For the next hour, Cap explains the ins and outs of flounder gigging as we sit in a loud restaurant that smells like sweet sauce and mesquite smoke and eat burritos filled with coleslaw, pork, and mashed potatoes. By the time I drop him off, things seem less dire.
“I made life harder than it needed to be,” he says as he gets out of the car. “I have a feeling your mom raised you better.”
“How’s that?”
He shrugs, adjusting the oxygen tank on his shoulder. “You’ll figure out what you’re here for, and this will all work out.”
Before I can tell him how untrue that feels, he closes the door and disappears down the maze of docks, limping as he goes. The sky is ablaze with bubble-gum shades, making every boat a near-black silhouette. The splinters and chipped finishes that exist by day are gone, replaced by a picturesque beauty. A scene changed by the angle of light.
In the quiet of the car, I text Reese a picture of the turtle, then force Bennie to talk to me even though she’sbusy with Gypsy. I’ve only been gone for two days, but I’ve missed her voice.
“What’s Grandpa like?” she asks.
It strikes me how easily she says it:Grandpa.She’s wholly unbothered by the fact we haven’t known him and now we do. I am so resistant to calling him dad, and here she is throwing familial titles around like it’s no big deal. It makes me think if I tell her about Nash, she might not hate me forever.
“He’s kind of weird,” I admit with a laugh. “And funny—maybe really funny. He grunts a lot. And has a fake leg and a mermaid cane.”
“A pirate,” she says, delighted.
I think of Sunny the Psychotic Tour Guide calling him the same thing and shudder.
“Something like that.”
“Are you with anyone else?”
My brows pinch. “Anyone else?”
“Yeah,” she says. “Is anyone else helping you?”
“No.” My pulse picks up, but the lie comes easy as I trace the line of the steering wheel. “Just me and him.”
“Oh,” she sounds almost disappointed. “Have you done anything scary?”
“Scarier than meeting a strange man and looking for lost gold?” I laugh a little. “No.”
“Mom,” she groans. “That’s how it works. You don’t find treasure if you aren’t brave and doing scary things. That’s what they do in the movies. It’s the whole reason the treasure is never found to begin with. Everyone else is too scared or not looking at the place right in front of them.”
Now she sounds like Sylvia.
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
My mom shouts “Supper!” and we end the call withlove yousandmiss yousexchanged. Bennie might not care that I’m gone, but today, at least, she likes me.
Two blocks away from Nash’s house, I park along the street and ignore how bad this plan is and how poorly it could go.
Rolling my suitcase behind me on the streetlight-lit road, I deflate with sad relief at the empty driveway. Nash isn’t home. Of course not. I read the same text he did.
Skirting around his yard to the not-guesthouse, the humiliation of my reality nearly swallows me whole. I can’t afford another night at one of these hotels. I can’t afford anything. Other than sleeping in my car, this is the only idea I have. Maybe this is the brave thing Bennie was talking about. Instead of sword fighting or exploring gold-laden caves, my version of doing something scary is sleeping on my estranged husband’s accidental futon without telling a soul.
The door to the shed opens easily, but before I close it, I look at the dark house. Nash’s house. His beautiful house that he bought on his own when he wasn’t with me because it was good enough to stop roaming for—even for a few years—when I wasn’t. The painful reality of that braids itself into the thick heat of the night air and burns my lungs with my next breath.
On the futon in the dark, staring at the ceiling, I call Jonathan. He tells me about his day, and I tell him about mine—about everything we didn’t find at the plantation and eating barbecue with Cap—but the entire time we talk, I’m far awayfrom it all. Like someone else is speaking while I tread the waters of my thoughts.
“You aren’t bothered Nash is helping with this?” I ask, picking at a thread of the beach towel I’m using as a blanket. “Worried or anything?”
Jonathan chuckles through the line. “Of a former traveling substitute teacher?”
“He’s a little different though,” I say, distracted.Wonderingwhat Nash is doing. “Has a house. A dog. He’s lived here for three years.”
