Eight months pregnant, Claire Morgan had not planned to spend her Saturday afternoon at the apartment pool.

She had planned to sit in the shade, keep her swollen feet propped up on a spare chair, and steal ten minutes of silence before heading upstairs to make dinner for a husband who had lately been home in body and nowhere else.

The July heat pressed down over the complex like a lid.

Kids shrieked in the shallow end, teenagers scrolled on lounge chairs, and the air smelled sharply of chlorine, wet concrete, and suntan lotion.

Claire kept one hand on the curve of her belly, feeling the baby shift low and heavy, while she stared through mirrored sunglasses at the bright blue water and tried not to think.

Not about the way Derek had become secretive with his phone.

Not about the monthly money transfers she had noticed once, then again, then three times after that, all sent to someone he insisted was an old college friend in a rough spot.

Not about how he never used that explanation unless she asked a direct question.

Not about the fact that their nursery still wasn’t finished because every conversation about the baby somehow turned into Derek saying he was tired, stressed, distracted, busy.

Claire had learned how to make herself small inside discomfort.

Marriage taught some women that skill faster than others.

She closed her eyes for a second.

Then she heard a splash that was wrong.

It did not have the loose rhythm of children playing.

It sounded frantic, off-beat, and cut through the pool noise like a snapped wire.

Claire looked up just in time to see a little girl’s hand slap once at the water near the deep end before disappearing below the surface.

For half a heartbeat, nobody moved.

Then somebody screamed.

“Oh my God!”

Claire was already on her feet.

Everything after that happened too fast for fear to catch up.

She lumbered into a run, one hand bracing her belly without even realizing she was doing it.

“Call 911!” she shouted, and then she was diving.

The water struck her body like a cold wall.

Her lungs clenched.

Her dress ballooned around her.

She forced her eyes open in the sting of chlorine and saw a blur of pink swimsuit and pale limbs drifting downward.

She reached, caught an arm, slid her hand under the child’s shoulders, and kicked for the surface.

The girl was terrifyingly limp.

Claire hauled her toward the edge.

By then several people were crowding the deck, frozen in that useless panic people feel when they have arrived one second too late to be brave.

A teenage boy dropped to his knees and reached down to help pull the girl up.

Claire dragged herself out after her, breathless and shaking.

The child wasn’t moving.

She looked about six.

Blue was already creeping around her lips.

Claire had not thought about CPR in years, not since a workplace safety training in an old office conference room.

But the instructions came back to her in fragments.

Tilt the head.

Check the airway.

Breathe for her.

Her hands trembled so badly she almost missed the right position.

“Come on, baby,” Claire whispered.

“Please.

Come on.”

One breath.

Nothing.

Two breaths.

Still nothing.

By the third,