Page 53 of Hearts of Locke Hill

“I shouldn’t have said that the way I did.” He winced. “My father was right there. He’d jump in and teach us along the way back, keeping his hand under our belly if he had to.”

She let go a deep breath of relief.

“But getting water up your nose or coughing a bit, that can happen to anyone. So don’t let it scare you.”

She looked down and shivered. “Water scares me now,” she whispered.

She heard his sigh. “I know,” he said. “My father says water is powerful. More powerful than us. But learning to swim gives you power to move through it. To float on top of it. You always have to respect the water. It has rules. Like riding a horse. If you learn those rules, it can be safe. And fun.”

She wanted to have fun again. She wanted to be safe. She wanted to have power.

“Do you understand?”

She nodded. He pulled her a little deeper in and her fist tightened. “What are you doing?”

“I’m going to pull you around for a little while. You’re a little bigger than Simon, but he likes it.”

“Simon is a baby.”

“He’s four, and he’s been swimming all summer.” He took both her hands and walked backward. “Just let me pull you. Pretend you’re a kite and I’m towing you along.”

“Kites don’t swim.”

“Ah, but they float.”

She couldn’t argue with that. They began to move through the water. At first, she kept her elbows bent, but as he pulled and turned in large figure eights, her arms relaxed.

“Now,” he said, “blow bubbles in the water.”

“I’m not a baby,” she said, but as she spoke, water slipped into her mouth, and she sputtered and coughed, losing her grip on one hand, and she pulled at him in panic. “I can’t touch. I can’t touch!” Her head slipped under, and she grabbed at anything, everything sloshing. Her elbow collided with bone before sure arms grabbed her waist and knees and she was hauled to Cyril’s chest.

She still scrambled for purchase, clawing her way up and asfar out of the water as she could. He lifted her halfway out, and then he was dumping her onto the pebbled shore. He collapsed next to her, holding his hand over his eye.

“I know this is going to be difficult for you,” he grumbled as he waited for her to sputter herself out, “but you’re going to have to do as I say.”

She rolled onto her stomach and buried her face in her folded arms, heaving a last few coughs. The sun-warmed air played with the cool drops on her arms and neck. She shuddered. Defeat never settled well with her. “I’m too afraid,” she muttered.

“You have reason to be.”

She lifted her head and looked over at him. He lay on his back, gingerly touching the outer corner of his eye, where it had met with her elbow.

“How do I not be afraid?” she asked. Surely, Cyril Burke would know. He never backed down from anything. Though, she’d never tell him that. “I’m a coward.”

He rolled onto his side and propped his dark, shining head on his wrist. “If you were a coward, we wouldn’t be anywhere near this lake, dripping wet because you are fighting like a demon to learn how to swim. I wouldn’t have this swollen eye, and you wouldn’t have a belly full of lake water and perhaps a minnow or two. You, Violent Violin, are the least cowardly person I have ever met, and I have George for a brother.”

She let his words settle on her. To her horror, her chin began to tremble. Her brow crumpled, and she fought it. “I … I wish I’d learned how to swim … before.” Her attempt to breathe hurt. “If I’d known how, Daniel wouldn’t have—he wouldn’t have—” Quickly, she turned her face into her arms again, unable to fight the tears. Her stomach burned. Her heart burned. The sobs cameas quietly as she could render them. She was mortified that Cyril witnessed her failure on top of everything else.

A warm hand pressed her shoulder. “Come now, Violet. You can’t know that.”

She scrambled to her knees, grabbing fistfuls of pebbles. “I do. If I hadn’t challenged him, if I hadn’t been trying to show him how deep I could go—I didn’t see the drop-off. And he ran. He jumped off the dock and he didn’t swim well, but he tried to save me and he pushed me and pushed me until I could reach the dock and when I turned around”—she was gasping for air, her voice a high squeak she didn’t recognize—“when I turned around, he wasn’t there. I couldn’t see him. And he wasn’t there anymore …” The world became a blur around her, and she wrapped her arms around her middle, the pebbles slipping through her hands.

A sun-warmed towel was wrapped around her shoulders, and she knew Cyril sat near her, but she wasn’t sure how long she stayed like that, crying over her brother, who would never swim with her again. Who would never do so many things … again.

A little while later she blinked with the realization that she no longer cried. Though puffy, her eyes had dried. Her breathing had settled, and her back rested against solid warmth. The solid warmth shifted.

“I was thinking,” Cyril said from behind her. They were back-to-back, sitting on the lakeshore. She’d never sat that way with anyone. He’d let her lean against him for how long?

“What about?” she asked, her voice a bit croaky.