I think about fairy lights instead.
TWENTY-THREE
EMMA
The coffee maker dies on Monday morning.
Not the slow decline I’ve been expecting—the gradual dimming, the sad gurgling, the eventual surrender of an appliance that has lived a full and haunted life. This is sudden. Violent. A pop, a spark, and a smell that can only be described as burning ambition, and then silence.
I stand in the galley staring at it. The coffee maker stares back. We have reached an impasse.
“Mom.” Aidan appears behind me. “Something smells like a campfire.”
“The coffee maker passed away.”
“Again?”
“This time I think it’s permanent.”
He peers at it. Pokes the power button. Nothing.Pokes it again. Still nothing. “Should we have a funeral?”
“I’m considering it.”
“Mr. Paul could fix it. He fixed it last time.”
The name lands in the galley like a stone dropped into still water. Ripples everywhere.
“I’ll figure it out,” I say. “Go eat your cereal.”
Aidan gives me a look that is far too perceptive for someone whose shirt is on inside out. Then he disappears, and I’m alone with a dead coffee maker, no caffeine, and the knowledge that the person who can fix this is ten feet away and I told him I needed space.
Space. What a stupid word. Space is what exists between planets. Space is what astronauts float through. Space is not what you ask for when the man you’re falling for lives on the boat next to yours and you can hear him making his own coffee through the wall of the hull every morning at six-fifteen.
Not that I’ve been listening.
Matt is supposedto take the kids to the beach today. It’s his last full day before his flight tomorrow. He texted a plan—pick up by nine,beach until lunch, boardwalk in the afternoon, early dinner, then he’d drop them off and head back to the inn on the mainland where he’s staying.
Aidan has been ready since seven. Shark tooth necklace. Swim trunks. Towel draped over his shoulder like a cape. Stomper is in a ziplock bag because “he’s coming but he can’t get wet again, not after what happened last time.”
Millie packed her own beach bag. Book, sunscreen, water bottle, granola bar. She’s ten going on forty.
Jenna is in her room. The door is closed. I can hear music through it—something moody and bass-heavy that vibrates the thin houseboat walls.
Nine o’clock comes. No Matt.
Nine-fifteen. No Matt.
Nine-thirty. Aidan is sitting on the deck steps with his towel-cape, watching the parking lot. He hasn’t said anything. He doesn’t need to. His whole body is saying it—the way he’s leaned forward, the way his legs are swinging, the way Stomper’s ziplock bag is clutched against his chest.
I text Matt.
Emma:Kids are ready. Everything okay?
Three dots appear. Disappear. Appear again.
Matt:Running behind. Be there in 20.
I show Aidan the screen. “Twenty minutes, bud.”
