“Okay,” Millie says. “Q-and-A time. First question: do you think Karana was right to stay on the island alone?”
“I think she was brave to stay.”
“Brave and right aren’t the same.”
“No. It’s not.”
She considers this, tapping her finger against the page. “Second question: do you think it’s possible to build a whole life by yourself, or do you eventually need other people?”
I look at this ten-year-old philosopher sitting cross-legged on a dock in the lantern light, asking me the question I’ve been avoiding for a decade.
“I think you can survive alone,” I say. “But surviving and living aren’t the same.”
Millie nods. Writes something in the margin of her book. Looks up.
“Last question. Did you bring snacks? Because Mom said you might bring snacks, and I skipped dessert purposely.”
I reach under my chair and produce a bag of chocolate chip cookies from the marina store.
“Mr. Paul. You are the perfectaudience.”
Emma laughs from the houseboat deck. The sound carries across the water, and Jenna pulls out one earbud—just one—and says, “Can I have a cookie too, or is this a members-only situation?”
“Get down here,” Millie says. “But you have to answer a discussion question first.”
“Pass.”
“One question. Non-negotiable.”
Jenna sighs the sigh of a teenager being asked to participate in family bonding. She climbs down to the dock, takes a cookie, and drops onto the beach towel next to her sister.
“Fine. One question.”
“Good. I just asked Mr. Paul this one, but I want to hear what you think. Do you think it’s possible to build a whole life by yourself?”
Jenna looks at the cookie, looks at her sister, and looks at me sitting in my fold-out chair on the dock at seven o’clock on a Tuesday because a ten-year-old invited me.
“No,” she says. “Obviously not.”
Then she puts her earbud back in and eats her cookie, and that’s the most words Jenna Spencer Mills has ever voluntarily spoken in my presence, and I’ll take it.
Emma catches my eye from the houseboat. She mouths two words.
Thank you.
I nod. Mouth one back.
Always.
The stars come out. Millie reads one more chapter. The cookies disappear. Somewhere on the boardwalk, music drifts from the brewery. The evening wraps around us like something warm and lived-in, and I think:this is what it feels like. This is what I’ve been missing.
Not the romance, the butterflies, the heat of Emma’s fingers on my ribs, or the way my pulse kicks when she walks past.
This. Cookies on the dock. A kid reading out loud. A teenager tolerating my existence. A woman on the houseboat steps, watching me with her children, deciding I’m safe.
I fold up my chair at nine. Millie hugs me—arms around my waist, face against my chest, no warning. Just a full-body, ten-year-old commitment to affection that knocks the air out of me.
“Same time Thursday?” she asks.
