“If Mom could take a night out yesterday, you can have one today,” Tom said.
Out of the corner of my eye, I caught John shaking his head at Tom. Don’t go there. Wrong logic. Try again.
“So you’re saying I’m like Mom.”
“He wasn’t saying that,” John said.
They were unlikely to win this argument now. I’d actually been considering my husband’s offer until my brother jumped in and ruined things, as he often did.
“No, I wasn’t,” Tom continued. “I was saying you should become more like Mom.”
John groaned. I kept my mouth closed and waited for them to pivot, try again. John was nothing if not persistent and determined in his own calm way.
“I mean, if a widow can allow herself pleasure, why not you? Why not try to salvage this vacation in a way that at least Dad would approve of?”
“Maybe we should go hoverboarding.”
“Also, free babysitting,” John said.
“Oh, they’re old enough to take care of themselves,” Tom said.
“They are not,” I snapped.
I sighed. It had been a long time since John and I had gone out alone. Too much business travel for him. Too many early mornings on the river for me. Too much of Sydney’s math homework to help with for us both. Some days, I thought I was still tired from giving birth twelve years ago, that I’d never caught up.
“How about we take out the boat?” John said. “Maybe go over to Wauwinet. I always think of your dad when we’re on the boat.”
“I think Pop would like that,” Tom said.
I sniffed back the tears that were threatening at the corner of each eye. I knew they both meant well, but they had no idea what they were doing. None of their logic would make me feel better. But sitting around filled with regret and sadness and grief while we waited to change our ferry reservations wasn’t doing me any good either. Listening to my mother scrub pans and wipe down cabinets in a house we didn’t own and weren’t paying for was making me jump out of my skin. I felt like I was just taunting Billy Clayton by waiting around. How long before he found me, grilled me again? How long before the search warrant arrived?
Wind in my hair. Salt spray across my cheeks. He couldn’t find me on the water.
“Okay,” I said. “You win.”
We left Sydney and Courtney at the kitchen table, making cookies while my mother ordered them a pizza. Cookies and pizza. The only things girls and adolescents had in common.
Tom’s only plan was to watch a baseball game and eat any cookies they deigned to give him. John and I walked the long way, up Beach Street to Easton, down to Brant Point, then over on the beach to our mooring, just so we could avoid going past the house. We waded out. John started up the boat, and I wiped down the wooden surfaces. It was impossible to keep a beautiful boat clean, but that didn’t stop us from trying, from always dipping the sand off our feet, rinsing off, trying not to spill anything sticky.
As we headed slowly through the harbor, around the Point, I remembered how much my brother and father hated the imposed speed limits. How I thought of it as warming up, a respite, and they thought of it as holding themselves back.
John drove the boat even more carefully than I would, but I didn’t mind. It was nice to appreciate the brisk air after a day full of hot tears. When we pulled up at the dock, the Wauwinet Lady, the boat the hotel used to ferry customers, was well behind us, and we tied up, grateful that we would get a drink and an Adirondack chair on the lawn before the crowd arrived to watch the sunset. We ordered scallops and mushroom pâté and two gin and tonics and balanced the small plates on the flat arms of the chairs looking out to sea. And then John started talking as the colors slowly seeped across the sky. Not about my family, not about my dad, but about vacations and places he’d like to go, things he’d like Sydney to see. Not overtly saying Let’s make new memories; let’s start over fresh, but it could be interpreted that way. And that was okay. I let him dream out loud, I added a few ideas of my own—Chautauqua, Penobscot, Vancouver—and then we settled in for the first part of the pink-and-orange light show. When the sun breached the horizon of the water, we headed back to the boat, to let the last glimmers of light guide us home.
This was my favorite part, not leaving but coming home. When navy blue started to take over the pastel sky, preparing for stars, moon. The in-between, not still day and not yet night.
As we rounded the jut that held Brant Point Lighthouse, a fire flickered on the beach. It illuminated a man, a guitar, a small group sitting and standing around him. A flash of beer cans, a silver zipper on a hoodie, glinted like fireflies.
“Remember those days?” John asked, and I smiled. I did and I didn’t. So much beauty had been painted over with pain. Yes and no. As we passed them, a girl stood by the edge of the fire. The orange light shimmered across her, illuminating her hips as she danced. A strip of sequins at the bottom of a too-short shirt.
“John,” I said, grabbing his arm. “That’s Sydney!”
“What?”
“At the bonfire.”
“What? That’s crazy. How can you—”
“Her shirt! I saw her shirt!”
“Honey, there are probably a million kids with the same sh—”
“John, stop!”
He idled the engine. I rolled up my white jeans, kicked off my sandals, and dove into water that would have been too shallow if we’d been a foot closer. I knew those waters—the depth, the outcroppings—like I knew the floorplan of my own home. Like I knew the posture and outline of my own daughter.
When I walked onto the beach, dripping, furious, I’m sure I looked like a creature, a monster from the sea. The look on my daughter’s face certainly would lead you to believe that.
She turned and ran when she saw me, grabbing Courtney by the wrist, sand spitting at her heels.
The music stopped, and all I heard was the sound of my clothes dripping onto the shallows of the low tide. I turned, wordlessly, and swam back to the boat.