ready to go.”
She reached for her suitcase, but Ty beat her to it.
“No way am I letting you carry that.”
“I’m pregnant, not an invalid.”
He shrugged. “Makes no difference. You’re not carrying it.”
When they reached the bottom of the stairs, Ty’s mother stopped them.
“You can’t leave without saying goodbye to William. He’d be heartbroken.”
Yeah, well, his nephew wasn’t the only one who was going to be heartbroken when Ellie left.
“He’s in the pool. I’ll go get him if you’ll wait?”
Eleanor nodded.
She and Ty stood in silence, then she sighed.
“We should have just walked out to the pool instead of her having to drag William inside.”
She nodded, sure he was right.
“Ty!” His mother’s scream echoed through the house.
Both Ty and Eleanor took off toward the door that led out to the pool.
What met their gazes made Eleanor’s stomach tighten into a nervous ball.
Ty’s father was in the pool, holding a lifeless little body to his chest but apparently frozen with fear and unable to move further.
Ty immediately jumped to action, crossing the distance and jumping into the pool.
“Give him to me,” he demanded of his father.
His pain-filled eyes dropping to the lax body of his grandson, he did so.
Ty took William, prayed he wasn’t too late, assessed him while carrying him from the pool.
As best as he could tell, there wasn’t any trauma or neck injuries. God, he hoped William hadn’t dived into the pool, injured his neck, been paralyzed and drowned.
But his nephew had drowned.
No heartbeat. No respirations.
A pain unlike any Ty had ever experienced slashed across his chest, but he drew on years of experience with dealing with medical emergencies to move automatically.
“Oh, Ty,” Ellie cried, as he laid William’s tiny body on the concrete and began performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation.
Ellie pulled her cell phone from her purse, dialed 911 and realized she had no idea what Ty’s address was.
“The Triple D Ranch,” she told the emergency worker. “We’re at the Triple D Ranch.”
Behind her, Ty’s mother gave the address and Ellie carefully repeated it to the voice on the other end of the phone line.
She handed the phone to Ty’s mother and bent beside him, meaning to help him with the CPR, but her gaze caught on Ty’s father.
The man still stood in the pool. She didn’t think he’d budged since he’d handed William over to Ty.
Worried that more might be going on than just shock, she called out his name, but he didn’t even look her way.
Kicking off her shoes, Ellie went into the pool to Harold Donaldson.
“Mr. Donaldson?” She touched his arm.
He jumped, seeming to come out of the trance he’d been in. He glanced around, his eyes landing on where Ty was working on William.
“I didn’t know what to do,” he began, his voice trembling.
Despite her differences with the man, her heart squeezed with compassion. She put her arm around him. “Come on. Let’s get you out of the pool.”
Ty counted compressions in his head, gave a breath at the appropriate times and prayed. In his mind, he prayed and prayed and prayed.
But nothing happened.
No lub-dub of William’s heart.
No gasp of breath or sputtering or cough.
Nothing.
He couldn’t let this happen. Couldn’t not revive William.
Couldn’t ever forget the pallid color on his father’s face, the pain in his father’s eyes as he’d taken William out of his shaking arms.
Never had Ty seen a weak link in his father’s armor. Never had he seen the man not know exactly what to do.
His father was a man of action, a decisive man who never questioned, just did.
Ty gave another breath.
Nothing.
The longer he couldn’t revive William the less likely he was to be able to.
How long had the boy been in the pool? How long had his father just been holding his lifeless body?
From the corner of his eye he saw his mother go to his father, wrap her arms around him and start talking to him. He saw Ellie reassure herself that nothing more was wrong with his father than fear, then she moved to him, knelt next to where he desperately tried to save William.
“Let me help.” She didn’t wait for him to answer, just bent and gave William a breath, counted his compressions out loud and repeated the breath.
And a miracle happened.
Nothing could convince Ty that anything short of a miracle had happened.
Because William coughed.
Weakly at first, then stronger as his lungs cleared the water.
“Oh, Ty, he’s alive.”
At Ellie’s exclamation, Ty’s mother cried out and his father sank to his knees.
“Harold!” His wife sank down next to him.
“Check him,” he ordered Ellie, not willing to leave William’s side but afraid the stress of what had happened might be affecting his father’s heart.
William’s eyes opened, he coughed more. Deep, rattling coughs that shook his tiny frame.
Ty turned him, beat on his back, trying to assist in clearing the fluid.
“Uncle Ty?”
Ty let out the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.
Stepping out of the house, Harry and Nita took in the scene before them.
“What the hell is going on here?”
Eleanor
