“I hit my elbow.” With a shaky breath, he added, “It scared me, too, when I sank.”
“You’re used to swimming with a life preserver, but it’s entirely different when you aren’t wearing one. One day soon we’ll go to the beach and I’ll make sure you know how to swim, okay? Not that you can skip the preserver, but it’d be good for you to know, just in case we have any more accidents.” Corbin drew his own deep breath. “Though I expect you to remember the rules. Got it?”
Justin nodded.
“You scared me, too,” Lang said, joining them on the dock. “Corbin sounded panicked, and that doesn’t happen often.”
“He did?”
“Damn straight.” Lang put a hand on Justin’s shoulder. “Dads are like that.”
Ivey looked back to see Hope sitting in the grass with the puppies climbing on her.
Obviously giving his brother a chance to collect himself, Lang went on, “Your dad told you how our mom was about us swimming, right? Even when we were older than you are now, she had to know when we were in the water so she could keep tabs on us. What if you’d hit your head instead of your elbow? What if you hadn’t been able to hold on to the ladder?”
“There’s an undercurrent in the water,” Corbin explained. “Where you fall in isn’t always where you stay. If you’d gotten knocked out...” He briefly closed his eyes in another bid for calm. “If I hadn’t found you right away, I don’t know what I’d do.”
“Cuz you were scared, huh?”
Little by little, Justin seemed less worried and more fascinated. Ivey wondered at that reaction. Had no one ever shown him so much concern?
“I was terrified.” Corbin dropped back to sit on his butt. Muscled arms draped over his knees, he regarded Justin. “I need your word of honor that you won’t go near the lake alone. Not for any reason.”
Quickly nodding, Justin said, “Not even if Frankenstein is swimming.”
Corbin’s mouth quirked, then he pulled Justin in for another hug.
“Ah, hell.” Lang lifted his nose into the air. “My ribs!” He took off running for the deck stairs.
Wearing a grim expression, Justin watched him go. “Did I ruin dinner?”
“No. It’ll be fine.” Corbin stood. “Let me see your elbow.”
“It’s okay.”
Corbin lifted his arm anyway, then whistled. “I bet that stings.”
Ivey peeked to see, then winced in sympathy. Justin had scraped off the skin and it was already bruising. “You can bend it okay?”
“Yeah.” He flexed his arm to prove it.
“Let’s you and I go get some dry clothes.” Corbin glanced at Ivey. “You’ll bring in the animals?”
“Of course.” She was so proud of how Corbin had handled things, she felt a little weepy. She could use a minute or two to recoup. “Go on. We’ll see you on the deck.”
“Thanks.” One hand to the back of Justin’s neck, Corbin walked off with his son.
Ivey dropped down to sit with Hope on the grass. “That was intense.”
Hope continued to corral the puppies as they kept trying to scatter. “Ivey, did your parents ever smack you?”
She put Daisy between them, then gathered a puppy into her lap so Hope would have less to contend with. “Once, when I was young, maybe half Justin’s age, I remember wandering off at a campsite. Like Justin chasing the ducks, I went after a butterfly. By the time it flew away for good, I realized I was lost in the woods. Nothing looked familiar.”
Hope half turned toward her. “What happened?”
“I sat down and cried. Finally Dad heard me, and a few minutes later he came crashing through the woods like a grizzly bear.” Ivey hadn’t thought about that long-ago day in forever. “He was shaking, his eyes a little wild.” She smiled, remembering how relieved she was to see him. “He shook me, gave me a smack on the butt, then he squeezed me tight for the longest time.”
“Somewhat like how Corbin reacted.”
“Minus the butt smack.” She glanced back at the house and saw Lang industriously transferring ribs to a platter. “Later Dad told me that I’d scared a decade off his life. He lectured me for three days on things that could have happened, and how devastated he and my mom would have been without me.”
“Come and get it,” Lang called out.
“Your dad’s reaction actually sounds kind of nice.” Standing, Hope brushed off the grass and then lifted two of the puppies into her arms. “I can’t remember my parents ever being that angry with me, not even when they