The paramedics got there in six minutes. I got there in twenty-two.
Rowan was sitting on a stretcher in the driveway in a tiny oxygen mask, furious and soaking wet. Hattie was sitting next to him in a blanket, shaking, holding his hand.
I dropped to my knees and held them both.
“You saved him,” I said into Hattie’s wet hair. “You saved your brother.”
“I’m sorry I let him get out,” she sobbed. “I was supposed to watch him.”
“No, baby,” I said. “You were never supposed to watch him. That was a grown-up’s job.”
Rowan spent one night in the hospital for observation. His lungs were clear. The doctor said that if he’d been in the water thirty more seconds, it would have been a very different day.
Alexis didn’t answer her phone until that evening.
She was at a hotel in Scottsdale. With a man she’d met online four months earlier. The suitcase was because she was leaving. For good. She’d planned to call me “once she was settled.”
