“How,” she says, arm deep in the bench. “This has a latch.”
“Mitch can get into anything,” Olson says fromthe floor, where he's tying his other shoe. “He opened the hotel safe in Chattanooga. Mom cried.”
“I didn't cry. I took a breath and called the front desk.”
“Your breaths are loud.”
Outside on the deck, Aidan is doing a thing I've decided not to investigate. The words “Steve” and “transport vessel” and “relocation program” drifted through the wall, and whatever is happening with that crab can wait until after I've blended my foundation.
“Jenna.” I knock on the bathroom door with the mascara wand, leaving a small black dot on the wood. “I have a client in forty-five minutes.”
“I'm almost done.”
“You said that twelve minutes ago.”
“Time is relative.”
“Not when your mother needs the mirror.”
The door opens. Jenna emerges in a cloud of floral perfume that costs more per ounce than my moisturizer, her dark hair pulled into a braid that looks effortless and probably took the full twenty-three minutes. She gives me a once-over—pajama shorts, mascara on one eye, gear bag hanging off my elbow.
“You lookunfinished,” she says.
“Thank you. Get your brother.”
“Which one?”
“The one relocating marine life.”
She heads for the deck. I slide into the bathroom, which is approximately the size of a closet. The mirror is fogged. I wipe it with my sleeve and stare at my half-mascara'd face.
I used to get ready for shoots in silence. Our bathroom in Chattanooga was enormous—double vanity, a soaker tub Matt used once, a walk-in closet with enough room for his 3D-printed train accessories that migrated from the garage like tiny plastic refugees. All that space and no one to share it with. I'd get dressed, walk past the garage where the tiny locomotives ran their tiny routes, and leave the house without anyone looking up.
Twelve years of marriage and I don't think Matt ever once saidyou look nice.Not on the way to a wedding. Not on date nights that I planned and he attended with the enthusiasm of a man being driven to a dental appointment. He'd glance up from whatever tiny bridge he was painting and say “have fun” and go back to his tweezers. I stopped getting ready in front of the mirror and started getting ready in front of the microwave because at least the microwave hadthe decency to reflect me back.
Now I can't put on mascara without getting elbowed. I'll take it.
I finish my face in four minutes. Grab my gear, kiss Millie's head on the way past, step over Olson's shoe situation, and pause at the deck door.
“Aidan.”
My son is crouched at the railing with a plastic bucket and a length of rope. Steve the crab is sitting in the bucket, claws up, looking like a tiny furious passenger.
“I'm moving him to a better habitat,” Aidan says. “Crabs need vitamin D.”
“They absolutely do not.”
“How do you know? Are you a marine biologist?”
“Put Steve back. I'll be home by lunch.”
He sighs the sigh of a misunderstood conservationist and begins lowering the bucket over the side.
The marina in the morning is one of my favorite versions of this place. The light is still low enough to be golden instead of white, the dock boards cool under my sandals, the air carrying that early smell of salt and diesel before the heat bakes it all into one shimmer.
By noon this dock will be hot enough to cook on—I've watched Aidan test this theory with a slice ofAmerican cheese, and he wasn't entirely wrong—but right now it's perfect. A cormorant is drying its wings on the nearest piling, arms spread like it's accepting applause.
The intracoastal is flat and green, barely moving. Across the water the mainland pines are dark against a sky that's already turning white at the edges. It's going to be brutal today. I can feel it building.
