“Get the kids!” Kit ordered as he went to the two old men.
“He’s dead.” The agony in Mr. Gates’s voice made Olivia shiver.
She started toward the children but they ran the opposite way, afraid of what had happened. They were very difficult to catch! She chased them past the chicken coop, through the orchard, and toward the house. “Please don’t let them go in the house,” she said aloud.
With all those hiding places, she’d never find them.
She managed to get Ace just as he reached the clothesline. But then, the child was crying too hard to keep running. Olivia went to her knees and pulled him into her arms. His convulsions were making her body shake.
As Olivia knew she would, Letty stopped running and came back to them. Olivia opened an arm and held her too.
“We killed Uncle Freddy,” Ace wailed.
“We drown-ded him,” Letty said.
She could guess what happened. The children loved to push Uncle Freddy around in his wheelchair. They’d been warned about getting too near the pond with him, but it looked like with all the adults busy that day, they’d disobeyed—a common occurrence with them.
“It was an accident,” Olivia said, but then she too began to cry. Uncle Freddy and his humor, his kindness and generosity to all of Summer Hill. Gone forever. And poor, poor Mr. Gates. How was he going to live without his friend? How—?
“I can swim,” came a raspy voice over them.
Olivia’s head was bent over the children, the three of them clinging together so hard they looked like a human barrel.
It was Ace who first looked up.
Kit was standing over them, a weak, dirty Uncle Freddy in his arms.
“Livie,” Ace whispered, a hiccup in his voice.
Olivia kept crying. Dear Uncle Freddy. And there was what was waiting for Ace with his mother! It was too much for one child to have to bear in his little life. “I know, Ace, sweetheart, it’s not your fault. It was an accident.”
“Olivia!” Kit’s voice was stern. She was still holding the children tightly.
Letty looked at Ace, then turned to see Kit holding Uncle Freddy like he was a baby.
She let out a scream and pushed so hard that Olivia fell backward onto the ground.
In the next minute, the children were clutching Uncle Freddy’s hand and laughing, crying, hiccuping.
“You’re going to get sunburned.” Kit was smiling at Olivia as she looked up at him in astonishment.
Behind them, Mr. Gates was pushing the wheelchair. From the look of him, he’d aged years.
Uncle Freddy, his thin, frail body limp in Kit’s arms, smiled at them. “We’re going to put in a swimming pool because I can swim.”
“Come on, old man,” Kit said, “you’re getting heavier by the minute.” Looking at Olivia, he nodded toward Mr. Gates. He needed to be taken care of.
She went to him, gave the wheelchair a push that sent it rolling, then picked up his arm and put it around her shoulders. That he made no comment about hugging a pretty girl scared her.
Ace’s dad, Dr. Everett, was called and while they waited for him to arrive, Mr. Gates insisted on bathing Uncle Freddy. It’s what he’d done since both of them were in their early twenties, and he wasn’t going to neglect his duty now.
Kit helped undress Uncle Freddy and get him into the hot water, then left him with Mr. Gates, who was still shaking. “They need each other,” Kit told Olivia.
As for the kids, they were so subdued by what had almost happened that they weren’t making a sound. Olivia gave them peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with glasses of milk and they were in the kitchen, eating in silence.
Kit had put on a shirt and he and Olivia were sitting on the hall floor, one on each side of the bathroom door. Inside, they could hear Uncle Freddy talking. His voice was low but there was excitement in it.
“The kids didn’t put the chair’s brake on,” Kit said. “It was all because I made them swear that they wouldn’t go swimming without an adult present.”