“I’m making a mental note to do that.”
I was about to ask her how her sister, nephew, and brother were when a dark shape swam under us, stealing my attention.
“What? What did you see?”
“Uh, it was a big fish, about four feet long.”
Before I’d finished talking, Sadie had her face pressed against the transparent plastic. “Was it a pretty fish, or was it a sinister, ugly fish?”
“It was a dark fish shape,” I mumbled, not knowing how else to describe it because that’s all I’d seen.
After a couple of minutes, she sat back up again. “There are sharks out here, aren’t there?”
I nodded slowly, and then my head snapped to the side when I saw the shape appear under me and then swim along the length of the pool to where Sadie was sitting.
Both of us looked up at each other then back down.
“Whatever you do, Sadie, don’t scream or splash around,” I hissed, reaching slowly for the only weapon we had—the oars.
“Why not?” she whisper-shrieked. “I don’t care if I offend it.”
“Because the vibrations attract it to the source of them. Stay calm, stay quiet, and we’ll slowly make our way to the shore.”
I stuck the paddle in the water and gestured at her to do the same thing, then nervously looked at where everyone was standing, totally unaware of our predicament.
“Is it definitely a shark?”
“Put it this way, if it has feathers, webbed feet, a beak, and swims in a pond, is it a duck?”
“I don’t know,” she growled. “It could be a swan or even a bird who wants to go for a swim. I mean, I don’t have fins and gills, but I swim in the water.” She looked back down again and added, “At least, I did before this.”
Just then, there was splashing next to us, and we turned to see a fin cutting through the water, periodically thrashing its tail around.
All of the calmness left me, and that’s when both of us screamed and started frantically rowing back to the shore.
Chapter Twenty
Jackson
“So, are you ready?” Ned asked, smiling at me.
Rubbing my chest, I winced and took a big mouthful from my bottle of beer.
“I don’t know if a man’s ever ready. We might think we know the answer, but we don’t actually know for sure they’ll say what we want them to.”
Laughing, he shook his head. “You don’t know unless you ask.”
Marcus, who’d been standing quietly beside me, turned to look out at where the girls were. “What are they doing?”
Following where he was looking, all I could see was the girls yelling and leaning over the edges of the damn pool they’d insisted on going out in, rowing frantically with the oars.
“Huh, I was almost certain they wouldn’t work with an inflated pool, but look at them go,” Elijah mused, smiling at the sight.
“They look like they’re having fun.”
“I’m not sure about that,” Ned muttered, looking at the screen of his phone. “I zoomed in on my camera, and they look like they’re about to cry.”
Leaning over to see his screen, I had to admit that wasn’t far from what I’d think, too, seeing the blurry faces on it.
“Maybe they can’t get back in?” Benny said as he joined us, then shook his head as he watched them. “Scratch that, they’re doing quite well.”
All of us walked farther down the yard until we got to the small patch of beach at the end of it before we hit the water. I loved Elijah’s house and the area around it, and I loved the location in Sarasota, too. There was something peaceful and relaxing about it.
By the time we were up to our ankles in the sea, we could hear them.
“Are they yelling sharp?” Elijah asked, cupping his hand over his forehead to shade his eyes from the sun, even though he had sunglasses on. “Damn, it’s hot.”
Straining, I could hear them yelling it as well, but it was Malcolm who replied. “Yeah, it sounds like they’re asking if there’s anything sharp around.”
Going a little deeper than we were, Marcus cupped his hands around his mouth and bellowed, “No, it’s just beach. There might be some rocks, though, but you’ll be able to see those.”
“He’s such a delicate flower, isn’t he?” I snickered as we all itched our ears.
Marcus had the ability to sound like he had a bullhorn even when he didn’t intend to. According to our parents, that’s how he was born, bellowing his lungs out at a volume that surprised all of the doctors and nurses. The irony was that he was usually a quiet guy, so this was a wasted skill most of the time.
Looking back at the girls, my eyebrows shot up at how frantic they were to get back to us. Each time they’d yell ‘sharp,’ Marcus would reply with ‘beach,’ while the rest of us monitored them.