Learning to Swim (24 page)

But it made me uneasy. Mrs. O’Leary had money stuffed in books in her little house. Who knew how much of it. Did she really need the money? What would she need it for? Apparently Rory didn’t know about the stashed cash.

“So will I see you tonight?” Rory broke into my thoughts.

I grinned. “Only if you want to.”

He didn’t answer, but slipped his arms around my waist and kissed me. Then he pulled away. “I think I do,” he said.

I headed for the door. “Meet me somewhere at eight?”

“The jetty?”

“Of course.”

It wasn’t until I was outside the Pink Palace, shoes in hand, last night’s damp clothes smelling a bit like must, that I realized I was in for round two.
My parents
. It had been a long time since we’d had a fight of this magnitude. This time, I was determined not to give in as easily as I usually did. This was about the rest of my life. I took a deep breath and began to climb the back stairs.

But I was wrong. When I passed my father in the kitchen, he didn’t say a word to me. He may have been giving me the silent treatment, but it wasn’t a whole lot different than our day-to-day interaction. In the living room, Mom was suspiciously quiet, lifting a few fingers in greeting. That could only mean that the wrath of my father was still on its way.

I stayed carefully away from them, and the next day, I was too consumed in my own world to notice whether my father was talking to me. I had big plans with Rory.

I slipped out of the Pink Palace around nine that evening and met him at the resort.

He was sitting on the edge of the pool, watching his brother Aidan clean the water with a net on a long pole. The pool was closed. We’d purposely waited until after dark when it closed to resort guests. There was just a sliver of the moon out tonight; it lent an eerie effect to the reflections on the water’s surface. Almost sinister. But that interpretation was probably produced more by my imagination than any grounding in reality.

Rory jumped up when he heard my footsteps on the boardwalk.

“Hey!” he said brightly. “Come meet my brother Aidan.”

“We met briefly,” I said, putting on as friendly a face as I could. It probably wasn’t very convincing, considering the nerves that were clenching my stomach.

“Hi,” Aidan said. As I’d noticed before, he was a mini Rory. Only a bit shorter and with slightly darker hair. And, of course, he was considerably quieter. I found myself wondering which brother was more like Mr. O’Leary.

Rory was beaming, but Aidan and I were both clearly out of things to say. I watched Aidan pull the pole apart and stow it in a wooden cabinet at the side of the pool.
Seriously the polar opposite of Rory.
They were twins to the eye, but he was the introverted, quiet opposite to Rory’s friendly exuberance. Who must their mother have been to produce such similar, yet strikingly different boys?

“Thanks, for, uh, cleaning the pool,” I said lamely.

Jesus, shut up
, I chided myself.
He’s not the pool boy
. Well, technically, he may have been. But
God
he had Rory’s eyes—the same exact big, round, brown eyes.

Aidan nodded absently. “Good luck,” he murmured before disappearing into the resort office. I blushed profusely. How embarrassing to be known as the girl who couldn’t swim. He could probably swim every bit as well as his older brother. His older brother who was already getting into the pool.

“Come on!” he called happily.

It looked cold. But that was a lame excuse. I finally settled on, “Rory, I’m kinda scared.”
And not completely comfortable in a swimming suit
, but I wasn’t about to admit that out loud.

He waded to the side of the pool and held his hand out to me. “Sit down.”

I pulled off my shorts and t-shirt and unconsciously hunched over, shrinking into myself. What happened to that confident, flirty girl in the Ritz pool?
She’s definitely gone
.

I sat down on the side of the pool, lowering my feet in with a gasp. It was, indeed, cold. I took his hand, goose bumps running up my arms and legs.

“You have nothing to worry about; you’ve got the best teacher in Oyster Beach,” he said.

I nodded. I was full of a thousand emotions and I didn’t know which one was evident on my face. I was scared, of course; my mother’s irrational fear of losing another loved one to the mysterious power of water had definitely had a dark effect on me. I was embarrassed, too, not just to be in a swimming suit in front of this gorgeous boy, but to not know something so typically childish. And I was angry. I was angry at
her
for messing this all up for me. Gretel. She was nothing to me, not even a real person, but she’d caused so much pain. If she hadn’t gotten into that pool and drowned, who knows what would be different now? I certainly wouldn’t be in this position. Maybe we wouldn’t even be at the beach. Maybe my mom wouldn’t have been such a tight ball of nerves and generally crazy for the entirety of my life. And I would have had a sister. A small pang pricked at my tummy. She had never been a real person to me.
But she could have been. She
should
have been
.

“You ready to get in?” Rory said.

“How about you swim a little first?” I tried to stall. “Just so I can see what it’s supposed to look like,” I added lamely.

“I think you’ve seen me swim enough, it’s your turn to try.”

I looked at him sharply. Were we finally going to broach the subject of my—well—those mornings at the pier? “You—?”

He let my unfinished question fall to oblivion. His face said it didn’t matter; my face was undoubtedly saying I was confused. His hand in mine felt like electricity as I remembered those mornings back when I didn’t know him. It had been a long time since I’d thought of that time; it felt so unnatural to remember a time when I didn’t know Rory.

“So, are you ready to get in?” he repeated.

I took a deep breath and nodded.

