Page 25 of Except Emerson (Detroit ABCs #7)

When I went back outside, Coral was batting at a toy that Levi had hung and he was rinsing off under a shower head that seemed to have flipped out from the side of his cabana.

“I’m too nasty to jump right into the pool,” he told me over his shoulder.

I watched as the water sparkled down his back, which was a lot more muscular than most backs.

So were his arms, which made it easy to see how he’d carried everything so easily today.

I nodded silently and found the shower on my own cabana.

When I turned around, he was watching me, and I suddenly remembered his sister Ava telling me that he was definitely interested, and her daughter explaining that meant he liked me as a girlfriend.

“Feel better?” he asked.

Those words expressed something different, though. He had sounded the same as when he’d been checking on my cat. “I want to get submerged all the way,” I answered, and walked toward the square pool.

“You’re limping a lot.”

“I stepped down pretty hard after I emptied out the cabinet above the refrigerator. That was all full of cookbooks.”

“Really? Be careful,” he warned. “There’s a big ledge around the edge, so you have to dive far out.”

I wasn’t going to dive. Despite growing up close to Lake Huron and going in the water a lot, I was a cautious swimmer—but not Levi.

After watching me climb carefully, he backed up a few feet and then propelled himself into the pool.

He came up and shook back his hair, which looked darker when wet.

It brought up the memory of Grant swimming in Lance and Vivienne’s pool and how I’d watched him on that last day, feeling so…

I had been unhappy, that was what I’d felt.

I identified the feeling now but at the time, I hadn’t known what was wrong except that I’d been anxious about how much he was drinking.

He always liked beer, but that day he’d been downing bottle after bottle.

“It feels good,” Levi called, and then swam over to me. He moved through the water like he knew what he was doing, not just splashing around.

“I had to take lessons and be on a team,” he explained when I asked. “All three of us did, but Liv’s the only one who stuck with it. She could have swum in college but she followed her asshat of a boyfriend instead.”

“Is that the guy she married?”

“No, thank Jesus,” he said, and blew out a big breath of relief that splashed droplets up onto me. “Can you swim? Does it hurt your hip?”

“I can.”

“You have a bigger scar than I expected,” he noted, and I realized what he’d been looking at as I had rinsed off.

“My surgery after the accident got complicated. It was worse than my arm and my femur.”

“That was all broken?”

“Yes,” I agreed. “And some ribs. But I got a new hip out of it.”

“You had to have your hip replaced?” he asked incredulously.

“There was a lot of damage, more than they could repair. But it wasn’t as bad as my head.”

“A concussion,” Levi confirmed.

“Yes, and then post-concussion syndrome. That’s it, besides the other stuff.

” I pushed off the side, where I had been sitting on the smooth ledge, and paddled a lot less gracefully than he had done.

I looked back to see him watching. “I won’t drown,” I promised.

“I was never in danger of that, not after the first time.”

“What? What first time?”

I briefly explained what had happened when I was little, kindergarten-age. I had been invited to a pool party because all the kids in my class had gone, but I’d been much less than competent in the water at that point. “I sank but they fished me out.”

“Were you breathing?”

I thought back. “No, not at first. I don’t remember much from when I started to choke and things went black up to when the ambulance was there.

I got a lot more careful in the water after that, and I got better at swimming.

One way I did it was by watching Million Dollar Mermaid .

Esther Williams is amazing. Did you know she could have competed in the Olympics, but World War—”

“I’m more interested in the fact that you’ve had two near-death experiences than in the story of some Olympian,” he interrupted. He had swum out to me and was treading water next to where I floated.

“Three.”

“What?” Levi asked.

“I’ve had three near-death experiences. In high school, I was in my first car crash.”

He took my arm and towed me back over to the side of the pool. “You haven’t mentioned any of this before.”

“I was in another car crash,” I stated. “That’s all.”

“No, that’s not all! What in the hell happened?”

“I was driving and came to a stop to make a left,” I said. “I didn’t know that the driver of a car behind me was really drunk, and when I started to make my turn, she tried to swerve past me. She hit the side of my car in just the right spot to roll me over a few times.”

“A few times? What the fuck?” He shook his head. “Tell me the details. All the details, even if you think they’re not important.”

“My car was wrecked.”

“More,” he said, and gestured.

I had to think hard, because it had happened a long time ago.

