Page 130 of High Season
“I know,” he said. “I know.”
“Have you called an ambulance?” she said. “We have to call an ambulance.”
The world swayed again, and she found that she was leaning into him. That he was holding up her weight, his arms wrapped around her body. Making quiet, shushing sounds.
“It’s too late,” he said. “I saw her fall. The way she hit her head—Hannah, it’s too late.”
The shush turned into a sob. A choke.
“What do you mean?”
“She’s… Hannah, she’s…”
He could not say it. Hannah could not hear it.
“We have to try.” Hannah’s voice was strangled. Slurred. Everything still felt hazy, not quite real. Perhaps it was not. Perhaps she could fix this still. “We have to get her out of the water.”
His arms loosened. His eyes were wet.
“You have to leave,” he said.
“I… what?”
“I saw her fall,” he said. “It was her ankle. She was disoriented. She must have hit her head when you pushed her. She was limping. Confused. Her foot gave way. I tried to grab her, but I couldn’t.”
He pulled back, his face level with hers. Urgency radiated from him.
“Hannah,” he said. “You need to get out of here, before anyone realizes what you’ve done.”
They moved through the twisted stairwells and hidden passages that weaved from the upper landing down to the house’s basement level. Hannah felt as if she was in a dream, the world slopedand blurred around her. As if she was drifting in some unstoppable way toward a decision that was already made.
They paused at the door that led out to the pool. Blake squeezed Hannah’s hand.
“I could come with you,” she said, desperately. “I could help. Maybe we could still help her.”
He shook his head.
“You can’t be here,” he said. “Do you know what would happen if anyone realizes what you did? You’d get arrested. It’s manslaughter, at least, if she… if she’s…”
There it was again, the thing that he could not say.
Hannah did not think to ask how anyone would even know about the fight. She did not think to ask, even, why Blake was so certain that his sister was dead. How he could be thinking so clearly, so sharply, when Hannah could barely see beyond this minute, this second. When all she wanted to do was run to Tamara, to help her, no matter the personal cost.
These were the thoughts that would come later. Deep in the night, when Hannah could not sleep. She would still wake up with the image of Tamara’s body floating in the water right behind her eyes.
“You have to go,” Blake said. “We can still make people think it was an accident. I can protect you, Hannah. But no one can know you were here.”
He moved his face so that he was close to her. So close that she could smell his sweat.
“We stay quiet, OK?” he said. “I love you. I’m going to protect you.”
He was trembling. Hannah could see that, in spite of his stoicism, his solidity, he was scared. She truly believed that he was scared for her.
Just then, a child’s scream cut through all the other distant sounds—the muffled clink of glasses, the hum of conversation. A cry that was unmistakably Nina Drayton. That unmistakably came from the pool.
“Go,” said Blake.
One last squeeze of her hand. A gentle push. Then he was gone, running to both his sisters.
