Millie appears beside us. She doesn’t say anything. She just slips her hand into my free one—the one Emma isn’t holding—and stands there, quiet and certain, like she’s been saving that spot for me.
I look down at my hands. Emma on one side. Millie on the other. Aidan wrapped around my legs. Somewhere across the deck, Jenna is pretending not to watch while absolutely watching.
This is it. This is what Holly meant. Notdon’t forget to eat lunch.Don’t forget to live. Don’t forget that a sticky note on a logbook is not enough. Don’t forget that grief is not a house you have to stay in forever.
The music plays. The yacht glows. The ocean stretches out dark and endless beyond the railing.
“Dance with me,” Emma says.
“I’m terrible at it.”
“You are tonight.”
She pulls me onto the floor. Aidan follows, because Aidan follows everywhere. Millie stays at the edge, watching, smiling, holding her book against her chest. Jenna rolls her eyes—fondly, I think, but with Jenna you can never be sure.
I dance. Badly. With a woman who smells like champagne and salt air, on a yacht that shouldn’t exist at my marina, at a celebration I spent months dreading and will remember for the rest of my life.
The yacht sails at midnight.
Levi and Delilah stand at the stern as the engines rumble to life, waving at the crowd gathered on the dock. Delilah throws her bouquet backward without looking—Caroline ducks like it’s a grenade, and Lottie catches it one-handed without trying. Justin, standing ten feet away, goes very still. Lottie looks at the bouquet. Looks at Justin. Looks back at the bouquet.
“Don’t,” she says.
Justin holds up both hands. “Didn’t saya word.”
“Your face said it.”
“My face is neutral.”
“Your face has never been neutral in its life.”
The whole dock laughs.
Then the yacht pulls away. Slow at first, easing out of the slip, the wake barely rippling the dark water. The twinkle lights on the rigging shrink as it clears the harbor mouth and heads for open ocean. Caribbean bound. Twenty years in the making.
The crowd thins. Cars start and voices fade. Aubrey is already directing cleanup with her clipboard. Michelle and Grayson leave arm in arm. Harold walks Grandma Hensley to her car, and I watch him open her door, and I watch her pat his cheek, and I stop watching because some things a son doesn’t need to see.
Dawson finds me on the dock. “Dad.”
“Yeah.”
“Good night.”
“It was.”
He grins and bumps my shoulder with his. Walks to the parking lot where Finch is waiting, and they drive off in Dawson’s truck with the windows down and the radio up.
My marina is quiet again. The slips are empty except for Justin’s boat, my boat, and Emma’shouseboat with its fairy lights glowing against the dark.
I find Emma on her deck.
She’s changed out of the bridesmaid dress into a sweatshirt and shorts. Her hair is down. Her feet are bare on the wooden planks. The camera bag is by the door—she’ll sort the photos tomorrow. Tonight she’s just Emma.
Aidan is asleep on the deck bench, Stomper tucked under his arm, still wearing his wedding clothes. His shark tooth necklace—the replacement one Harold gave him after he lost the first—hangs crooked against his chest. He crashed mid-sentence, Emma tells me. Something about how the shark worked better on the dance floor than he expected.
Millie went to bed an hour ago. Book on her nightstand. Lamp off.
Jenna is inside texting someone. I don’t ask who. I have a feeling I already know.
