Chapter 5 - His Hand Was Still Open When I Turned
I heard my own breathing before I felt my hands.
The pool hall made everything louder. The filters hummed under the water and the lights buzzed somewhere above the bleachers, and every breath I took came back off the tile. Rourke was still talking. He had his right hand up, palm out, the way guys do when they want to look reasonable. The whistle on the lanyard swung a little when he moved and then settled against his shirt.
He was between me and the edge of lane four. Behind him the water moved in a slow chop from the circulation jets. I could smell chlorine and wet concrete. My jacket felt heavy on my shoulders.
Tamsin had stepped to my left. I saw her in my periphery, her cream sweater pulled tight at her wrists where she was holding her own hands. Ivy was back by the door, where we'd stopped. I didn't look at her. I couldn't look at her and keep my eyes on him.
Rourke said something about it not being what it looked like. His voice was thin in that big room. He took a half step toward me, still with that hand up. The rubber of his sandals squeaked on the wet deck.
I remember thinking about the deck. Someone had mopped it after practice and left it damp. There were footprint trails leading from the shallow end to where the kickboards were stacked. The coping stones at the edge were dark with water. When I was Ivy's age I'd slipped on a deck just like that and split my chin open.
Tamsin said, "Please don't."
It was quiet. Not a scream. She didn't reach for me yet. She just said it once and stopped breathing after, like she was waiting to see what kind of man I was going to be in front of our daughter.
Rourke glanced at her when she spoke. That was the moment his posture changed. He dropped his hand an inch and turned his head just enough to look at her, and then back at me. He tried to reset, lifted that open hand again.
"We were just talking," he said. "Come on."
I believed my body understood before I did. I shifted my weight to my left foot. The sole of my shoe found a dry patch on the concrete. My right shoulder dropped back an inch. It wasn't a decision the way people talk about decisions. It was the same turn I'd made a thousand times throwing a ball with my brother in the yard, hips first, then shoulder.
I swung.
I led with the side of my fist and caught him high on the jaw, just under the cheek. The sound cracked flat off the far wall and came back. It wasn't like the movies. It was shorter and wetter, flesh and bone, and then the scrape of his sandal as his feet went out from under his stance.
Time didn't slow. If anything it got faster. His head snapped to the side and his open hand flew out for balance and found nothing. The lanyard lifted off his chest. He took one step back and his heel hit the coping stone.
I saw his eyes go wide. He wasn't looking at me anymore. He was looking at the ceiling lights, then at the water. His arms windmilled once. His left foot slipped on that dark wet edge where the water lapped over from the gutter.
Tamsin moved. She lunged forward with her arm out, fingers spread, reaching for his shirt. Her sweater sleeve rode up her wrist. She was too late by half a second. Her fingertips brushed the whistle lanyard and it slipped through her hand.
He went over backward.
His shoulders tipped past the edge and his knees buckled. For a half breath he was hanging there, one foot still catching on the coping, his body angled out over lane four. Water from the lane reflected up across his face, moving blue light across his chin where I'd hit him.
Then gravity took him.
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I stayed where I was, my right hand still closed, my chest heaving. The echo of the hit faded into the hum of the pool. Behind me I heard Ivy suck in air. Tamsin was already on her knees at the edge, her hand in the air where he'd been, her balance pitched forward toward the empty space over the water.
Rourke fell toward the lane, arms half up, mouth open, with nothing under him but blue water.
