“Go, Pirates!” Dawn yelled, her hands a megaphone around her mouth, but she wasn’t even looking at the swimmers. She was so obvious that I felt embarrassed watching her. It was like watching someone do something very personal, like inserting a tampon. I imagined climbing down the bleachers when the race was over to sit next to her. I could ask her how the fund was doing. I could ask if there was a way I could help. I wanted to in the worst way. I knew Mom put in three thousand, and I gave five hundred from the money I was saving for extra college expenses, although I told Mom I only gave a hundred. Andy gave thirty from his bank account. Money was not enough. I needed to do more. I watched Dawn cheer on Ben’s team, imagining the conversation I’d never have with her.
The race was almost over. Andy was in the lead. Surprise, surprise. “Come on, Andy!” I yelled. Mom raised her fists in the air, waiting for the moment of victory, and Uncle Marcus let out one of his ear-piercing whistles.
Andy slapped the end of the pool, and the applause exploded for him, like it had two days before in the Assembly Building, but he just turned and kept swimming at the same insane pace. Mom laughed and I groaned. He’d never understood about ending a race. At the end of Andy’s next lap, Ben leaned over, grabbed him by his arms and lifted him out of the pool. I saw him mouth the words You won! to Andy, and something else that looked like You can stop swimming now.
We all sat down again. Andy looked at us, grinning and waving as he walked to the bench.
Uncle Marcus leaned forward again. “I’ve got something for you, Laurel,” he said.
My mother had to break down and look at him then. “What?”
Uncle Marcus pulled a small folded newspaper article from his shirt pocket and reached across me to hand it to her.
“One of the guys was up in Maryland and saw this in the Washington Post.”
I looked over my mother’s shoulder to read the headline: Disabled N.C. Boy Saves Friends.
Mom shook her head with a laugh. “Don’t they have enough of their own news up there?” She looked at Uncle Marcus. “I can keep this?”
“It’s yours.”
“Thanks.”
Uncle Marcus took in a long breath, stretching his arms above his head as he let it out. Then he sniffed my shoulder. “You wear chlorine the way other women wear perfume, Mags,” he teased.
He was not the first guy to tell me that. I liked that he said “women” and not “girls.”
The pool had been my home away from home since it was built when I was eleven. Before that, I could only swim during the summer in the sound or the ocean.
Daddy taught Andy and me how to swim. “Kids who live on the water better be good swimmers,” he’d said. He taught me first of course, before Andy even lived with us. One of my earliest memories was of a calm day in the ocean. It was nothing major. Nothing special. We just paddled around. He held me on his knees, tossed me in the air, swung me around until I practically choked on my laughter. Total bliss.
When I was a little older, Andy joined us in the water and he took to it the same as I did. Daddy’d told me that Andy probably wouldn’t be able to swim as well as I could, but Andy surprised him.
I couldn’t remember ever playing in the water with my mother. In my early memories, Mom was like a shadow. When I pictured anything from when I was a little girl, she was on the edge of the memory, so wispy I couldn’t be sure she was there or not. I didn’t think she ever held me. It was always Daddy’s arms around me that I remembered.
“How’s Ben’s head?” Uncle Marcus asked.
“Better,” I said, “though he’s still taking pain meds.”
“You know who he reminds me of?”
“Who?”
“Your father.” He said this quietly, like he didn’t want Mom to hear.
“Really?” I tried to picture Ben and Daddy standing next to each other.
“Not sure why, exactly.” Uncle Marcus put his elbows on his knees as he stared at Ben. “His build. His size, maybe. Jamie was about the same height. Brown eyes. Same dark, wavy hair. Face is different, of course. But it’s that…brawniness or something. All Ben needs is an empathy tattoo on his arm and…” He shrugged.
I liked when he talked about my father. I liked when anyone, except Reverend Bill, talked about Daddy.
I was probably five or six when I asked Daddy what the word “empathy” meant. We were sitting on the deck of The Sea Tender, our legs dangling over the edge, looking for dolphins. I ran my fingers over the letters in the tattoo.
“It means feeling what other people are feeling,” he said. “You know how you kissed the boo-boo on my finger yesterday when I hit it with a hammer?”
“Uh-huh.” He’d been repairing the stairs down to the beach and said, “Goddamn it!” I’d never heard him say that before.
“You felt sad for me that I hurt my finger, right?”
I nodded.
“That’s empathy. And I had it tattooed on my arm to remind me to think about other people’s feelings.” He looked at the ocean for a long minute or two and I figured that was the end of the conversation. But then he added, “If you’re a person with a lot of empathy, it can hurt more to watch a person you care about suffer than to suffer yourself.”
Even at five or six, I knew what he meant. That was how I felt when something happened to Andy. When he fell because his little legs weren’t steady enough yet, or the time he pinched his fingers in the screen door. I cried so hard that Mom couldn’t figure out which of us was hurt at first.
When I heard that Andy might be trapped by the fire—that any of those children might be trapped—the panic I felt might as well have been theirs.
“I was worried about him,” Uncle Marcus said.
I dragged my foggy brain back to our conversation. “About who?” I asked. “Daddy or Ben?”
“Ben,” Uncle Marcus said. “He had some problems in the department at first and I didn’t think he’d last. Claustrophobia. Big guy like that, you wouldn’t think he’d be afraid of anything. But after the fire at Drury—”he shook his head “—I realized I’d been wrong about him. He really proved himself. All he needed was the fire.”
And right then I knew it wasn’t fog messing up my brain. It was smoke.
Chapter Nine
Marcus
EXCELLENT DAY FOR THE WATER, AND the boaters knew it. From the front steps of Laurel’s house, I stopped to look at Stump Sound. Sailboats, kayaks, pontoon boats. I was jealous. I had a kayak and a small motorboat. I used the kayak for exercise and fished from the runabout. Or on those rare occasions I had a date, I’d take the boat for a sunset spin on the Intracoastal. I had this fantasy of taking Andy out with me someday. Never happen, I told myself. Give it up.
I rang Laurel’s doorbell.
Nearly every Sunday that I wasn’t scheduled to work, I did something with Andy. Ball game. Skating rink. Fishing from the pier. Maggie used to come, too, but by the time she reached Andy’s age, she had better things to do. I got it. I was fifteen once myself. I liked the time alone with Andy, anyway. He needed a man in his life. Father figure.
My beautiful niece opened the door and gave me a kiss on the cheek. I’d dated a woman a while back who turned out to be too artsy-fartsy for my taste, but I did