“The boat,” he said.
I looked at him, and he looked back like he’d placed his piece on the board, and now we’d see if I moved mine.
“Are you gonna say you haven’t used it much this summer, and you don’t have time for sails because Eli eats hours like Pac-Man?”
“All true.” His mouth twitched. “But that’s not why I’m offering it.”
“Why are you offering it?”
“Because you sleep better when you can hear water hit hull,” he said simply. “Because you like walls you can touch without getting up. Because you’re a man who checks the perimeter, and a 40-foot ketch is easier to check than a 3,500-square-foot house.”
I stared at him. “That was disturbingly accurate.”
“It’s almost like I know you.” He lifted one shoulder. “Take her for a while. I’ve got a slip down by C dock. It’s quiet there. There’s shore power. I replaced the bilge pump and the head last spring. She’s ready to go. No pressure,” he added quickly, palms out like he was approaching a skittish horse. “If you want to stay here, stay here. But if you want a door that closes on your own noise, I can give you that.”
I looked past him at the dark line of the horizon and the way the stars doubled in the sliding glass reflection. I could already feel it—the way the world narrowed on a boat. The way problems did too. Deck, lines, mast, hatch, stove, berth, the soft thump of a halyard in a night breeze. A map I knew in my bones.
“You sure?” I asked.
“Rios,” he said, amused now, “I am not only sure, I’m selfish. If you sleep, you will be human again, and then I can rope you into fixing my gate and hanging the cabinet doors I’ve been avoiding.”
Because I knew he expected it, I smirked. “Ah. There it is. The trap.”
“Always,” he said cheerfully. “What do you say?”
Inside, the bedtime story rolled toward its end. Caroline’s voice joined Aubrey’s, steady and warm. A page turned with a whisper. Someone giggled. Eli hiccuped and sighed.
I swallowed. “I say thank you.”
“Good.” He clapped his palms lightly on his thighs and stood. “We’ll walk down there after bedtime and make sure everything’s fired up. Lights, water, shore power. You can move in tomorrow if you want.”
“Tonight,” I heard myself say.
Hoyt’s brows lifted, but he only nodded, unperturbed. “Tonight, then.”
We sat a minute more, both of us listening to the end of the house’s evening song. My shoulders crept down a notch I hadn’t realized they’d climbed. Space. A place to put my vigilance without resenting the people I loved for being noisy and alive.
Caroline slid the door open with her hip and stepped onto the porch, tucking a piece of hair behind her ear. Her pajama pants were sprinkled with cartoon lobsters. There was a smear of something unidentifiable on her shoulder. She was radiant with the kind of tired happiness that could only be earned.
“They’re down.” The gaze she turned on me was pointed. “You look a fraction less haunted. What did he say to you?”
“I offered him the boat,” Hoyt said.
Caroline’s face opened like the sunrise. “Oh, thank God. I was trying to figure out how to make that not sound like I was kicking you out.”
“You are not kicking me out,” I said quickly.
“Obviously.” She came to me and put her hands on either side of my face, thumbs sweeping the sweat at my temples, the way she’d done when we were kids after Dad slammed a door too hard and the house rattled. “You are loved here, siempre. But you also look like a man trying to sleep in a beehive.”
“That is an apt metaphor,” I said dryly.
“Then take the boat and get some quiet,” she said. “And come eat breakfast here in the mornings so I can see your face.”
“Deal.”
Her eyes searched mine. The part of me that had perfected the mask shifted, tried to slide it up. The other part—the one that had crossed an ocean for this porch—held still.
“You’ll tell me when you’re ready?” she asked softly.
