The water was sparkling and pale blue and should have been warm, but wasn’t. And there were footsteps approaching. It was Ayala. It had to be. So Harpo kicked, and water flew everywhere. She might get wet, but that was a risk he was willing to take. He had work to do. He had to fix her relationship with her daughter.
“That’s the splashing of a man who has something on his mind,” said Ayala as she sat beside him.
Harpo was thinking about her wonderful little girl. He started to tell her that, but then noticed that Ayala was all made up, looked entirely different from the straggly thing who’d crawled out of a canoe the night they’d met. She could be a different person altogether. His mother could transform herself like that. Minnie also knew how to use makeup like it was armour. Harpo edge
