What was down there in the deep-end corner, weighted so it would not drift, was a small sealed urn.
I did not go in after it right off. I got the family, and we stood at the edge looking down through that dark water at a thing somebody had set there on purpose, and none of us knew what to make of it. Then the husband said the only people with a key before them were the old couple they bought the place from, and he called the realtor.
It took a day to sort out, but the story that came back stopped all of us cold.
The couple who sold the house were in their seventies. They had raised their family there and swum in that pool for forty summers. And for fourteen of those summers they had a dog, a big old retriever named Buster, who loved that pool more than any of the kids did, who paddled the deep end every hot afternoon until he was too gray to climb the steps anymore.
Buster had died that spring, a month before they sold. They could not bear to scatter him somewhere strange, and they could not bear to dig him into a yard that would not be theirs much longer. So they sealed his ashes in an urn, weighted it, and rested it in the corner of the deep end where he had been happiest his whole long life. One of them had slipped back the week before closing, lifted the cover in that one spot, and knelt at the water to say a last goodbye.
It was not something sinister hidden in the dark. It was an old couple who could not think of a kinder place to leave the dog they loved than the water where he had been young.
There was a note under the urn, sealed in wax against the wet. It asked whoever found it to forgive them, gave a phone number, and said they would understand completely if the new family wanted Buster moved.
The family called. The old couple drove over that same evening, and there was not a dry eye at that poolside when they came.
Here is the part I will remember. The young family has two kids and a pup of their own now, one that had already taken to that pool like it was built for him. They told the old couple that Buster was welcome to stay right where he was, in the deep end he loved, for as long as they owned the place. They set a little paw-print paver into the deck at the corner, and told the couple to come swim any summer day they liked.
Twenty years around pools, and that is the only thing I ever pulled out of the deep end that I was glad to put right back.