He put his hands on my hips and lifted me into the pool, pulling me slowly through the water to the middle. It was like flying, fluttering free through the water, yet held so firmly to him.

He stopped in the middle, standing up, but my feet just barely grazed the bottom. I wouldn’t let go of his hand. We had a long night ahead of us.

“We’ll start with floating,” he said.

We were wrapped in the same towel, perched on a lounge chair and kissing softly when Aidan appeared again.

I jumped up, self-consciously pulling the towel around me. Rory laughed as my flustered reaction pulled the fluffy towel off his shoulders. God he was hot when his hair was wet and sticking up in all directions, after he rubbed it with the towel (and my fingers may have contributed a bit, too). It also helped, of course, that he wasn’t wearing a shirt.

I grabbed my clothes and tried to pull them on without letting the towel fall. My suit was still damp but I was too embarrassed to even look Aidan in the face, much less strut around in a swimming suit.

“What’s up?” Rory asked him.

“Mom’s looking for you,” he said. He eyed me awkwardly struggling with the towel and my t-shirt. “And she wants to know who you’re with.”

“I—we’ve—I’ve met your mom,” I stammered.

“I’ll be right in,” Rory told Aidan.

Aidan grinned and left.

Maybe I wasn’t an Olympic swimmer. And maybe we’d spent more time kissing than actually practicing swimming. But maybe that was all I needed. The pool wasn’t a sinister thing anymore, not after the night I’d just had in it. It would forever be associated with Rory’s hands and his laugh.

“Meet me at the pier tomorrow?” I said, as I left.

“Always,” he said.

I passed Aidan near the office on my way out. He barely looked up from the book he was reading by the beam of a porch light. I hesitated; my instinct was to say something but he seemed more like the type of person who was a lot happier with as little conversation as possible. A little like me.

I finally resolved on a simple, “Bye.”

“Maybe next time you guys will actually get around to swimming.”

I grinned. He was all jokes. Maybe he wasn’t so different from Rory, after all.

Briseadh Isteach agus Briseadh Amach

Breaking In and Breaking Out

Princess was the only one that jumped up to greet me when I walked in the door. Granted, she was the only one to ever jump up to sniff my shoes, but the silence was alarming that night. Maybe they had been sitting there in the dining room in perfect chilled silence the whole evening, or maybe they’d seen me coming, but that’s how both my mother and father were when I entered.

And then I realized they weren’t alone. Captain Harville was there, standing awkwardly between them by the table.

He looked about to speak, but throwing a glance at my parents, he realized the delinquent wasn’t to be treated with congeniality. Instead he just nodded a quick hello. He looked extremely uncomfortable.

“Hi,” I said brightly, hoping to break the tension.

“Where have you been?” Dad said by way of a response.

“I was just—”

“We don’t need to talk about that,” Mom said gently. “Right now.” She took a calming breath. “Captain Harville came to speak with you.”

“It needn’t sound as formal as all that,” Captain Harville said. He held his hat in his hand and twisted it nervously. “There was a break-in down at the Ritzes’ and I was just doing the rounds of everybody who may know something, may have seen anything unusual around the Ritz house recently.”

I froze.
A break-in?
Had someone seen us at their pool? We’d left everything exactly the way we’d found it. But it was still trespassing.

“When did it happen?” I said, willing my voice not to break.

“Last night.”

I let out a deep breath, willing my cheeks to go back to their normal color. We’d been nowhere near the Ritz house last night. “Oh, I’m sorry, I don’t know anything. I don’t hang out with the Ritz kids anymore.”

“That’s not why he’s here,” Dad cut in sharply. “Actually that’s exactly why he’s here. As a matter of fact, if you were friendly with that family, he wouldn’t be here at all. He’s here because you’re so damned friendly with that handyman Ritz hired.”

“That has nothing—”

“Officer, what was it that was broken into, exactly?” Dad said pointedly.

“Well, it was the little shed at the back of the property. Where the O’Brien boy works. He wasn’t working at the time, though, so I’m sure—”

“Rory?” I nearly yelled. “You think
Rory
did this?” This was directed at my father whose glare hadn’t left me, searching for any break in my defense. But it was Captain Harville that cut in quickly.

“Now, nobody’s pointing fingers at anybody. It wasn’t a serious affair. The door was broken open and there were some things thrown around. Nothing’s missing. We’re just seeing if anybody knows anything. No harm done.”

I looked at my father. He obviously thought there was
much
harm done.

“Well I can promise you neither Rory nor I had anything to do with it,” I said firmly.

“That’s just fine, and now I’m going to leave you all and I want you to forget I was here. No harm done.” He hesitated before nodding politely.

Mom got up to show him to the door, but Captain Harville hesitated again in the doorway. “Cora—I also wanted you to know that … well old Mrs. O’Leary talks about you a great deal. She sure cares for you a whole lot. And she’s been real sick lately. Won’t you go and see her when you can?”

My heart plummeted and shame flooded my cheeks. That was the second warning I’d gotten about Mrs. O’Leary’s health.
How selfish could I possibly be?

But Dad succeeded in making me look like an angel in comparison just then. “I’m afraid Cora won’t have time for that,” he said coldly.

“And why’s that?” I demanded, spinning to face him.