Page 49 of My Family

Nobody asks about the mother. We all know better.

The guest wing is down a separate corridor, through a set of double doors that open onto a hallway with hardwood floors. Four bedrooms, each with its own bathroom, each decorated in shades of gray and white that feel less like a home and more like a hotel.

Harry stops at the second door, pushes it open, and looks at me with a grin. "You two," he says, jerking his thumb at Liam and me. "This one's yours. I figured you'd appreciate the privacy." He winks. "Just don't ruin the sheets. They're Egyptian cotton."

Liam's ears go red.

We spend the afternoon by the pool. Olympic-sized, Harry said, and he wasn't exaggerating. The water is clear and blue, the kind of blue that doesn't exist in nature. Maybe it exists in places that cost money to maintain. I wouldn’t know. The deck is ringed with lounge chairs in white canvas. A tray of tiny sandwiches with the crusts removed has appeared on a side table, alongside fresh fruit and smoked salmon on crackers. I don't know who put it there. The staff moves through this house like ghosts.

Jack cannonballs in immediately, fully clothed, sending a wave over the stone edge that soaks the nearest tray. A woman in a gray uniform appears within seconds, replaces the damaged food without a word, and disappears. Jack surfaces, grinning.

"I'm never going back," he announces.

Harry stretches out on a lounge chair, sunglasses on, looking more at ease than I've ever seen him. He catches a grape from the tray and tosses it in his mouth. This is Harry in his natural habitat, I realize. All the performance at Aspire, the card games and the charm and the constructed image are gone. He’s just happy.

Liam gets in slowly, testing the temperature at the steps, then stops and turns to look at me with enormous eyes.

"It's heated!" he exclaims, like he's reporting a miracle.

He pushes off and floats on his back in the shallow end, arms spread, face turned up to the sun. His black hair spreads around his head in the water. His eyes are closed. He looks completely, utterly still, which, for Liam, is so unusual it almost startles me. He's always in motion, always bouncing on the balls of his feet or drumming his fingers or pulling at his sleeves. But here, now, he just floats.

I sit on the edge of the pool and watch him. The sun is heavy and warm. There's no bell about to ring. No guard about to do a sweep. No schedule.

I lower myself into the water. It's warm, the temperature of something that costs money to be that temperature. I wade to where Liam is floating. He opens one eye.

"Hey," he says.

"Hey," I say.

He closes his eye again. I stay where I am, and for a while neither of us says anything.

"I could stay here forever," he says. Not sad, which I appreciate, because I don’t want him sad.

He reaches out underwater and finds my wrist, his fingers wrapping around it.

Jack, having dried off approximately zero percent, announces he's going to learn to do a backflip off the pool's edge. His first attempt sends him sideways into the water in a shape that defies physics and probably violates several laws of motion. His second attempt is worse. His third lands him so far off-center that Harry, from behind his sunglasses, says flatly, "You're going to crack your skull and then I have to explain to Griff why I killed you."

"He’s right for once, Jack, please, stop," I say, sternly.

Jack attempts it a fourth time. He lands it. Barely. His feet slap the water at an angle that makes me wince, but he surfaces with his arms in the air and the expression of a man who has won a gold medal at the Olympics, and we give him the reaction he deserves, clapping and woohooing.

Harry orders Gerald to bring a speaker and music fills the air. Even I know the singer: Bad Bunny, the bass vibrating through the water and the stone and the deck chairs. Liam grins at me from across the pool, water dripping from his black hair.

It's twilight when the sound comes. A low rumble of an engine, tires on stone, the crunch of expensive gravel under expensive rubber.

Harry hears it before anyone else. He sits up, then stands.

"That's my father," he says.

Jack stops mid-sentence. Liam treads water, watching Harry. I know this transformation. I've seen it in every kid who's ever come through Aspire, the shape you take when someone with power over you walks into the room.

"Come," he says and moves toward the house. Liam pulls himself out of the pool and stands beside me, dripping, goosebumps rising on his arms. He doesn't say anything. His hand finds the crook of my elbow.

We wrap ourselves in towels and follow Harry inside, wet feet on marble, the air conditioning hitting our damp skin. Somewhere in the front of the house, a door opens and there are voices.

We all brace.

Chapter 19. Ethan