“Aidan’s going to quiz you. He doesn’t go easy on people.”
“I can handle an eight-year-old crab quiz.”
“Famous last words.”
She leaves. The dock office smells like her shampoo for approximately four minutes. I know this because I don’t open the window.
It happensat two in the afternoon.
I’m on the dock checking the yacht’s shore power connection when I hear the splash. Not a big splash—not a person falling in. A small splash. The sound of something light hitting the water.
Then Aidan screaming.
“Stomper!”
I’m already moving before my brain catches up. I come around the side of the yacht and Aidan is on his knees at the edge of the dock, reaching over, his whole body stretched toward the water. The gray elephant is floating about four feet out, already starting to take on water, one ear submerged, themissing eye facing the sky like a tiny, resigned surrender.
“He fell! Mom, hefell!He was on the railing and the wake from the boat knocked him off and he’sdrowning!”
Stuffed elephants can’t drown. I know this. But looking at Aidan’s face—the panic, the absolute terror of losing the one thing that got him through the worst nights of his life—it doesn’t matter what’s rational.
I jump.
The water hits me like a slap. July warm but still a shock after standing in the sun. My boots fill immediately—I’m wearing work boots, because of course I am, because I was checking electrical connections, not planning a swim. My T-shirt balloons around me, white cotton going transparent, clinging to everything as I surface.
Stomper is three feet away, sinking. I grab the elephant by his good ear and hold him above the water. He weighs almost nothing dry. Wet, he weighs about two pounds and feels like a dishrag.
“I got him! Mr. Paul got him!”
I swim back to the dock with one arm, the other hand holding Stomper above the waterline like he’s a rescued sailor. My boots are dragging me down. Myshirt is plastered to my chest. The dock ladder is five feet to my left and I grab it with the hand that isn’t holding a stuffed elephant and haul myself up one-handed because there’s no dignified way to climb a ladder in wet work boots while rescuing a toy.
I make it onto the dock. Barely. My left boot catches the top rung and I stumble forward, catching myself on the dock box, water pouring off me in sheets. I look like I’ve been through a car wash. My shirt is completely see-through. My jeans weigh approximately forty pounds.
I hold out Stomper.
Aidan takes Stomper with both hands, presses him against his chest, and bursts into tears. Not the sad kind. The relief kind—when you thought you lost the thing that matters most and then you didn’t.
“Thank you,” he says into Stomper’s wet head. “Thank you thank you thank you.”
“He’s going to need to dry out,” I say, because I don’t know what else to say and emotions make me talk about practical things.
“I’ll put him on the deck to dry. He likes warm spots. Stomper, you’re safe now, buddy.”
Aidan runs off with the soaking stuffed animal held to his chest, leaving a trail of water drops on the dock boards. He’s talking to Stomper the whole way,reassuring him, telling him about the rescue, narrating it like a movie. “And then Mr. Pauljumped in.He didn’t even take off his shoes. He justjumped.”
I’m standing on the dock, dripping, in see-through white cotton and waterlogged boots, when Emma comes around the corner.
She stops.
I’m mid-motion—pulling the wet shirt away from my skin because it’s clinging to every part of me in a way that’s uncomfortable. The fabric is stuck to my chest, my shoulders, my arms. Water is running down my neck. My hair is in my eyes.
“What happened?” she asks, but her voice sounds different. Higher. Thinner.
“Stomper went overboard.”
“You jumped in for Stomper?”
“He was sinking.”
