“And can I bring the list? I want to show Dad the list.”
My stomach tightens. “Of course.”
He disappears. I hear him rummaging through his room, narrating his preparations to Stomper, who is propped on the windowsill in his permanentdrying spot.
I look through the porthole again. Paul is drilling something into the railing post, his back to me, his shoulders set in the way they get when he’s concentrating. Or when he’s trying not to feel something.
I should go talk to him. I should walk out there and say something reassuring, something that bridges the gap between yesterday’s hand-on-his-chest and today’s careful distance.
Instead, I scroll through three more weddings and close the camera.
Matt texts mid-morning.
Landed. Grabbing the rental car. Should be there soon. Can’t wait to see the kids.
I stare at the message. Four sentences. Cheerful. Punctual. Promising.
I’ve seen this version of Matt before. The one who shows up with energy and enthusiasm and a trunk full of good intentions. The version who lasts about six hours before the real Matt surfaces—the one whose attention drifts, whose phone buzzes with model train forum notifications, whose eyes glaze over during conversations that don’t involve HO-scale locomotives.
But maybe I’m being unfair. Maybe people change. Maybe the distance gave him perspective. Maybe this time?—
“Mom, he landed early!” Aidan is reading over my shoulder because privacy is a concept that does not exist in a houseboat with three children.
“I see that.”
“Can we wait on the dock? Can we be there when he pulls up? Like in the movies when people hold signs at the airport?”
“We don’t have a sign.”
“I can make one.”
He’s already grabbing markers from the supply drawer. Millie appears silently beside him, the way she does when she wants to participate but doesn’t want to seem eager. Jenna stays on the bow. Doesn’t take her earbuds out. But she shifts position so she can see the parking area at the end of the dock.
His rental carpulls into the marina parking lot about an hour later. Silver SUV. Brand new. The kind of car that screamsI’m doing well financially and I want you to notice.
He steps out wearing pressed khakisand a polo shirt, like he’s arriving at a country club instead of a marina. His hair is shorter than the last time I saw him. He’s wearing new glasses—wire frames, trendy. He looks... good. Rested. Like a man who sleeps eight uninterrupted hours in a quiet house with no children and no leaking pipes and no coffee maker that sounds possessed.
Aidan breaks into a sprint.
“Dad!”
He’s across the dock in seconds, crashing into Matt with the full-body force of an eight-year-old who has been counting minutes all morning. Matt catches him—I’ll give him that—scoops him up, holds him tight.
“Hey, buddy. Look at you. You got so tall.”
“I grew an inch and a half since April. Mom measured me on the doorframe. Well, it’s not a doorframe, it’s a bulkhead, because we live on a boat now. Did you know boats have bulkheads instead of walls?”
“I didn’t know that.”
“There’s so much I need to tell you. I have a list.”
Millie reaches them next. She doesn’t sprint. She walks—measured, careful, her blue daisy dress fluttering in thebreeze—and when she gets there, she wraps her arms around Matt’s waist and presses her face against his shirt without saying a word.
“Hey, Mills.” His voice goes soft. “I missed you.”
She nods against his chest and doesn’t let go.
Jenna is last. She walks down from the houseboat with her earbuds draped around her neck—a concession—and stops about four feet from Matt with her arms crossed like she’s evaluating him.
