“Okay.” He doesn’t move from the steps. Keeps watching.
From my houseboat deck, I can see Paul’s boat. His cabin door is open. He’s inside—I can see him moving through the porthole. He hasn’t come out on deck all morning. Hasn’t walked past. Hasn’t looked over.
He’s giving me exactly what I asked for.
I hate it.
Matt arrives at ten.
Not nine-twenty, which is what his text implied. Not nine-forty-five, which would have been late but forgivable. Ten o’clock. A full hour after pickup, in the same silver SUV, wearing the same tourist T-shirt, carrying a cardboard tray of gas station coffees like that fixes anything.
“Sorry, guys. Got a late start. The inn didn’t have the coffee I like so I drove to find a decent one, and then the bridge was up for a boat passing through.”
A drawbridge. He was late because he needed the right coffee. Three children inswimsuits, watching the parking lot, and he was hunting for a latte.
Aidan’s off the steps before Matt finishes parking. Whatever hurt he felt during that hour of waiting, he’s packed it away with the efficiency of a kid who has learned to compress disappointment into a very small space and put it somewhere it won’t slow him down.
“Dad! I brought Stomper! He’s in a waterproof bag because of what happened last time!”
“What happened last time?”
“It’s a long story. It involves the ocean and heroism.”
Millie walks to the car at her measured pace. She gets in, buckles her seatbelt, and opens her book.
Jenna comes last. Earbuds in. Sunglasses on. She gets in the back seat without a word and closes the door.
I stand on the dock and watch them drive away. Again. The second time in three days that I’ve watched my children leave with a man I’m not sure I trust, and both times I’ve stood here on the weathered wood feeling like the dock might be the only solid ground I have left.
Paul’s cabin door closes. I hear the latch click from ten feet away.
He saw me standing here. I know he did.
I lastforty-five minutes before I crack.
Not about Paul. About the coffee. I need coffee. The machine is dead. I don’t have a French press because I am a woman who owns exactly one method of making coffee, and that method is currently deceased on my galley counter.
I could go to Michelle’s. That’s the rational choice. Walk to the boardwalk, order a latte, sit in a booth like a functioning adult.
Instead I walk to the marina store because it’s closer and because the marina store has a terrible drip coffee pot that produces something closer to hot brown water than actual coffee, but it’s caffeinated and it’s twenty steps from my houseboat.
Harold is in the marina store.
He’s behind the counter with a crossword puzzle and a Tupperware of tomatoes, looking like a man who owns the place. Which he did, once. Now he just haunts it.
“Emma.” He lowers the magazine. “You look like you need coffee.”
“The machine on my boatdied.”
“The haunted one?”
“It wasn’t haunted. It had electrical quirks.”
“Paul called it a demon appliance. Said it made noises that didn’t correspond to any known kitchen function.”
I pour myself a cup of the terrible coffee. It’s as bad as I expected. I drink it anyway.
“Paul won’t come near me,” I say, and I don’t know why I say it. Harold is not my therapist. Harold is a seventy-two-year-old man in a fishing vest who showed up to a store he doesn’t run to read a magazine he’s already read. But he’s here, and I’m here, and the coffee is terrible, and it comes out.
