Chapter 4: Girls Fall

The deckhands pulled Paola out of the Monongahela by her arms.

She came over the stern rail in a heap of wet ivory silk, coughing, with her pearls gone and her hair across her face.

She had gone down fast and come up kicking. Nobody on that boat could say she had not learned to swim after all.

The head deckhand's crew, the four men I paid, stood around her with the ring buoy and the boat hook.

Not one of them looked at me. They had seen what the phones had seen.

By the time I reached the lower deck, the story was moving through the guests faster than the boat was moving through the water.

"The rail broke," a man said.

"Did you see her go?" a woman asked.

"She grabbed the bride's wrist first," said a third voice.

I stood at the stern door with my hands folded and said nothing.

The head deckhand came up beside me with a wrench in his fist.

He opened his other hand and showed me two bolts, bright at the heads, with fresh scratches around them.

"Found these on the deck by the stairs," he said, low.

"Somebody backed them out and set them loose. Not the river, Miss Zuza. A wrench."

"Keep them," I said. "In your pocket, in your own hand. Give them to nobody."

"Yes, miss."

"And thank you," I said.

He nodded. Then he turned to the crowd and said loudly, "Everyone back inside, please. The lady is fine. The lady is cold."

Dominic came down the stairs two at a time.

He pushed through the guests with his tie loose and the charm gone out of his face.

He knelt beside his sister on the wet boards.

"Paola. Paola, look at me."

"She pushed me," Paola said, coughing. "She turned and she shoved me."

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