For a long moment, nobody breathed. Then Hargrove looked down at the party again. At Marcus teaching Gina’s husband the electric slide. At Darnell grilling hot links next to Paulie. At the water, which for the first time in anyone’s memory, looked less like a grave and more like a mirror.

“My father was an asshole,” Benny said, calm and clear. “No offense.”

He came down. And The Pit, for one afternoon, was just a pool. No sides. No history. Just oil-slick skin and cold drinks and the sound of people who’d finally learned to swim in the same water.

“They’ll talk,” she said one night, dangling her feet over the quarry’s edge. The water below was black as coffee, deep and cold.