Page 38

"Okay! Okay." A pause. "Do I say the address, or—"

And then Blaine was there.

I don't know where he came from. The house, presumably, at a dead run. He came down the bank and into the water without breaking stride and without saying one word. He got his shoulder under the other arm and the two of us had Esteban up on the stones in a matter of seconds.

"Head wound," I panted.

"I see it."

"He can't confirm his left hand."

"Esteban." Blaine had his hand flat against the side of the man's face. "Esteban, look at me. You're all right. You fell and cut your head and it's bleeding a great deal. Head wounds always bleed a lot, and it is almost certainly not as bad as it looks."

"Mr. Cauthorne, I'm so sorry—"

"You have nothing to apologize for. Look at me. Where are you?"

"...The pond."

"Whose pond?"

"Your mother's."

"What day is it?"

There was a pause about a second and a half too long.

"Thursday," he said.

Blaine's eyes came up and met mine over the top of his head, and every year of our marriage went across that gap in a quarter of a second. Neither of us said the word out loud.

"It's Wednesday," he said pleasantly. "You're fine. Gregory, pressure on it. Steven, are they coming?"

"They said fourteen minutes—"

"Tell them there's a gate code and give them the number. It's on the panel. Then go up to the top of the drive and stand there so they don't miss the turn."

"I was in the middle of—"

"Now, Steven."

He left.

I sat in the shallow end of a koi pond in a soaked shirt with my hand pressed to a man's scalp, and Blaine knelt on the stone beside me holding his head, and neither of us looked at each other again until the paramedics came.

Here's the thing I noticed while we waited, and I'm not proud of noticing it.

Esteban kept apologizing.

Not to us. To the pond. To the fish. Twice he tried to tell Blaine which of the koi he thought he might have landed on. He was more concerned about a fish than about the fact that his left hand still wasn't doing what he asked it to.

"Esteban," Blaine said eventually. "Stop talking about the fish."

"They're very expensive koi."

"They're my mother's fish and she has too many of them. Stop talking about the fish."

He laughed a little, then stopped, wincing.