Amanda had already cleared the pool deck of furniture by the time they arrived, towels stacked in a neat pile on the patio table like she’d been planning the logistics of this for days.
"You didn’t have to make a production out of it," Franz said, setting the twins’ bag down beside the towels.
"I’ve been waiting since spring for the grown man who kept promising them lessons to actually show up." Amanda kissed his cheek, then crouched immediately to twin height, where Lily and Leo stood in matching towel capes Aunt Estella had sewn them for the occasion. "Look at you two. Ready to be fish?"
"I’m ready," Lily said. "Leo’s nervous."
"I’m not nervous." Leo’s grip on his towel said otherwise.
"You don’t have to swim today if you don’t want to," Franz told him, crouching to his level the way he’d learned worked better than standing over him. "We can just get in the shallow end and see how the water feels. That’s the whole plan for today."
Leo considered this with the particular seriousness he brought to decisions that mattered to him. "The whole plan."
"The whole plan."
That settled something. Leo dropped the towel cape onto a chair without further comment and marched toward the pool steps, jaw set, not looking back to see if anyone was watching him do it.
Vincent appeared from the house with Lexx balanced against one shoulder, a folded newspaper tucked under his free arm like he intended to actually read it at some point, which Franz doubted. "Your mother banned me from the water twenty minutes ago. Said I’d terrify them with my form."
"You would," Amanda called from the pool steps, already ankle-deep with Lily’s hand in hers. "You swim like you’re being chased."
"I swim efficiently."
"You swim like the pool owes you money."
Arianne laughed from the lounge chair where she’d settled with a bag of Lexx’s things, and Vincent handed the baby over to her without ceremony. Raising Alex and Franz had left him with plenty of opinions on how it was done, and none of them stopped him from doing it his own way anyway. Lexx immediately reached for a fistful of her hair, gnawing at his own fist a second later when that failed to satisfy him.
"New tooth coming in?" Vincent asked, settling into the chair beside her.
"Second one. He’s been chewing on everything within reach since Tuesday." Arianne freed her hair and offered Lexx a finger instead, which he accepted with visible relief. "Ellie says it should break through by the weekend. Nothing like the fever from the first one."
"Small mercies." Vincent watched the twins in the shallow end, Amanda holding both their hands as they bounced experimentally against the water’s resistance. "He held Leo’s rattle exactly the way Alex used to hold his crayons. Same grip. I noticed it at the before and didn’t say anything."
Arianne didn’t answer that right away, and Vincent didn’t seem to need her to. Some things were just true out loud, without requiring a response.
In the water, Franz had gotten both twins to the point of floating on their backs, one hand under each of their spines, close enough to catch them but no longer holding on the way he had ten minutes ago. Lily kicked hard and unafraid, having decided this was easy the moment she started, sending up a spray that hit Franz square in the face.
"Sorry," she said, not sorry at all.
"Terrible aim. Try to get me next time on purpose."
Leo floated more carefully, his eyes fixed on Franz’s face like the water might change its mind about holding him up if he stopped watching. "Don’t let go."
"I’ve got you." Franz kept his hand steady beneath him. "You’re already floating. I’m just here in case you forget."
"I won’t forget."
"Then I’m just here because I like being here."
That got a small, surprised laugh out of Leo, water splashing up around his ears, and for a second his focus slipped from the fear of sinking to the fact of floating, which Franz suspected was the whole trick of teaching anyone anything. You gave them something else to notice until the thing they were afraid of stopped being the only thing in the room.
By the time the sun had moved past the pergola and Amanda was calling everyone in for lunch, Leo had managed four unassisted strokes before losing his nerve and grabbing for Franz’s arm, and Lily had declared herself, unprompted and with full authority, "basically a mermaid now."
"Basically," Franz agreed, lifting her out of the water and setting her on the pool deck, where she immediately wrapped herself in the towel cape again like ceremony demanded it.
Leo climbed out on his own power, refusing help with the specific stubbornness he reserved for things he’d almost failed at, and stood dripping beside Franz while Amanda toweled Lily’s hair with more enthusiasm than technique.
"Next time," Leo said, "I want to swim to the deep end."
"Next time," Franz agreed. "We’ll get there."
Lunch was sandwiches and cut fruit at the table under the pergola, Lily narrating the entire lesson to Vincent as though he hadn’t watched every second of it himself, complete with sound effects for the splash she’d sent at Franz’s face.
"And then I got him right in the eye," she said, gesturing with a strawberry for emphasis.
"You got me in the mouth," Franz corrected. "There’s a difference."
"There isn’t. You closed your eyes. That counts as the eye."
"That’s not how physics works."
"It’s how my physics works." Lily popped the strawberry into her own mouth, satisfied with the ruling.
Leo ate more carefully beside her, turning the day over in his head the way he turned most things over, and eventually set his sandwich down long enough to make an announcement to the table generally. "I floated on my own for four strokes."
"Four whole strokes," Amanda said, with the exact gravity the number deserved. "That’s practically the ocean."
"It’s a pool."
"It’s the ocean if you believe hard enough." Amanda winked at him, and Leo considered this logic seriously before deciding it was acceptable.
Arianne watched them from the lounge chair, Lexx finally drowsy against her shoulder, his gums working slower now around the same finger he’d claimed twenty minutes ago. Vincent had stopped talking beside her, the newspaper unread on his lap, his attention on his grandchildren rather than the page.
"You were right," Franz said, dropping into the chair on Arianne’s other side, wet hair dripping onto his own shoulders. "He needed the whole plan explained before he’d get in."
"I didn’t say anything."
"You didn’t have to. I know what you look like when you already know how something’s going to go." Franz reached over and took Lexx’s free hand, the baby’s fingers closing around one of his without opening his eyes. "Next weekend, deep end. He’s already decided."
"Then we’d better be ready for it," Arianne said, and let the afternoon settle around all five of them, water dripping off the twins’ hair, Lexx’s breathing slowing toward sleep, the whole day arranged around nothing more complicated than a promise finally kept.