“I'm fine.”
“You said that last month. Then Aidan got dive-bombed by a seagull and you dropped it in the sound.”
“That was not my fault. And it came back on after the rice.”
“After fourdaysin rice.”
“Still counts.”
I'm counting heads—a reflex that's become as automatic as breathing since I became a single mom. Three boys on the deck with Harold. Millie and Jenna at the bow. Lottie accounted for. Seven. Harold makes eight. I look back toward the dock, where the light is hitting the weathered boards at an angle that turns everything amber, and my heart does a stutter-step.
Paul is walking down the dock.
He's not hurrying. He's not smiling. He's carrying a water bottle with rigid deliberateness.
My pulse picks up, which is annoying. Physically annoying. I press my thumb into the side of my coffee mug and focus on the ceramic edge.
“Well,” Lottie murmurs from behind me. “Look who left his cave.”
“Don't start.”
“I'm observing. The man who grunted at me thismorning is now voluntarily boarding a boat full of children. That's character development.”
Paul reaches the boat and stands on the dock looking down atThe Good Lifewith an evaluating squint. Then he looks at Harold, who is beaming with the radiant satisfaction of a father whose bluff just worked.
“Thought I'd check the south posts from the water side,” Paul says. “Different vantage point.”
“Sure.” Harold doesn't blink. “Grab a seat. We're about to shove off.”
Harold turns to me. “He does this. Has since he was twelve. Can't just enjoy himself. Has to invent a practical reason first.”
Paul steps onto the boat without responding. The whole vessel shifts slightly under his weight—he's solid, built from years of dock work, and something warm spreads through my chest that I immediately file undernot relevant.
He could at least have the decency to not look like that. Faded T-shirt. Tanned arms. Hair pushed back like he ran his hand through it once and forgot. I've seen this man every day for nine months and my body still hasn't gotten the memo that we don't like him.
We do not like him.
He sits on the bench across from Lottie. Nods once. She nods back with a smile that contains entirely too much information, and I shoot her a look she ignores completely.
“All hands accounted for,” Harold announces. He turns the key andThe Good Life'sengine rumbles to life. “First Mate Aidan, cast off the bow line. Deckhands, cast off the stern.”
There's a brief, chaotic moment where all three boys attempt to untie ropes at the same time and Mitch nearly goes overboard, but Harold corrects him with a calm “other side, son” and the line comes free. We drift out of the slip, Harold guiding us through the channel with one hand on the wheel, pointing out landmarks for the boys.
“That's the old oyster bed,” he says, nodding toward a stretch of shallow water where the grasses bend in the current. “Used to harvest from there when I was your age. Best oysters on the coast.”
“What's an oyster taste like?” Olson asks.
“The ocean. In a good way.”
“What's the ocean taste like in a bad way?”
“Swallowing it when you fall off a boat. Which you will. Everyone does. When it happens, keep your mouth closed and youreyes open.”
We pass through the channel and the world opens up.
The marina falls behind us, shrinking into a cluster of shapes against the tree line. The sound stretches wide and flat ahead—pale green close to shore, deepening to a blue that looks almost painted where the channel drops off. To our left, the barrier island curves south toward Emerald Isle, the dunes pale and windblown above a thin white line of beach. To our right, the mainland is a dark ribbon of pines and live oaks across the water. Between us, scattered through the shallows, the little marsh islands sit low and green—just tufts of spartina grass rising out of the water, barely bigger than a living room, ringed with oyster shells that catch the light.
I love this part. The moment the land lets go and it's just water and sky and the hum of the engine underneath you. Nine months in, and this view still makes my throat tight—not with sadness, but with fierce, startled gratitude. I almost stayed in Chattanooga, in a house with a man who loved trains more than me, because staying was easier than believing I deserved something better.
