He opens the Tupperware. Takes a piece. Bites into it. Chews slowly, deliberately, like a man savoring something that has nothing to do with banana bread.
“Best you’ve ever made,” he says.
“It’s the same recipe I’ve been making for forty years.”
“Must be the company.”
Grandma Hensley adjusts her sun hat. There is the faintest pink on her cheeks, which I have never seen in my life and didn’t think was possible.
“Well,” she says. “Show me this yacht.”
They walk toward the yacht together. Not touching. Not holding hands. Just walking, side by side, at the pace of two people who’ve been circling each other for longer than I’ve been alive and are in absolutely no rush.
I watch them go. Then I go back to the dock office and start my day, which should involve invoicing and scheduling but will probably involve something else entirely because nothing on this dock goes according to plan anymore.
Aidan ison the dock at nine with a stuffed elephant.
I’ve seen the elephant before. Small, gray, missing its left eye. One ear has been resewn with thread that doesn’t match—white thread on grayfabric, careful stitches, probably Emma’s work. The trunk is limp from years of being held. The whole thing looks like it’s been through a war, which, given what I know about this family, it basically has.
“That’s Stomper,” Aidan tells me, unprompted, because Aidan tells me everything unprompted. “He’s an elephant.”
“I can see that.”
“He’s had a hard life.”
“He looks like it.”
“He lost his eye in the Great Washing Machine Incident of 2023. Mom tried to fix him but he was in the hospital for two days.” He means Emma’s sewing kit. “He’s been through a lot. But he’s tough.”
“Good quality in an elephant.”
Aidan sits on the dock box near my boat, Stomper in his lap, kicking his feet against the wood. “Mom says Stomper is my emotional support animal. Like a therapy dog but smaller and he doesn’t need walks.”
I don’t say anything. I just listen, because I’ve learned that with Aidan, listening is the job.
“I’ve had him since I was three. Dad gave him to me.” He pauses. “Before Dad was... before things got weird. Stomper was from the good part.”
The good part. Before the trains.Before the garage. Before the divorce and the moving truck and the houseboat and a life that looks nothing like the one this kid was promised.
“He helps me sleep,” Aidan says, quieter now. “When it was really bad—when Mom and Dad were fighting and I could hear it through the wall—I’d put Stomper over my ear and squeeze and it made the sound go away. Not really. But kind of.”
My chest does something that I refuse to name.
“Stomper’s a good elephant,” I say.
“The best elephant.” He hugs Stomper against his chest and then hops off the dock box and runs toward the houseboat, because Aidan doesn’t walk anywhere. He runs, he crashes, he arrives. That’s his mode.
I watch him go. The gray elephant bouncing against his side, held by the trunk, dragged through the world by a kid who’s been holding on to it since before everything fell apart.
I go back to the invoice. The numbers don’t make sense. Nothing makes sense. I start over.
Emma comesby the dock office at ten to talk about the weddingrehearsal timeline.
She’s got a binder. Not as elaborate as Delilah’s—no color-coding, no flower emergency section—but organized like she manages three kids and a freelance career and a leaky houseboat. Tabs labeled in her handwriting. Shot lists. Lighting notes. A hand-drawn diagram of the yacht deck with camera positions marked in red.
“I need fifteen minutes on the bow before the ceremony for test shots,” she says, flipping to a page. “The light at six-thirty is going to be different from the light at seven-thirty, and I want to know what I’m working with.”
“You can have fifteen minutes.”
