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“Dad, Dad, watch me! Look, Dad!”
Tim glances up from his book and blinks, squinting into the blinding afternoon sunlight just as the small figure launches herself cannonball-style from the deck straight into the water. After a few seconds, her head resurfaces and she grabs the side of the pool again, grinning up at him with her gap-toothed smile.
He grins back and gives his daughter a proud thumbs-up. “Seeing lots of improvement there, A-team.”
Aster giggles and throws herself backwards, showing off with a reverse somersault followed by her little feet kicking wildly and proudly above the surface.
Tim chuckles and watches to make sure she resurfaces safely before returning to his book.
“Incoming!” shrieks another little voice from the porch doors, and Tim registers a neon-orange-clad, black-haired, child-sized streak barreling toward the pool to join her sister. Briar clasps her hands together and dives headfirst into the water like she’s been doing it all her life.
Which, coincidentally, she has.
On the twins’ first birthday, Lucy had enrolled them in infant swim classes after completing a truly impressive amount of research. He had been skeptical but trusted her judgment, and after only a few months of lessons he was watching his two girls as they were unceremoniously tossed one by one into a pool fully clothed, but quickly flipped themselves onto their backs, stuck their faces out of the water, and breathed normally until the instructor picked them up and handed them to their parents for hugs and praise.
And ever since then, Tim could breathe easier when the girls insisted on playing in the water, even though he never really understood the appeal. Truly, they are their mother’s children.
Speaking of . . .
“Aster!” Lucy calls, stepping out onto the deck. “Do you need to reapply?”
“No, Ma!” comes the answer.
“I got her,” Tim says, motioning to the bottle of sunblock on the table.
Lucy smiles a thanks and takes the seat to his left, kicking her feet up onto a nearby flower pot. She breathes a long sigh and leans her head back against the chair. Tim closes his book, crosses his arms, and takes in the sight of his wife next to him.
She looks stunning, as usual. Her face glows in the late summer sun, her cheeks are flushed from the heat and the bottle of beer she's sipping, and she’s wearing those jean shorts and yellow bikini top that he loves.
“I think I’ll take the girls to the beach tomorrow,” she considers. “Bri’s been begging to go.”
Tim raises his eyebrows. “If you want to swim in a glorified fish sewer tank, that’s your funeral.”
“Oh, stop it,” she swats the back of his head and laughs. “You dated a lifeguard, remember?”
“See, now you’re just making things up,” he jokes.
She rolls her eyes. “Well, we could always use a designated wagon-puller if you want to come with.”
“Can’t,” he says and shakes his head. “Tomorrow’s the seminar.”
Lucy gasps and grabs his shoulder in excitement. “Right! Tomorrow!”
Once every three years, the LAPD puts together a conference for up and coming leaders in the department, and he had been asked to not only deliver a lecture but be one of the keynote speakers. He’d spent so much of his life learning from people and attending talks and gathering information and knowledge, even during his time as a training officer, that being on the other end of that deal was truly something he still wasn’t used to. But when the chief herself had requested him personally, how could he refuse?
To say he was honored would be an understatement.
“Are you nervous?” Lucy asks.
He shrugs. “I’m standing on a stage and talking about policing. How hard can it be?”
“You’ll do great.”
“Do great what?” Two little hands suddenly grab Tim’s right arm and he swings Briar up and into his lap, even though she’s dripping water all over him. It actually feels nice in this heat.
“Dad's teaching people how to be good cops,” Lucy explains as she reaches into the cooler for an applesauce snack for Aster, who is currently practicing her belly flops.
“You already did that.” Briar raises one eyebrow at her dad, skeptical and with a touch of disdain – all traits she unfortunately inherited from him.
“I was a training officer before,” he clarifies. “Now I get to teach training officers how to be training officers.”
His daughter laughs, in that adorable way six-year-olds do when they don't fully understand something but still find the words hilarious. “Training officer teach training officer,” she sings, and watches as Aster climbs out of the pool and plops herself down under the table in the shade, applesauce in hand.
Tim breathes a sigh and holds his daughter as she contentedly kicks her heels against his shin bones.
The annoying sound of their doorbell interrupts the comfortable silence, followed by their dog’s frantic barking.
“Expecting someone?” Tim glances at Lucy, eyebrows raised.
She shakes her head, mildly annoyed by the interruption. “Reese! Hush!” With a long-suffering groan, she stands up and affectionately pats the dog’s head on the way to the door.
