I stood at the edge of that green water and I made myself understand what I might be looking at, and I want to tell you that in that moment I was as afraid as I have ever been in my life, because Mrs.

Harris’s words were going around and around in my head — heavy bags, into the pool, in the middle of the night — and there is only one thing your mind goes to, standing over dark water full of sunken shapes, and I had to grab the back of a patio chair to keep my legs under me.

And then, from the corner of the yard, small and hoarse and utterly disbelieving, a voice said, “Daddy?” — and I forgot the pool completely, because it was Maya.

Chapter 6 — Maya

She was tucked into the far corner of the yard, in the narrow shadowed space between the shed and the fence, folded down small with her knees against her chest, and she had made herself so still and so quiet that I had walked right past her without seeing.

She had hidden herself there.