Page 62

Lexi Carmichael

I heard numerous gasps as I teetered back and forth on the walkway, trying to regain my balance.

Please, please don’t screw this up. Don’t fall in.

Too late I realized I wasn’t close enough to reach Tito’s outstretched hand. Windmilling my arms and contorting my body to stay upright, I’d pivoted almost 180 degrees. For a moment, I thought I’d recovered, but I knew I was near the edge of the walkway, because I could feel the slope. I put my foot down to catch myself and felt…nothing.

I was going down.

A cry escaped my lips as I fell. Except, by some miracle, I didn’t fall. Something snagged my right arm, and I straightened.

Stunned, I turned and saw Tito had caught me. He’d placed one foot on the corner of the box and, by leaning over, had just managed to reach me.

“Easy there,” he said. “You gave us quite a scare.”

“Holy crap.” My heart pounded. “Not half as much as I gave myself.Danke, Tito.” My foot finally found purchase on the walkway, so I steadied myself. Still clutching Tito’s hand, I knelt next to the box and closed my eyes for a moment to get a hold of my emotions.

Once I’d settled the rapid beat of my heart, I got back to the matter at hand. The first thing I noted about the clear box was although the water level in the pool had sunk below the level of the box, the water level in the box itself had not dropped. The water inside the box was now higher than the pool level by almost an inch.

Interesting.

“Tito, look at this,” I said as he knelt on the other side. “The water level in the box isn’t dropping. That must mean that the box is self-contained and the water in the box is separate from that in the pool. Otherwise, it would push the water out the bottom and the levels would equalize.”

“Okay. And that means exactly what?” Tito asked, his expression blank.

“It means we don’t have to drain the entire pool,” Vittoria called out. “We just have to drain the water in the box to get down to the float and the weight.”

We all turned to look at Vittoria in surprise. She held up her hands. “What? I had physics in school, and I’m a schoolteacher. Just because I’m pregnant doesn’t mean I lack brain cells. Not yet, anyway. I presume this means we can stop draining the water from the pool and start doing it from the box.”

Grinning, I gave her a thumbs-up. “You’re exactly right, Vittoria. Guys, help Vittoria raise the siphon in the hot tub as high as it will gowithouttaking the end of the hose out of the water. That should slow or stop the flow, so we don’t fill the hot tub with any more pool water. Then, someone needs to grab the end of the hose that’s in the pool and move it here to the box so we can siphon the water.”

“On it,” Stefan said, wading into the water and grabbing the hose with his feet, pulling it up. Holding on to the side of the pool and keeping one end underwater, he dragged it toward us.

Juliette and Vittoria lifted the hose in the hot tub to slow the drain. While they did that, I quickly began calculating how much water we could siphon out of the box and put into the hot tub. When I came up with a number, it meant we didn’t have enough room in the hot tub.

“Guys, we’re going to have to remove some water from the hot tub with those cans and dump it,” I said.

“Why?” Tito asked.

“Because the volume of water in the clear box equals roughly half of what we’ve already removed from the pool. But since the hot tub is more than halfway full, we’re going have to first remove several feet of water from the hot tub before we can make this work.”

Oscar looked at me in surprise. “You just did all of that calculating in your head? Right now?”

“Yes, right now. Do you want me to explain my calculations?”

“God, no. I’m just…incredibly impressed. Well done.”

Wait, my father-in-law was impressed by my mental calculation skills? Really? I was totally going to sit next to him at all our family functions.

“Lexi, where do you want us to dump the water from the hot tub?” Vittoria asked, still holding the hose.

“Well, we can’t put the water back in the pool,” I said. “And we can’t afford to raise the water level here. Anyone see a floor drain?”

“There should be one here somewhere,” Stefan said. “Almost all pool decks have a drain of some kind for deck washing or in case the pool has an overflow. It might be hidden. We need to look for it.”

Everyone started looking around, except for Tito and I, who stayed at our post in the middle of the pool and Vittoria at the hot tub.

“It’s here by the hot tub,” Oscar finally cried out. “It had a cover on it, so it didn’t look like a drain.”