Oh well,
she thought.
It’s your idea. No one’s forcing you to do it. And the first time is the worst. Just get it over with, and before you know it, you’ll have friends dropping by for chili again, even in this fancy neighborhood.
Distracted by the logistics of hostessing, Keely almost missed the turn that led to their secluded street. Just as she slowed the car down and put on the signal, a police car, its light flashing and siren wailing, sped up from behind her and wheeled around the corner.
I wonder what that’s all about,
she thought. She could hear them now—more sirens in the distance. Instinctively, her heart began to pound. As she rounded the curve that led to her house, she saw a cluster of flashing lights and a congregation of vehicles in the distance.
No,
she thought.
Oh no—it can’t be us.
She mentally counted the houses that stood on the street. There weren’t too many. Each house had a large lot around it. Next door to them was Dr. Connelly, an elderly widower who lived with his daughter Evelyn.
That’s probably it,
Keely thought. The retired physician was in his eighties and suffering from Alzheimer’s. Why, even his daughter had to be nearly sixty.
Keely was actually hoping it was Dr. Connelly.
Anything,
she thought,
but my house, my kids.
There was no smoke in the air, no fire trucks. Just police, and an ambulance.
A heart attack. It has to be,
she thought, although she, of all people, knew it might very well be something else. Keely’s car crawled up the street, hampered by the arriving emergency vehicles. She gripped the wheel fiercely. As she drew closer, she counted the houses and she knew. It was not the Connellys’ house. It was one house farther up. Her heart thudding, her mouth dry, she pulled the SUV up, stopped it short behind a patrol car with a squeal of brakes, and jumped out. There were groups of people standing in knots on the front lawn, looking curiously up at the house. They turned to stare at Keely. Mark and the children were nowhere in sight. Keely began to run up the lawn toward her house. Even more than the emergency vehicles, there was something chilling about the sight of that front door, which was gaping open, as if privacy no longer mattered.
A
young patrolman tried to block her entry by gripping her forearm. “Let go of me,” she hissed. “I live here.” The young man dropped her arm as if it were hot and stepped back, averting his eyes. Keely saw that he wanted to avoid her gaze, and his obvious discomfort was chilling. She looked around her house as if it were a foreign place. It was filled, as if in a nightmare, by people she didn’t recognize. “Mark,” she cried, and then looked at the young cop accusingly. “Why are these people here? Where is my husband? My children?”
“Are you Mrs. Weaver?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Keely. “What are you doing here?”
“You’d better come with me, ma’am,” he said softly.
“Why? What is this all about?”
“Right this way, ma’am,” he said. He cleared a path for her through the uniformed strangers who were clustered in her living room.
She could hear a baby crying now. Abby. “Where is my husband?” Keely demanded. “My son?”
“The sergeant will explain,” the young officer said stiffly as he escorted her through the French doors to the patio. The patio was lit by fairy lights on the trees and by the light that filtered out from the house. Beyond the patio, the pool was illuminated. It glowed, gemlike, a pale blue lozenge afloat in the darkness. There were more strangers, everywhere she looked. Police, people in hospital scrubs, emergency personnel. Then, in the midst of the confusion, Keely saw a familiar face. It was Evelyn Connelly, her next door neighbor. The pudgy woman, who was wearing a sweatsuit with a strand of pearls, was gesturing widely as she spoke to a sober-looking police officer with a gray mustache. The
man nodded, but his gaze traveled to Keely. Evelyn turned, and her eyes widened as she recognized her neighbor. She tilted her head to one side and regarded Keely with a pitying glance.
“Evelyn,” Keely cried, as if she were a long-lost friend.
The older woman approached and grasped Keely’s hand in her own puffy, liver-spotted hand with its weighty diamond ring. “I’m sorry,” she said, as if in answer to Keely’s unspoken question. “I called them. I went to let the dogs out, and I heard the baby screaming. It went on for a long time. I was afraid it would upset Dad—he gets agitated by that kind of thing. So I came over to check.”
The gray-haired officer approached Keely. “Are you Mrs. Weaver?”
“What is it?” Keely demanded. “What’s going on? Where is my husband? Where’s my baby? And my son?”
“You have to be very brave now, dear,” said Evelyn, gripping her hand. “This is not easy.”
