Into the Water

Sean wakes in the middle of the night to Louise pounding on his front door. Louise hands him a bottle of diet pills prescribed to Nel, with the warning: “Studies in the United States have linked their use to depression and suicidal thoughts” (142). Sean reminds Louise that Katie’s blood tests were clean when she died. Louise insists that the pills are proof that Nel killed her daughter and may have harmed other people as well. Sean agrees to investigate so Louise will calm down. 

Erin works on investigating Nel’s diet pills and thinks over Katie’s case, learning about a falling out between Katie and Lena at school. Erin goes to talk to Jules, informing her that Robbie was not involved in Nel’s death. Erin tells Jules they will need to search the house again because of the diet pills they found in Katie’s room. Upon further investigation, Erin finds out that Nel “couldn’t have bought the pills” (150) because she was in the hospital when they were purchased. On her way out the door, Erin finds out that the prints on Nel’s camera are Louise’s. 

Erin visits Mark to ask him questions; she finds him packing to leave town, supposedly with his fiancée. When Erin surprises Mark with questions about Katie rather than Nel, Mark starts to deteriorate mentally, “struggling to hear her over the pounding of blood in his ears” (154). Once Erin leaves, Mark looks for a token of Katie to take with him but finds none, having burned them all after her death. Mark goes to the school to find something of Katie’s in Helen’s office. He finds nothing but does find Nel’s mother’s bracelet that Nel always wore and takes it with him. 

Erin and Sean go back to the Whittakers’ house, where they find Josh, who insists without prompting that his family was asleep “that night.” Erin and Sean tell Louise that their new blood tests show, as the first did, that Katie hadn’t taken any pills the night she died. After learning that Nel couldn’t have bought the pills, Louise insists: “Lena did it” (160). When Erin asks Louise for her fingerprints, Louise admits to tampering with Nel’s camera. Louise recalls going to Nel’s house after Katie’s death and saying “cruel things” to Lena. Admitting that she couldn’t bear the thought of Nel having something of Katie on camera—that Nel might show “my girl to the world, alone and frightened” (163)—Louise acknowledges that she tried to take the SD card from the camera. 

Erin suspects Louise may have hurt Nel, based on Louise’s account of threatening Nel and Lena. Sean tries to put Erin off the idea. Erin notes that it seems “bizarre to me that [Lena’s] reaction to her friend’s death would be so extreme, so visceral, when her reaction to her mother’s was so restrained” (165). 

Lena notes that she bought the diet pills and thinks the adults are foolish for believing the pills matter in Katie’s death. Sean and Erin question Lena about the pills at the station. Erin changes tack and asks Lena about the day Louise came to her house and threatened Nel. Lena insists that Louise had nothing to do with Nel’s death. As Lena is leaving, Erin observes: “When someone dies like this, the question everyone asks is why. […] But not you. And the only reason—the only reason—I can think of for that, is because you already know” (169). 

Lena walks home and runs into Josh, who tells her that he thinks they should “tell.” Lena worries that if she and Josh tell the truth, the police will “ask questions about what happened afterwards” (171). At Lena’s suggestion, Lena and Josh walk to Mark’s house, then throw rocks at it, causing considerable damage.

Nel’s excerpt about Katie details Katie’s walk through town prior to her suicide, collecting rocks and bricks along the way. She imagines that Katie thought about Lena shortly before as she passed Lena’s house. Nel also ties Katie to the women before her, suggesting that the previous summer, Katie and her friends had been “telling stories of the river, of Libby and Anne and all the rest” (174).