Chapter 15
The engagement pool became useful again the following summer.
I considered filling it in.
Didn’t.
Felice did not own water.
Anwen came to a family barbecue with Theo.
Not as staff.
Not hidden.
Some guests from the engagement were there.
Several looked uncomfortable.
Good.
One woman approached Anwen and said:
“I had no idea.”
Anwen answered:
“You didn’t ask.”
Sharp.
Fair.
I stayed out of it.
She did not need me translating her anger.
Then Theo crawled toward the pool.
Every adult moved at once.
Anwen reached him first.
She laughed.
“Absolutely not.”
He protested.
I crouched beside him.
“You have your mother’s relationship with swimming.”
Anwen glared.
Bad joke again.
I was learning slowly.
Then something floated near the edge.
A folded dollar bill.
One of my cousins had dropped it.
Anwen saw.
So did I.
For a second, the old night returned.
Money in water.
Felice smiling.
Your son doesn’t eat.
Then Theo slapped the surface and soaked us both.
Memory broke.
Anwen laughed.
She looked at the dollar.
Then at me.
“Leave it.”
So we did.
A wet dollar became exactly what it should have been.
Paper nobody needed badly enough to enter deep water for.
That was wealth, I realized.
May you like
Not how much money floated in your pool.
Whether the person beside it could afford to let it sink.