Tim listens closely to the voices inside.
But Briar picks up on who it is even before he does.
“Auntie Angela!” the girl yells and scrambles off Tim’s lap, disappearing inside the house.
He glances down at Aster’s hiding spot under the table. “Wanna go say hi?”
She shakes her head as she licks the applesauce container clean.
“Okay,” he allows. “Come in if you change your mind. And you know the rule, A-team.”
She nods solemnly. “No running and don’t dip a toe in the water until you’re here.” Both the girls have heard their parents repeat the rule hundreds of times. Even with a secure fence around the water and having impeccable swimming skills, they can never be too safe.
He nods. “Good. I’ll be right back.”
Even inside the house, he keeps the corner of his eye on the neon-green-clad girl as she lays on the deck under the sun and claps her hands, humming a tune.
Lopez is in the kitchen chatting with Lucy, having stopped by on her way home with materials from Grey for Tim’s lectures and updates about the conference tomorrow, as well as a plate of macaroons from her son. “Jack’s starting cooking class this year,” she explains. “And Wesley’s allergic to coconut.”
Lucy grins and sets the plate on the kitchen island as Briar eyes the cookies, her mouth probably already watering. “Tell him thanks – They’ll all be gone today, I bet.”
Tim chuckles. “It’s like feeding an army around here.”
“Try having a teenage boy,” Angela says with a smile. “I didn’t even know that much milk and cereal existed in the world.”
As Tim commiserates with his friend, Lucy sends Briar out to ask her sister if she wants a cookie.
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When Briar’s frantic little screams echo through the house, the world stops.
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He has plenty of regrets in his life. Choices he made in the military, on the police force, in his marriage. Decisions he made that affected not only his own life but the lives of his men, his friends, his coworkers, his subordinates, his rookies . . . his wife.
Each regret has stayed with him. They were never anything easily forgotten. Things that he shoved under the rug, hoping to move on . . . But they always caught back up to him eventually, bringing up all the pain from the first time around.
His daughters are the one thing he finally felt like he got right.
They’re his whole world.
He’d never considered himself an emotional person until he saw their faces for the very first time, tiny and angry and purple from screaming.
At that moment he knew, without a doubt, that he would single handedly move mountains for them.
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Every first responder needs to know that they have the ability to stay calm and clear-headed in a high-stress situation.
But those few moments thoroughly test all the years upon years of training and action and shootouts and literally running through fire.
He should be panicking.
He thinks he registers Lucy’s yelling. She knocks down a chair on her way.
And time slows down.
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The three adults make it out the door in less than a second. Tim doesn’t notice the scalding bricks against his bare feet.
All he sees in front of him is a cloud of red in the water and a bright point of neon green in the middle of it all.
No thoughts, no calculations, no consideration.
Just action.
His legs burn . . . but not from the heat.
Somehow he finds himself in the pool, grabbing his daughter’s limp body, lifting her to the surface, staring at her pale face and blue lips and watching as blood runs in rivulets down her neck, staining her ashy skin and her green swimsuit.
What comes next?
Drowning victim.
Drowning victim?
(No. Not his daughter. Not his girl.)
He can see the words in the back of his mind. The textbook with the photos of calm professionals performing easy, sterile CPR on living actors or plastic dummies.
She’s dead.
No she’s not.
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She ends up on the pool deck. Tim hauls himself out and Lucy is there too, her face pale and her hands shaking, turning Aster face-up, her fingers running over the gash in her head. Clenching her jaw against the nausea she must be feeling.
It’s Angela who stays calm. Takes the girl, runs her hands around her fragile little body, checks for a pulse and any signs of breathing. Does what an experienced and skilled first responder should do.
Tim meets Lucy’s gaze, and in that split second he’s pulled back to reality.
This is his daughter. The physical manifestation of the love he and Lucy have for each other. The shining light in his life. The reason he worked so hard to forgive his own parents . . . so that he could be the best father he possibly could.
This is his baby girl, and she's going to live.
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Briar clings to Lucy’s neck.
Tim kneels on the pavers, sharp hot brick digging into his skin. The phone is damp, from sweat or water or blood, he’s not sure. The dispatcher is blessedly calm.
He hears Angela counting chest compressions.
. . . Tries not to listen to the crack of ribs breaking.
He recites their address by rote, his mind replaying just one thought.
She’s okay. She’s okay. She’s okay.
