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He was asleep inside of ninety seconds. Steven sleeps like a man with nothing in him that could keep him up, which is another item from the list.

I lay there beside him with my feet finally warming and considered what I’d just done.

I had been handed a clean, undefended opportunity to tell the truth. To say that Gregory chose the work, every time, for six years, and that eventually I could not carry it any longer. Any man on earth would have taken it. It is the single most socially acceptable thing a divorced person is permitted to say in bed at one in the morning.

Instead I said the sentence people say when they are protecting somebody.

We wanted different things.

Why did I lie to Steven?

Chapter Twelve

Gregory

I was on the terrace with my coffee when I heard the splash.

It's a specific sound, a person going into water. Not the sound a diver makes. Heavier, more sudden, with a kind of scrabble in it where somebody's shoes tried to do something and failed.

Then a voice said, "Oh my God!"

And he was laughing.

I got to the koi pond in about nine seconds, and this is what I saw.

Esteban was in the water. Face-up, but only just, one arm hooked over a rock and the other one not doing anything at all. The water around his head had turned a color that water should not be. Reddish brown. A reflector floated six feet away, silver side up, spinning slowly.

And Steven Ellis Bland was crouched on the bank with his phone out, filming.

"Are you okay? Esteban? Oh my God, are you—" He was still laughing, in that helpless way people do. "That was — okay, that was incredible, hang on—"

I went into the pond.

It's deeper than it looks. That's the thing nobody understands about ornamental water. Four feet at the edge and then six, and the bottom is river stone laid by somebody thinking about how it would look from the house, and all of it is coated in a decade of algae.

I got both hands under his arms.

"Esteban. It's Gregory. I've got you."

"Mr. Normand—" He tried to stand and his legs went out from under him and we both went sideways. I got a mouthful of pond water and something enormous and orange went past my knee. "I'm sorry. I'm very sorry—"

"Don't apologize, don't do that. Don't move your neck for me. Can you feel your hands?"

"Yes."

"Both of them?"

He didn't answer.

"Esteban. Can you feel your left hand?"

"I don't know," he said.

"Steven." I didn't look up. "Call 911."

"Is it — I mean, is it that bad, he's kind of—"

"Call 911 now!"