I ducked further into the shadows and tripped around, trying to tug up my underwear and stiff khaki pants, worried they might spot me.

But there was no chance of that; they were too focused on each other.

I was just about to slip around the side of the house, when I saw the push. Bri, face angry as a bull, shoved the woman, Mara. Both hands pressed against her chest, not hard. But hard enough. I watched the woman tumble through the sky, as though she were a fallen angel, cast out by Jesus himself.

Mara’s head made a loud, wet crack as she fell onto the edge of the pool and then there was an enormous splash as her body tumbled into the water.

Horrified, I raised a hand to cover my mouth, squelching the screams I wanted to let loose.

Slowly, I forced myself to look back up at the balcony, all the while praying that that monstrous woman wouldn’t see me and kill me next.

But I was invisible to her, as her eyes were trained on the pool. Bri was grinning like a Cheshire cat, giddy with what she had done. I stood frozen on the periphery, not daring to move, until the balcony door thumped shut and the curtains swished together again.

I counted to twenty and then I crept forward, walking on my tiptoes to the edge of the pool.

Mara lay on the bottom of the pool, eyes open and wide, glassy eyes staring back at me as she uselessly tried to flail her failing arms.

I made the sign of the cross over my chest and turned to leave. After a lifetime of being invisible as a servant, I knew it wasn’t my place to get involved. Even if I wanted to try to save her, I wasn’t strong enough.

But that’s when I saw her—Elizabeth Beake, soaking casually in the steamy hot tub. How had I missed her?

She was looking right at me, eyes round as quarters, and she was so still that, for a moment, I worried that she, too, was dead. Finally, she moved, lifting her long, lithe, naked body from the hot pool, and she walked straight toward me.

I hate that expression, ‘You could tell she was beautiful once’, because it implies that you can’t be beautiful and be old at the same time.

Elizabeth Beake was beautiful, probably more beautiful than she was in her youthful days. When she reached me, she took her hands and gripped both of my arms with surprising strength.

“Delfina, right?”

I nodded, glancing sideways once more to the now dead girl in the pool. She seemed to be alive on the bottom of the pool after she fell, but she certainly wouldn’t be breathing for much longer…