Reassured, the others again started badgering Stu to join them in the water, everyone looking his way and laughing now.
James glanced idly past Shannon. Out by the buoys in the deeper water, the blue air mattress bobbed on the wake of a passing ski boat. Just as he straightened in his chair to look more closely, he saw a small red head emerge beside the floating mattress, then go beneath the water again, one hand flailing above the surface.
Tossing his sunglasses aside, he leaped from his chair. Dashing past the startled mother and toddler, he dived into the water just beyond where Shannon stood, striking out for the mattress with long, distance-eating strokes. He’d been out there earlier and he knew the water was a good twelve feet deep at the buoy line.
He heard someone scream behind him. Heard a woman yell, “Kyle!” Heard a splash and sensed someone following him through the choppy water, but his focus was on the empty float and the spot where he’d last seen the boy.
Drawing a deep breath, he ducked beneath the surface, peering into the sediment-filled lake water and seeing nothing. He came back up for a quick gulp of air, then went back under, swinging his arms wide in hope of finding…
There. His fingers closed around wet skin. A flailing leg caught him in the stomach hard enough to make bubbles escape his mouth. Ignoring the pain, he grabbed hold of hair and skin and kicked upward, hauling the boy with him.
He gasped for air. Then released his breath in a sigh of relief when he heard the child in his grasp coughing and sputtering.
“Kyle!” Shannon swam up to them, her expression horrified. “Are you all right?”
The boy was trying not to cry, but not succeeding very well. “I fell off the float,” he said, his words broken by racking coughs as James supported him. “I swallowed some water and I choked and I couldn’t start swimming.”
“Let’s get him on the float and tow him in,” James suggested, his arms still wrapped around the boy’s chest as he treaded water for both of them.
Shannon nodded and looked toward the bank. “He’s okay,” she shouted toward the crowd that had gathered to watch anxiously from the beach. “We’re bringing him in.”
Bobbing in the water, she grabbed one end of the rubber float. “I’ll steady this while you get him on it.”
James nodded and looked at the boy, who had almost stopped coughing but began to look a little ill. “You’ll be fine, Kyle,” he assured him. “I’m going to hoist you onto your mattress, okay? Can you help steady yourself?”
Kyle nodded weakly. “I can swim,” he muttered, clinging to what little pride he had left. “I just choked on some water.”
“That happens sometimes,” James replied matter-of-factly. “Okay, on three. One, two, three.”
With the final count, he lifted the kid up and onto the mattress. While Shannon kept the float from tilting, Kyle grabbed the edges to keep his balance until it stopped rocking. Confident the boy wouldn’t fall off again, James took hold of the rope attached to the top and struck out for the shore with Shannon swimming steadily on the other side of the mattress.
Leaving all the other kids on the shore, herded over by the woman who’d been reading earlier, Stu waded out to meet them as soon as their feet touched solid ground. Well, James’s feet touched. Being several inches shorter, Shannon had to swim a little farther before she could stand.
“You okay, Kyle?” Stu asked the boy.
“I’m okay, Uncle Stu,” Kyle murmured, looking both weary and mortified.
The mother of the toddler thrust her youngest child into the other woman’s arms and dashed out to knee-deep water to clutch Kyle as Stu lifted him off the mattress. “You’re okay, baby? You’re sure you’re okay?” she asked, patting him down as though looking for injuries.
“I’m okay,” Kyle repeated, squirming. “Geez, Mom, don’t call me ‘baby’ in front of everyone.”
Now that her fears were somewhat relieved, fear turned to anger. “I told you not to go out that far. What were you thinking?” she scolded.
The boy’s pouting lips were turning blue and he was beginning to shiver as his own emotional reactions flooded through him.
“You should probably get him out of the water and wrap him in a towel,” James advised. “Don’t want him to go into shock.”
The calm advice brought everyone out of their panic-driven paralysis. Stu carried the boy to shore, where his mother grabbed a large, thick beach towel imprinted with cartoon superheroes and wrapped him snugly inside it. The non-related bystanders who’d gathered to gawk wandered back to their own pursuits, leaving the family gathered around Kyle.
“Kyle drownded,” one of the younger kids said in awe.
“He didn’t drown,” Shannon said fi
rmly. “He just came much too close.”
Turning to James then, she gazed up at him with liquid green eyes. “I don’t want to think about what might have happened if you hadn’t been here. We thought we were watching them all so carefully.”
The faint tug of familiarity nagged him again. Had he seen her somewhere before? She gave no sign of recognizing him.