Ten years—almost eleven, now. “Well…I remember the sound of the metal crunching. Then it was all really confusing, with stuff flying all around the car, but like it was moving slowly. I remember thinking that I didn’t have time for this because I needed to study for a test, and then it stopped.

I was upside-down. Fortunately, a soldier was driving by.

She had a knife and cut me down because we couldn’t get the seatbelt to work. ” I shook my head, too. “That’s all.”

“Were you hurt afterwards?”

“Yes. I had to go to the hospital and I had a few injuries. I was upset because I ended up missing that test, and also because the other driver tried to lie and say that it had been my fault. But another lucky thing was that a truck at the intersection had a dashcam that caught the whole thing. Anyway, I was ok, and I was also ok after that thing at the birthday party.”

“When you almost drowned,” he stated, and I nodded.

“I was fine and I am now, too. I don’t get very many headaches anymore and my hip is improving. I’ll be doing high kicks like you described to your sister’s husband when Ava was dating him.”

Levi looked confused. “What? Oh, did I tell you how I’d lied about her being a can-can dancer?”

I nodded. He had said it the first time I’d met him, and I’d recorded the information in the transcript from that day.

Every now and then, I reviewed everything to make sure that I was keeping details straight and I had done it again last night when I hadn’t been able to sleep.

I’d reread the conversation in which he had talked about all the different businesses his friend August was involved in. I brought that up now.

“This pool is a lot nicer than any I’ve ever been in. It’s nicer than any I’ve ever seen,” I mentioned. “I guess the jewelry store must be making a lot of money.”

“What?” He seemed confused again. “Oh, you mean August’s shop. I’m not sure about that, but I know that the club is very profitable. What happened to the drunk woman who hit you? Was she arrested?”

I didn’t want to discuss that anymore, and for his part, he wasn’t very interested in explaining how August was able to afford this modern mansion with a pool that rivaled a Great Lake in size.

I paddled away and we swam separately (which was easy to do, given the immense surface area of the water).

After a while, I got out and lay on one of the curved pieces of metal that was the seating here.

It was surprisingly comfortable and I felt a lot better, physically, after cooling down and stretching out.

The day also felt pleasantly summery and not like I had made a wrong turn into a kiln.

But mentally—well, I was thinking a lot about Hernán.

He probably wasn’t even all the way across the state of Michigan yet, and he was supposed to have gotten to Chicago by this afternoon because he’d wanted to see the Field Museum and then spend the night there.

It would definitely be closed by the time he made it and with his poor vision, it was a bad idea for him to drive around an unfamiliar city at night.

I thought about texting him with advice, but he had a real daughter to help him make decisions and keep an eye out for his safety.

That thought made me consider the incident in that birthday party pool, and how no one had been keeping an eye on me. There had been a lot of parents there because they were watching their own kids, but my mother hadn’t come. I didn’t remember if I had even bothered to ask her to.

“Emerson?”

I opened my eyes, just a little, and looked up at Levi. He held the cat, and she was nuzzling her head against his neck and making that funny sound again. Purring.

“I was just going to wheel you into the shade,” he told me. “Your legs might be getting sunburned.”

I checked, and they were definitely turning red. “I’m ok.”

“You were frowning, too. Actually, frowning and your chin was doing this.” He moved his around in an exaggerated quiver. “Mary Evelyn did that when she was about to cry.”

“I won’t cry, but I was thinking about Hernán. I wish he shared his location with me like he does with his daughter.”

“He probably wouldn’t mind, and I’m sure he’d like to track you right back.”

I nodded, because that did seem right. “I hope he texts me soon. I…” I stopped talking and sat up, because all three of us had heard the noise from the front of the house. “What is that?” It had sounded like thunder and had been powerful enough to ripple the calm surface of the square pool.

“It’s August’s car,” Levi said. He went to the side of a cabana and pushed a hidden button, making a cabinet open like magic. He retrieved a towel and threw it towards me. “Here, you can put that over yourself. He’ll probably have a bunch of people with him.”

“I have to cover up?”

Now he was frowning, too. “You’re right. We should get dressed and go.”

“Oh. Ok.” I understood, of course. This was how Grant had often felt about my appearance, that it wasn’t good enough for his friends.

And I was aware that I was out of shape, my hair had gone that weird color, and I had scars from the surgeries and also from my pet.

I stood and wrapped the big towel into a sheath over my body.

Ava had told me that Levi was unobservant, and I had noticed before that he didn’t criticize.

But this was in front of his friend, so it was different.

I went into the cabana and shut the door behind me.