A couple of people looked up at Keely, and then away. A woman in a short-sleeved blue uniform with a stethoscope around her neck was holding Abby. Keely yelped with relief and reached out for her child. She clutched the baby to her chest. Everything Abby wore—her hair, her little shoes—was wet and icy cold. Keely looked at the baby in confusion. “You’re all wet,” she said wonderingly.
Abby buried her face in her mother’s neck and whimpered.
“Mrs. Weaver,” said the graying officer, “I’m Sergeant Henderson.” He did not seem to realize that Keely did not care who he was.
Clutching Abby, Keely pushed past him, feeling as if she were moving in a soundless, weightless atmosphere, like a dream landscape. An old dream. An old nightmare. Through the open door of the gate, she could see them. Beside the pool, a knot of people seemed to be working, concentrating. No one was moving with any particular haste or urgency. But the tension in the air was palpable. As Keely approached, she could see that someone was lying on the concrete apron of the pool. Someone fully dressed, with shoes on. She recognized the pants, the pin-striped shirt. She stopped and stared.
“Mark?” she whispered. There was no response from him. “Mark!” she cried, as if urging him to stand up.
She tried to get near him, but others materialized and held her back. The sergeant came up to her again. “Mrs. Weaver, I have to detain you for a minute. The medical examiner is with him right now.”
“Is that a doctor?” Keely asked. “What’s the matter with him?”
“I’m sorry, ma’am. We found him in the pool.”
“The pool?” Keely whispered. “No, no, that can’t be right. My husband can’t swim.”
“No,” said Sergeant Henderson, as if he already knew it. His gaze was steady, pitying.
She felt a furious impatience with all of them. “Why is everyone standing around while my husband is lying there? Get him to the hospital. Hurry.”
“I’m afraid that wouldn’t help, ma’am.”
“Well, that’s impossible,” Keely insisted. “He wouldn’t go in the pool. He was afraid of the water. . . . He wouldn’t . . .” But even as she said it, something was penetrating the fog in her brain. Abby, in her arms, was wet. Completely sopping wet.
Keely looked at Abby as if she were seeing her for the first time. “Why is my baby so wet?”
“I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but it was already too late when we got here, Mrs. Weaver.”
“Too late?” she whispered. The police officer seemed to realize that she was not taking it all in.
“The medical examiner is examining the body right now, Mrs. Weaver. To certify the cause of death. Not much question, of course. We found him floating in the pool. The baby was beside the pool, soaked like that.”
Keely shook her head. “No . . . no . . .” She had to reject what they were saying. If she rejected it, maybe it wouldn’t become real. She had to prove that they were wrong. That this was all going to stop happening, any minute now. “All these people just standing around . . . you should have him in the ambulance. You should be taking him to the hospital,” she said faintly.
The paramedic with the stethoscope said, “He’s beyond our help, ma’am. Believe me, if there were any chance . . . even the slightest chance . . .”
“I’m sorry,” said Sergeant Henderson, taking a pad and pen out of his shirt pocket. “I know this is a terrible shock.”
Keely was shaking her head, pushing the man’s words away.
“I’m sorry, but we need to know. . . . When did you last see your husband?”
“What?” She looked up at him in confusion. “What time is it?”
The officer looked at his watch. “It’s about nine o’clock.”
“Supper. After supper . . .”
“You went out,” he prodded.
Keely felt dazed. “They were fine. Everything was fine.”
“Was your husband alone here with the baby?”
She saw them in her mind’s eye, Mark and Abby in the driveway, waving. “Yes,” she said. “He was holding her.”
The officer held the pen poised over the pad of paper. “And you say that your husband couldn’t swim. Are you in the habit of locking the gate to the pool?”
“Yes,” said Keely. “Yes. Of course. Always.”
“And your husband never went into the water.”
“No. Never. Except . . .” Keely could feel the cold water leaching through her clothes, running down the front of her shirt. The only part of Keely that was not freezing was her neck, where the baby’s tears seemed to sizzle on her skin. She could smell chlorine in the wisps of Abby’s hair. “Abby.” She looked up at the detective. “Abby is . . . I smell chlorine.”
A short man in a tie and a dark jacket who had been crouched in the knot of people by the pool stood up and came over to where they stood. He was wearing a dark blue all-weather coat and he carried a medical bag. He nodded to Sergeant Henderson.
