I tried to hand the check back, but he wouldn’t take it.
“Talk it over with Megan,” he said. “If you decide you can’t accept it, call me.”
Then he left.
I stood in the doorway holding the envelope.
Ten thousand dollars.
Megan and I had been putting off replacing our aging furnace.
We had a credit card balance we’d been working down for months.
That check could have made a real difference.
I didn’t feel proud of thinking about the money.
But I did.
When Megan came downstairs, I told her Brian had stopped by.
Then I showed her the check.
She went pale.
“Where did he get this?”
“From his bank, I assume.”
“Did Lauren know he was giving it to you?”
“He said she’d wanted to thank me, too.”
Megan read the check again.
“Did he tell you why?”
“Because I saved Noah.”
She shook her head.
“That’s not the whole reason.”
Before I could ask what she meant, she took the check from my hand.
“Megan?”
She folded it once.
Then she tore it in half.
I was too stunned to move.
Then tore it again and dropped the pieces on the table.
“You had no right to do that,” I said.
“I know.”
“You know? That’s $10,000!”
Her hands were shaking.
“Please listen to me.”
“Then tell me what you know.”
She sat down.
And for the first time since the accident, my wife began to cry.
After Noah was taken to the hospital, Megan went inside to collect the family’s things.
Lauren’s purse was on a chair near the kitchen. Noah’s little sneakers were by the back door.
Megan was gathering them when Brian returned from the hospital to collect Lauren’s forgotten phone charger.
Lauren had called him because she’d forgotten her phone charger.
Megan heard him speaking to Lauren through his phone.
At first, she hadn’t meant to listen.
Then she heard Brian say, “I was back. I was standing right there, and I didn’t even know where he was.”
He was quiet for a moment.
“Don’t say it was only my fault. You didn’t know where he was either.”
Megan stepped into the hallway, and Brian saw her.
He ended the call.
For a long time, neither of them spoke.
Then he said, “Lauren thinks I should have been watching him.”
Megan didn’t answer.
“She’s right,” he continued. “But she was there too. We both thought the other one knew where he was.”
He sat down at our kitchen table and put his face in his hands.
“I went to get ice. I came back. I checked a message from work. I looked up when people started screaming.”
Megan told me she’d never seen him look so small.
“I should have known where my son was,” Brian whispered.
She sat beside him.
“He’s alive, Brian.”
“Because Mark saw him.”
He looked at her.
“Not because I did.”
When Megan told me this, I felt some of my anger loosen.
I remembered Brian standing by the pool, his face drained of color.
“I understand why he feels guilty,” I said. “That doesn’t explain why you destroyed the check.”
“There’s more.”
That night, after Noah was discharged, Lauren called Megan.
She wanted to thank us. She also wanted to talk.
Lauren said she and Brian had spent hours replaying the party.
She’d been chatting with friends.
Brian had returned from the store.
Each had assumed Noah was with the other.
“She kept asking me how two people could both be there and neither one be watching their child,” Megan said.
“What did you tell her?”
“That she couldn’t change yesterday. But she could make sure it never happened again.”
Megan wiped her face.
“Then Lauren told me Brian wanted to give you money.”
I looked at the torn check.
“She knew about it?”
“She knew he wanted to. She didn’t know how much.”
According to Megan, Lauren had asked Brian not to make a large financial decision while they were both still in shock.
They had medical bills to sort out, and Lauren wanted to pay for swimming lessons and better safety precautions around water.
Brian insisted that he needed to do something for me.
“He told her he couldn’t live with knowing someone else had to save their son,” Megan said.
I looked at her.
“So you decided he shouldn’t pay me.”
“No.”
“Then what?”
Megan hesitated.
“Lauren called me again this morning. Before Brian came over.”
My stomach tightened.
“She said they had argued about it. Brian told her he’d already written the check. She was crying, Mark. She said he was trying to make himself feel less guilty, and she didn’t know how to reach him.”
I waited.
“She asked me to talk to you before you accepted anything.”
“Then why didn’t you?”
Megan looked down.
“Because when I saw that number, I panicked.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
“You could have told me all of this.”
“I know.”
“You could have asked me to wait.”
“I know.”
“Instead, you tore up a check with my name on it.”
Her voice cracked.
“Yes.”
I stood and walked to the sink.
Outside, the pool was perfectly still.
The same water I’d jumped into the day before.
“You were worried about their marriage,” I said, “so you made a decision that hurt ours.”
