253). Robbie finally recognizes Jules and tries to be friendly, saying he “popped her cherry,” to which Jules responds: “You raped me” (254). Robbie, refusing to believe Jules’s accusation, turns on her, calling her names and denigrating her. Jules learns that Nel never knew she and Robbie had had sex.

Jules, now restructuring everything she thought she knew about her relationship with Nel, realizes she’s been “pushing you all your life for something you didn’t do. And now I had no way to tell you I was sorry” (257). Jules goes for a swim to feel connected with Nel again.

Mark leaves Beckford with Lena in his trunk, unsure of where to go and worrying about what will happen to him now that his secret is out. As he drives, Mark recalls Katie coming to his house and telling him that Nel knew about their relationship. Upon learning that Lena and Josh knew, too, Mark screamed: “Do you understand what they’ll do to me? Do you fucking understand what it is like to go to prison as a sex offender?” (261). Mark decided he could no longer trust Katie, who “bewitched him” (261), and told her their relationship was over.

Mark next recalls fighting Lena and having to defend himself after Lena saw her mother’s bracelet in his possession. He regrets that if he and Katie had waited 10 months, Katie would have been of legal age, and he despairs of the “unfairness” of everything. 

Lena awakes realizing she is tied up in a car. She believes that Mark killed her mother as well as Katie and wants revenge. Lena recalls going to Mark’s house and finding it “ordinary and dirty and sad” (267). She recalls attacking him after seeing her mother’s bracelet. 

Erin receives a call that there’s another drowned woman in the Drowning Pool. However, it is just Jules going for a swim. While looking after Jules, Erin and Sean hear that Mark is gone, likely having left with Lena.

Jules returns home. She laments having pushed Nel away: “I failed you, I hurt you, and the thing that kills me is that you never knew why” (275). Jules goes downstairs and sees someone sitting on the window seat. 

Erin goes to the Whittakers’ house to ask Louise about her fight with Lena and finds Louise cleaning up the last of Katie’s things. Louise accidentally mentions that Sean is the only man she’s seen Lena be affectionate towards. Erin suspects from Louise’s behavior that Sean may have been involved with Nel and says as much, to which Louise replies: “Sean Townsend is a good man” (279). 

Moving back in the timeline, Sean investigates Mark’s house. He finds out that Mark seems to have been panicking while driving and changing his mind about where to go. The police bring in Mark’s ex-fiancée for questioning. She mentions that her father has a house on the coast and that Mark may have gone there. 

At the seaside house, Mark lets Lena out of the trunk. Lena asks Mark why he kept her mother’s bracelet, a question to which he has no real response. Deciding against trying to run, Lena thinks: “If it came down to it, I thought, it would be better to die knowing what happened to my mother than to live and always wonder, to never ever know” (287). Lena accuses Mark of taking Nel from her like he took Katie. Mark insists Katie was his and that Lena wanted him as well, accusing her of jealousy because he rejected her. As Mark talks, Lena grabs a nail from under the table and attacks Mark. Mark stops her, pinning her down to the table with the nail against her throat.

Jules sees that the person in her house is Nickie. Nickie reveals that the “Lauren” in Nel’s Drowning Pool story is Sean’s mother. She also tells Jules that Patrick used Lauren’s lighter to burn everything she owned after she died. Nickie suggests that while Nel was writing about Lauren, “she got her story from Sean Townsend, because, after all, he was supposed to be a witness, wasn’t he? So she thought he was telling the truth, and why wouldn’t she?” (295). Nickie further reveals that Nel had written down Jeannie’s version of the story about Patrick but still believed that Lauren’s death was a suicide, refusing to acknowledge Nickie’s assertion that it was murder. Nickie suggests that Patrick killed Lauren, Jeannie, and Nel. 

This excerpt is the second version of Lauren’s story—the one from Jeannie rather than Sean, and closer to the truth. Still suggesting Lauren died by suicide, this version of the story is different in the aftermath it depicts, detailing Jeannie’s interactions with young Sean. In this version of the story, Sean mentions that he, Patrick, and Lauren were all in the car together on the way to the river, but he’s “not supposed to talk about it” (300).