Because he refuses to live in a world where she’s not.
The dispatcher asks the questions he knows are procedure. And it focuses him. Keeps him breathing.
Is she conscious?
No.
How long was she underwater?
Maybe thirty seconds.
Is she otherwise injured?
Yes, a two-inch gash on the right side of her head.
The questions keep coming.
(Make it stop.)
Stay on the line, they’re almost to your location.
He hears the blare of an ambulance in the far distance. The whine of a cop car.
Sounds he hears every day. Sounds that are more familiar to him than his own reflection.
But now, he hates them. Only for the fact that those sounds greet people on the worst days of their lives.
And he can’t let that be today.
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There was a time when he might have prayed to a higher power. A brief moment in his life when the thought of deflecting his decisions onto a force greater than himself was more than tempting. When believing in life after death and the supernatural was comforting.
Now, all he can see is a pool of blood, a red-stained cloth, a trusted friend leaning over his dying daughter, crushing her further and further into the unforgiving brick as the life drains from her tiny, limp body.
And even as he’s on his knees, head bowed toward his girl as if in prayer, all thoughts of believing in a benevolent god that would allow this sort of thing seem childish at best.
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He’s frozen in time.
There’s no past. No future. Nothing but this horrible, infinite moment stretching on and on with no end in sight.
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And then.
And then.
“. . . Thirteen, fourteen–”
Her lips twitch.
Tim doesn’t know what else to do except to reach out mechanically and grab his daughter’s little hand.
At that second when his skin makes contact with hers, her mouth opens on its own and all of a sudden she’s convulsing and spitting and vomiting and choking, and he and Angela fly into action again, turning Aster on her side as her body reacts on its own, rejecting the water in her lungs and the food in her stomach all at once.
Beside him, Lucy gasps and releases a sort of strangled cry Tim has never heard before, finally breaking the unbearable quiet. She places a death grip on his arm and he automatically pulls Lucy and Briar into his chest. Catches Angela’s gaze, filled with relief and exhaustion.
She’s okay.
She’s okay.
“She’s okay,” he whispers. “We’re okay.”
He doesn’t even notice the tears streaming down his own cheeks.
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“Are you sure I’m not gonna break her?”
Lucy laughed, exhausted but more joyful than Tim had ever seen her before. “You can’t. Babies are tough.”
It’s not like he’d never held a baby before. In fact, he’d delivered one or two in his time on the job. But this . . . this was different.
The twins were tinier than he’d ever expected.
Carefully, like she was a bomb to defuse, he picked Aster up, cradling her tiny head in one hand and the rest of her body in the other. He marveled at her tiny features. The slope of her nose, the pout of her lips, the way a few wisps of jet-black hair poked out from under her tiny hat.
Everything about her was just so, so small that he wondered how she was actually alive.
He swallowed around the lump in his throat.
When she opened her eyes, it was game over.
Bleary and unfocused but altogether stunning and the brightest blue he’d ever seen . . .
He felt a hot tear escape his control, and knew that she suddenly held a power over him that he could never explain.
And he wouldn’t want it any other way.
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“Daddy?”
Her voice is so quiet, he almost misses it. But her eyes are blinking furiously and her breath speeds up, which catches his attention.
On the other side of the hospital bed, Lucy is sound asleep, her head leaning sideways against the wall, one hand on the bed. Genny took Briar for the night so they could both be with Aster, who finally looks like she has some life in her again.
“Hey,” he whispers and runs a hand along her forehead, avoiding the bandaged area. “How you feeling, A-team?”
The girl’s chin quivers and her eyes well up with tears, and Tim wishes for the thousandth time that he could trade places with her. Feel all that pain so she never would.
“I had a bad dream,” she says, holding back a cry.
“It’s okay,” he assures her. Her hand is so small. He brushes her hair away from her eyes and readjusts her pillows. “I’m here . . . I’m here.”
She draws in a shaky breath and lets out a quiet sob, probably still half asleep.
“Dad?” she whispers through the tears.
“Yeah?”
“Can you carry me to my bed?”
He swallows around the lump in his throat and holds her hand tightly. “I can. But go to sleep first, okay?”
As she nods, obediently closing her eyes. Within seconds, her breathing levels out and her hand relaxes its grip on his thumb.
Tim’s eyelids feel like sandpaper and he’s not sure how much longer he can hold himself upright, but not a single thing in the world can tear him away from this chair.
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He simply watches his daughter breathe.
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