The sergeant acknowledged his nod and said, “Dr. Christensen, this is Mrs. Weaver. Mrs. Weaver, this is the county medical examiner.”
Dr. Christensen nodded grimly at Keely. “I’m very sorry, Mrs. Weaver. It’s pretty clear. He drowned. No injuries of any kind, otherwise. He’s been dead about half an hour.”
“Mrs. Weaver tells me that Mr. Weaver couldn’t swim.”
Dr. Christensen looked back at the body lying by the pool. “He may have jumped in after the baby.”
Sergeant Henderson nodded, as if these words confirmed his suspicions. “That’s what I thought. I’m guessing it was instinctive, Mrs. Weaver. He didn’t think. He didn’t have time to think. His daughter was in trouble . . . he had to do something. So he jumped in. Somehow he managed to shove her out of there.”
“No, that’s not possible.”
The EMT held out her arms for Abby. “Ma’am, we should get that child’s wet clothes off,” she said. “And you should sit down. Give me the baby.” The young woman tried to reach for Abby, but the baby shrieked and would not release her mother’s neck. Keely held her baby close and took another step toward her husband. An EMT there, seeing her approach, stepped away, and Keely saw Mark’s face.
Instinctively, Keely threw up a hand over Abby’s eyes, to shield her from the sight.
Everything inside of her was refusing to believe. No, no, it couldn’t be. This was all a mistake. But she had seen the face of death before. Her husband Richard. And now that she had seen Mark’s face, she knew. Evelyn Connelly approached Keely and laid a hand on her arm. “I’m so sorry, dear. I don’t know how long the baby was screaming before I realized. . . . She never cries like that. I thought something must be wrong. That’s why I came over. And then I saw him floating in there. So I called 911. I’m afraid he was already gone when I found him . . .”
Keely was shaking her head, but her heart was already beginning to feel trapped. She would not be able to escape from it. She began to tremble. The paramedic returned again, this time with a towel, which she wrapped around Abby. Drawn to the warmth and dryness of the towel, Abby allowed herself to be peeled from her mother’s arms. Keely stumbled toward Mark on legs so numb she could not even feel them. She fell to her knees beside him and studied his features. She ran her fingers over the curve of his cheekbone as if she were blind. She put her face against his chest. The pin-striped shirt was sopping wet. There was no thrum of a heartbeat in her ear. She raised her head and stared at him, not believing it. “What did you do?” she pleaded of him. “You know you can’t swim.” But she knew there was no point in asking him.
And she knew, also, the answer to her question. “You couldn’t let Abby drown, could you?” Tears began to spill from her eyes. “You wouldn’t do that. Not our baby.”
Sergeant Henderson rested a hand on her shoulder. “He gave up his life to save the baby, Mrs. Weaver. Not many people would have the courage. You should be very proud of him.”
She could still see them, Mark and Abby, together in the driveway, waving to her. Her body began to shake with sobs.
“Mom?”
She raised her face, brushing away tears, and turned to see her son standing by the edge of the pool. He held something dark against his chest like a shield. His eyes were wide and terrified.
“Mom . . . what happened?”
“Dylan,” she whispered. She reached out her hand and he edged toward her, gazing against his will at the body.
She clutched his hand, pulling him closer. “Dylan, Abby fell in the pool. Mark tried to save her. He drowned.”
“Oh, no,” Dylan whispered. He fell to his knees beside her, still clutching the long, curved object against him. Keely reached for him, and they embraced, murmuring through tears and disbelief. A pair of ball bearings gouged Keely in the side. She released him and stared at the object between them. It was his skateboard tucked under his arm. Dylan seemed to have forgotten he was holding it. He appeared to be dazed by what he saw.
“The gate must have been open,” Keely said. At first she didn’t know why she said that. It didn’t seem relative to anything. And then he looked up at her guiltily and she knew. She stared at the skateboard. He jumped to his feet and dropped it, as if it were on fire, and the skateboard clattered against the cement.
Two men were guiding a rolling gurney through the gate. Sergeant Henderson came over to Keely, bent down, and tried to help her up. “Come on, Mrs. Weaver,” he said. “We’re going to have to move your husband. Let’s get you inside before they start.”