His First Choice

Lacey’s silence left him room to say more and he added, “He’s not ready to join a swim team or anything, but he’s proficient. He can get from one side of the pool to the other without taking in any water. It’s only seven feet across, but the point was to know that wherever he fell in, he could get to the side.”

Again, Tressa’s plan had been good, well thought out.

“But you weren’t there to see the actual lessons?”

“No.” He remembered that with a little regret. He’d have liked to have been included. But he got so much of Levi to himself, he certainly couldn’t begrudge his ex-wife her share of big moments alone with him. “I was in San Francisco for a California contractors’ convention and also to meet with a potential client and work up a bid for me to send one of my crews up to work on a complex of condominiums.”

“You were gone awhile, then.”

“Yeah.” He leaned back, put his feet up again and took another sip of beer. “A little over a week. It’s the longest I’ve ever been away since Levi was born, and I gotta tell you, it wasn’t easy. I called him every day. Twice. Morning and night. I think he handled the separation a lot better than I did.”

Wow. Talking to someone about his personal stuff, one-on-one, felt good. Damned good. He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed that part of having a companion.

“And by the time you got back, he knew how to swim?”

“Yep. But that’s kind of been the story of Levi’s life. He masters new skills as soon as he puts his mind to them. Like walking. When he was ten months old, he took one step, holding on to the chair he’d pulled himself up on, and within two days, he was walking from the chair to the couch.”

Suddenly he was back to doubting again. Kacey an

d Lacey had been alone with Levi that afternoon. And the boy had been subdued at dinner. Because he was exhausted, Jem knew, but...

“Why the questions about him learning to swim?” he asked now. “Was there a situation with him when Kacey took him to the beach? Did she tell you something I should know?”

Levi could have run off toward the water—though if he had, it would surprise Jem. Levi knew the consequences—no beach for the rest of the summer—if he didn’t respect the dangers inherent in being near the water alone.

He started to sweat until Lacey said, “He was perfect at the beach. Kacey didn’t tell me something you should know, Levi did.”

Everything inside Jem slowed down. Feet firmly on the ground, he sat forward, staring in the dark toward the pavers he’d laid himself.

“What did he tell you?”

“He asked Kacey and me how our mother held us both underwater at the same time when she taught us to swim.”

That could mean any number of things.

“He demonstrated to us how his mom held his ribs and squeezed as she held him under the water.”

Four-year-olds exaggerated. Levi told him impossibly outrageous stories all the time. And Tressa did have a tendency to panic. She could have had too tight a grip on him, but only to keep him safe.

Was everything they did going to be under scrutiny now? And for how long? What in the hell had that anonymous phone call gotten them into?

“He said that he cried.”

“He told you that?”

In the version he got, Levi had had great lessons. He’d excelled as usual. When he’d made it across the pool by himself, Tressa had bought a little plastic basketball hoop and basketball for the pool and they’d played with it and had a blast.

Levi had taken him by the hand out to her pool to show the little plastic basketball hoop to him as soon as he’d gotten back to town.

“He also told me that he didn’t tell you, which is why I’m telling you. It seems significant that he not only didn’t tell you, but that its magnitude is such that it’s still in his data bank.”

He didn’t disagree with her.

She was telling him. Talking to him like a friend would. Or someone who also cared for his son.

The immediate defensive traffic in his brain slowed. Allowing Jem to process information calmly.

“When did this happen?” Her question broke into his thoughts.