Aidan stacks his plates, carries them to the sink, and announces he’s going to check on Steve.
“Tell Steve I said good morning,” I say,and I’m not sure when I became a man who greets a hermit crab but here we are.
Aidan beams. “Steve likes you. I can tell because he didn’t hide in his shell when you walked in. That’s basically a hug in hermit crab language.”
He thunders down the hall. A door slams. Something falls over.
And then it’s quiet.
The galley is small. Morning light through the windows. My coffee mug next to hers on the counter, which feels like a statement I didn’t intend to make. A stack of plates and a syrup-sticky table and the smell of butter and the boat rocking gently.
I pick up a dish towel.
“You don’t have to do that,” she says.
“The pan needs soaking.”
“I’ll do it later.”
“It’ll be harder to clean later. Batter sets.”
I’m already running water. This is what I do—I find the thing that needs fixing and I fix it. It’s easier than standing in a woman’s kitchen with nothing to do and no idea what comes next. Yesterday I kissed her in a lighthouse. This morning her son yelled at me from a dock and I came over in bare feet because apparently I have no defenses left. I’ve been stripped of all my emotional fortificationsby a woman with a camera and three kids and a hermit crab named Steve, and the only thing I can think to do about it is wash dishes.
We work in the small galley, careful around each other. Her arm brushes mine reaching for the dish soap. She hands me a plate. Our fingers overlap on the rim and neither of us pulls away for a beat longer than necessary.
“Thank you,” she says. “For the pancakes. For being here.”
“Your son yelled at me from the dock. There wasn’t a lot of choice involved.”
“There was. You could have said no.”
“I don’t think your son understands the word no. I think he hears it as ‘try a different angle.’”
“He gets that from me.” She pauses. “Or from his father. Matt was persistent about things he cared about. The problem was the list of things he cared about was very specific and didn’t include his family.”
Her voice changes when she says it. Goes flat and careful, the way mine goes when someone says Holly’s name. I know that tone. It’s the sound of a wound that hasn’t finished healing.
My hands still in the soapy water. “What didhe care about?”
She leans against the counter.
“Model trains.”
I wait. Because I’ve learned that when Emma is about to say something real, you don’t rush her. You just stand there and let her get to it.
“He had this setup in our garage. Mountains, tunnels, a miniature village—the whole thing. He could spend all day painting individual bricks and tiny window frames. He was talented. I’ll give him that. He could build a whole world in a four-by-eight-foot space.” She picks at a spot of dried batter on the counter. “He just forgot he had a real world on the other side of the garage door.”
This woman—this warm, funny, impossible woman who kissed me in a lighthouse and feeds her kids pancakes and carries everything on her back—was married to a man who chose a hobby over her. Who had Emma Mills in his house and spent his time painting miniature scenery.
I have opinions about this. None of them are charitable.
“How long?”
“Our whole marriage, really. It started small. A hobby. Then it was every evening. Then it was where he went when Aidan had colic and I was walking the floor attwo in the morning, and where he stayed when Jenna needed help with her science project.” She pauses. “The garage had climate control. He installed it himself. Our bedroom didn’t. That tells you everything.”
It tells me everything. It tells me a man air-conditioned a room full of toy trains and let his wife sweat. I dry a plate. Set it down. Pick up another one, because if I’m not holding something I’m going to say things about her ex-husband that aren’t appropriate for a first breakfast.
“He wasn’t mean,” she says. “People hear ‘divorce’ and they assume someone was terrible. Matt wasn’t terrible. He was just—gone. Physically present, mentally in a miniature mountain range. He once drove ninety minutes to pick up a custom-painted caboose but couldn’t remember it was his turn to pack Jenna’s school lunch.”
