The houseboat rocks. Aidan mumbles about Gerald forming an alliance with the dolphins. Moonlight spills through the porthole.
“Okay,” she says.
“Okay?”
“Okay. I'm coming. Give me two weeks.”
We stay on the phone another hour, planning and being ridiculous. Before I hang up, I text her one more thing:
Me:You deserve a man who stays in the same bedroom. That's the floor, not the ceiling.
Three dots. Then:
Lottie:Lucky Charms are the floor of cereal and I still deserve those too.
Me:Go to sleep, Lottie.
Lottie:Going. Love you.
Me:Love you more.
Paul is going to lose his mind. I can't wait.
Two weeks later.
I hear them before I see them.
This is not unusual for Olson and Mitch Roberts. These are children whose volume knob was removed at birth and replaced with a toggle switch that only goes between loud and louder.
The minivan tears into the marina parking lot trailing a U-Haul that's fishtailing slightly, with a boogie board strapped to the roof rack at an angle that defies physics. A bumper sticker on the U-Haul saysAdventure Awaits,and one of the twins has added in marker:And Also Sharks.
I'm standing on the dock with my coffee. Millie beside me, reading a book. Jenna leaning against the railing, pretending she's not excited. Aidan vibrating at a frequency only dogs and dolphins can detect. He hasn't slept in three days. He's been drawing welcome signs. There are seventeen of them. One features Gerald the crab wearing a top hat.
“They're here,” Aidan whispers, like he's witnessing a religious event.
The van hasn't fully stopped before the sliding door flies open and a blur of boy launches himself onto the asphalt.
“Aidan!” Olson screams at a volume that startles pelicans off the pilings. “We're here! Wedrove all night! I saw a dead armadillo on the highway and Mitch cried!”
“I didn't cry,” Mitch says, climbing out with the weary dignity of a child who has been in a car for ten hours. “I had feelings about it. There's a difference.”
“You had wet feelings. On your face.”
“That was sweat.”
“From your eyes?”
Aidan teleports off the dock—I didn't even see him move—and throws himself at both twins, and the three of them go down in a pile of limbs and screaming on the asphalt.
“Gerald lives under the dock! He has a family now! There are four of them!”
“Can we see them?”
“Right now!”
They're up and sprinting before any adult can intervene, leaving the rest of us in the wreckage of their reunion.
“They got louder,” Jenna says, lowering her sunglasses.
