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Show •Ill "Here it comes! Here it is!" Carlo danced on his branch; his face appeared between the maple-leaves, eyes glittering. Two dark heads popped through the surface; dark arms came up, lifting something huge, shapeless and pale. "Now!" Carlo cried. Morgan clutched my hand. But I was immensely relieved. Without knowing it I'd been holding my breath, and now I let it out in a rush. This gross thing could not be my father, who was a slender man. God only knew what it was they'd dragged up: part of an old mattress, a decayed sofa, something old, soft, sad. Not a man. They lifted it higher; I leaned over the rail for a better look. Two legs trailed in the water; bare feet flopped at the ends like dead balloons, greeny-white. "It's a person," Morgan said. "YPS <" But not possibly my father. Some fat man who'd fallen in somewhere upstream and been dragged, bumping slowly along the bottom, until he fetched up here. A man with no family, who hadn't been missed by anyone. A wanderer. It was quite a coincidence, but strokes of luck both good and bad are incredible only until they come to pass. Then we see they were ordinary after all. I smiled at Carlo. "It's all right. Come on down. It's not Adam." "Yes it is," Jacob whispered. |