At home, Maeve sometimes gets in the bath to cry, but she’s too drained for that now. Her clothes sit in a rumpled pile to one side. The only break in the silence down here is whatever noise she makes herself. Sound of her breath. The lapping of the water against the pool’s edge when she moves, even slightly. She opens her hand and lets it fall below the cloudy surface, waiting for it to disappear.

When she brings it up again, the old scar is still there, reddening in the heat. In her mind, she can still see the broken piece of mirror clattering, bloody, to the floor. Stem to stern, she thinks. Fingertip to wrist. Another inch, and it would have hit a vein. She closes the hand into a fist and lets it sink like a stone. As scars go, this one feels like a badge of honor.

She’s resting on a kind of bench cut into the stonework, just slightly too low for someone Maeve’s size. Her chin grazes the water’s surface, then her lips. The water is so warm; she moves her shoulders and her neck, allowing the joints to loll, muscles spreading out. Her anxiety over Talia slows and her breath along with it. Physical exhaustion finally takes over. Her head nods, and she forces her eyes open. She can’t fall asleep here. It’s deep; she’ll drown.

But closing her eyes feels so good. There’s a moment of softness, the water just covering her lips, holding her.

Maeve wakes with a jerk. She opens her eyes, panicked. Shakes her head to rouse herself. The water plinks and plunks around her as she moves. She has the strange feeling that she’s missed something. That something woke her, something that’s no longer there.

Something—or someone. She glances at the deck, the changing room, and her eye falls on the broken tile Dan was examining yesterday, fixed now. She can see the gleam of fresh caulking, shiny and white.

She needs to go back upstairs. She needs to go to bed. The wet tile slips against her fingers as she climbs out of the pool. She’s wrapped in her robe, wringing out her hair, when there’s a thud from the hall, and she stiffens. Waiting.

Another, a little farther off.

Then nothing. Just the buzzing silence of the empty room. The ceiling arches high over her head. Maeve suddenly feels strange, vulnerable. Too alone, as she picks her way back to the entrance. She’s struck by an abrupt fear that she’ll find the door locked, be trapped inside for the night—and then she’s padding across the floor, faster and faster. Running.

But when she lays a hand on the door, it yields too easily, almost throwing her out into the hall.