I sit down. At her table. On herboat. With her kids and her fairy lights and the sound of the water and the smell of whatever she’s making and the running light glowing red through the galley window as the sun goes down.
I sit down, and I stay.
THIRTEEN
EMMA
Iwake up smiling.
That’s how I know I’m in trouble.
The houseboat is doing its gentle morning rock, the one I’ve gotten used to since moving here—the soft tilt and settle that means the tide is shifting. Light comes through the galley window in warm slats across the bedspread. From down the hall, I can hear Millie’s alarm going off and Millie ignoring it, which she will continue to do for exactly four more minutes before dragging herself out of bed with the enthusiasm of a government employee on a Monday.
I’m smiling at the ceiling. Like a person in a mattress commercial. I’m lying in bed on a houseboat smiling at nothing because yesterday a man kissedme in a lighthouse during a thunderstorm and my entire nervous system has apparently decided to reboot itself into a fourteen-year-old girl.
I kissed him first. I should be clear about that. He was in the middle of a sentence—something about being out of practice and terrible timing—and I grabbed his face and kissed him because if I waited for Paul Spencer to finish talking himself out of a beautiful moment, we’d both be eighty and living in Harold’s retirement community.
I’m smiling.
And then the smile fades, the way morning light fades when a cloud moves in. Not all at once. Gradually. One thought at a time.
He kissed you back. But Matt used to kiss you back too.
I sit up. Push the covers off. The houseboat rocks.
Matt used to look at you like that. In the beginning. Before the trains. Before the garage became more important than your bedroom. Before you learned what it felt like to be second place in your own marriage.
And just like that, the mattress commercial is over. Welcome to the behind-the-scenes documentary where the woman who just had the mostromantic day of her life decides to spend the morning psychologically dismantling it like a toddler with a tower of blocks. This is my specialty. This is what I do. Some women journal, and some meditate.
I catastrophize.
I put my feet on the floor. The wood is cool. From outside, I can hear the marina waking up—the creak of dock lines, a pelican complaining, the distant rumble of a boat engine somewhere in the channel.
Paul has a marina. Paul has boats. Paul has a business that requires his attention every single day. How long before you’re second to that too?
Stop it.
I’m in the galley making coffee before the thought finishes forming, and I hate that this is what I do—the same thing I’ve always done. Something good happens and I immediately start building the case for why it won’t last. Like a prosecutor preparing for a trial nobody filed.Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I present Exhibit A: a man who brought pickled okra to dinner. The prosecution will demonstrate that this is clearly a precursor to emotional abandonment.
My internal lawyer needs to be disbarred.
Matt wasn’t a bad man. I need to beclear about that too. He wasn’t cruel. He didn’t yell. He didn’t cheat. He just—wasn’t there. His body was in our house but his heart was in the garage, surrounded by tiny mountains and tunnels and a miniature village more detailed than our actual life. The man could paint individual bricks on a building the size of a saltshaker but couldn’t remember which child had the dentist appointment on Tuesday.
Twelve hours on a water tower the size of a coffee mug, zero minutes at Aidan’s school play. He once spent four hundred dollars on a limited edition locomotive that arrived in packaging more protective than anything he ever gave his children. Foam padding, a custom crate, and a certificate of authenticity. Meanwhile, Jenna was wrapping her own school lunches because Dad forgot it was his turn.
And the worst part—the part that still sits in my chest like a stone I can’t cough up—is that he washappydoing it. He was passionate and excited and fully alive in that garage. I just wasn’t what made him that way.
I lost a custody battle with a hobby. The hobby won. The hobby didn’t even know it was competing.
So I stopped competing. Stopped asking for help, stopped expecting it, because asking meant hearing “in a minute” and a minute meant never. I becamethe woman who handled everything. Three kids, a photography business, a household, and a husband who was essentially a very expensive roommate with a train addiction. I was a single parent with a plus-one who occasionally emerged from the garage to ask if we had any more spray paint.
The coffee maker clicks on. The red light glows. And I think about Paul on the other side of the dock, probably awake already, probably standing in his galley in that quiet way he has, and I think about last night at my table—how he sat down andstayed.
But Matt used to stay too. In the beginning.
I pour the coffee. Sit on the deck. The marina is gold in the early light and Paul’s boat is ten feet away and his curtains are drawn and I don’t know if he’s awake or asleep or standing behind that glass thinking about me the way I’m thinking about him.
It’s not that I think he’ll be bad to me. He won’t yell or cheat or leave in the middle of the night. What scares me is quieter than that. More ordinary. That he’ll be right here—close enough to touch, sleeping ten feet away—and still not really be with me. That the marina will be his garage. That the boats will be his trains. That I’ll watch him pour himself into dock cleats and charter bookings and engine repairs the way Matt poured himselfinto tiny landscapes, and I’ll realize I’ve done it again. Chosen someone who has room for everything except me.
