I don’t answer that.
“I should go,” I say. I set down the dish towel—her dish towel, the one with the faded lobsters—and walk toward the door.
I’ve gotone foot on the dock and one foot still on her boat when Dad’s golf cart hums down the dock.
Of course. Of course it’s now. The man has a radar.
He pulls up. Takes in the scene—me, half on Emma's houseboat, dish towel still over my shoulder, two coffee mugs visible through the galley door. His face does the thing. The slow smile.
"Morning," Dad says.
"Morning."
"Emma." He waves at her like they're old friends, because in his mind they already are.
"Hi, Harold." She waves back, easy and warm, and I watch my father light up the way he does around people who aren't me.
He looks at the coffee mug. The dish towel. My ears, which I'm certain are red.
Dad says nothing. He says nothing so loudly it fills the entire marina.
"Don't," I say.
"I didn't say anything."
"You're thinking it."
“I’m an old man sitting in a golf cart. I’m not thinking anything.” He adjusts his cap. “I’m just here to remind you the Langley charter is at two and the bilge pump on C-7 needs looking at. But you’d know that if you were in your office instead of —” He gestures at everything. “— elsewhere.”
“I had breakfast.”
“I can see that.” His mustache is trying to escape his face. “Pancakes?”
“How do you know it was pancakes?”
He nods toward the dock, where Aidan is now giving Steve a marina tour with narration that can be heard on the mainland. “Your son told me when he walked past my cart. He said, and I’m quoting, ‘Mr. Harold, Mr. Paul made the best pancakes in the world and he’s a regular now, which means he has to come to every breakfast forever. It’s a rule I just made.’”
I pinch the bridge of my nose.
“I like that rule,” Dad says. “I might adopt it myself.”
“Dad.”
“Langley charter. Two o’clock. C-7.” He puts the cart in reverse. “And Paul?”
“What.”
“Your mother made me wait three arguments before I got breakfast privileges. You did it in one.”
He drives away.
I watch him go. Pinch the bridge of my nose again.
“He’s going to tell everyone,” I say.
“Probably.”
“By tonight the book club will have a group text about it.”
