Chapter 4 #2
Emma laughs—the real one, not the performance—and my father smiles at her, and I recognize that smile.
It's the one he used to give my mother. Not romantic.
Paternal. Harold Spencer collects people.
He claimed Emma months ago, her kids the first week, and Lottie and the twins are next whether they know it or not.
He caught me watching through the window and waved.
I did not wave back. I returned my attention to the calculations like a man with important work and no feelings whatsoever about any of this.
The wind picks up around ten, the way it always does—the onshore breeze that pushes the heat inland and makes the lines hum against the pilings.
The office window is cracked two inches because the AC quit in April and I haven't fixed it yet, which means every sound on the dock drifts in—water lapping under the boards, a halyard clanking against a mast in the row.
The door opens. No knock.
“Beautiful morning,” Dad says, settling into the other chair like he still owns the place. Which he did for forty years before signing it over to me along with the debt and the water stain shaped like Florida.
“Morning.”
“I'm taking the kids out on the boat this afternoon. Dolphins.”
“All of them?”
“Every last one. The moms too, if they want. My boat's held more than that.” He pauses. “Your uncle fell overboard at your mother's birthday party in ninety-eight, but that was wine, not capacity.”
“Dad, the dock reinforcement—”
“Is not going anywhere. The posts will still need doubling tomorrow.”
“Is Justin helping?”
“He offered.”
“How's his back?”
“He says it's fine.”
“It's not fine. Hasn't been for two years, and he won't see a specialist because he's a Spencer and Spencers would rather quietly fall apart than admit they need help. I take full blame for establishing that tradition.”
My shoulders are tight. I roll them without thinking, and Dad's eyes flick to the movement—cataloging it, I'm sure. I don't give him an opening.
“So,” he says. “New arrivals.”
“Lottie. Emma's friend from Chattanooga. Moved here with her boys.”
“I met them. Olson's got a good handshake.”
“You've known him for ten minutes.”
“A handshake tells you everything in the first two seconds. The rest is just confirmation.”
I wait for it. The pivot. The moment where a simple observation becomes a strategic maneuver. My father doesn't make small talk. He makes chess moves.
“Justin should come on the dolphin tour,” Dad says.
“He has his own boat. He can see dolphins whenever he wants.”
“I didn't say he needed to see dolphins. I said he should come.”
“Why?”
“Because your brother spends every day on a shrimp boat with a teenage deckhand and then goes home to an empty house and eats whatever he can microwave standing up. That's not a life. That's a hostage situation he volunteered for.”
“He likes his routine.”
“He's hiding in his routine.” He pauses.
“I did the same after your mother died—did you know that?
Six months where the only living thing I talked to was a pelican on slip three.
Your mother would've been appalled. She married a man with personality. I owed it to her to find it again.” He levels a look at me that I feel in my spine. “Sound familiar?”
I don't take the bait. My hands are flat on the desk. I press them harder.
“Two new boys on this dock,” Dad says, mercifully shifting. “That's going to change the landscape around here.”
“It was already louder than I wanted.”
“Loud is good. A marina without kids on it is just a parking lot for boats. I didn't build a parking lot.”
“You built a working marina.”
“I built a community marina. The working part paid the bills. The community part was the point.” He looks out the window toward the dock, where the boys are doing a thing with rope that I'm going to have to investigate later. “Those boys need a place to run. This is a good place.”
“Those boys need supervision.”
“They need room to be kids. Let them fall in. Let them get sunburned. That's what summer is for.” He turns back to me. “I gave you the run of this dock from the time you could walk. You turned out fine.”
“Debatable.”
“You turned out employed, which is the same in this family.”
I almost smile. Almost. I catch it in time and redirect it into a frown, but Dad sees it—of course he does, the man has radar for any crack in my defenses—and files it away without comment.
“Speaking of the reinforcement schedule,” he says.
“No.”
“I haven't said anything yet.”
“You were about to say her name.”
“I was going to ask about the timeline, actually, but since you went there first—”
“I did not—”
“You did. You assumed I was headed that direction, which means she's already on your mind, which means I can sit here and let you do all the work for me.” He leans back, looking exactly like a cat that just knocked a glass off the counter on purpose.
I pinch the bridge of my nose. The water stain on the ceiling stares down at me. Florida has never looked more judgmental.
“Your mother yelled at me about the yard for thirty years,” Dad says. “I married her on the third argument. You're behind schedule, son.”
“That's not—”
“She's pretty. She's kind. She has nice kids. If you can't figure out the next step from there, I failed somewhere.”
“You didn't fail.”
“Then stop making me wonder.”
He pushes himself up from the chair and moves toward the door. Outside, an egret lifts off the railing, circles once, and settles back down like the effort wasn't worth it. The sun has climbed high enough that the dock boards are radiating heat, the baked-wood smell that means afternoon is coming.
Dad stops in the doorway. Turns back. The humor drains from his face, and what's left underneath is bare.
“Holly would have loved this,” he says. Not gently—just factually. The way you'd report the weather. “The kids on the dock. The noise. All of it.” He pauses. “She wouldn't want you like this, Paul. You know that.”
My throat closes. I don't say anything. I can't.
“Dock at two,” he says. “Dolphin tour. You're welcome to come. Or you can sit in here and stare at that ceiling. Your choice.”
He leaves.
The office settles back into its own sounds—the tick of the wall clock that's been five minutes fast since 2019.
The low groan of the dock shifting as the tide pulls out.
A boat passes in the channel and the wake rocks my chair a minute later, rolling the pens across my desk.
Through the window, my father is on the dock teaching the twins knots—that particular patient authority I grew up on.
The voice that made me believe, at eight, that he had all the answers, and that if I listened closely enough, I would too.
Holly would have loved this. He's right.
She'd have been out there with him, teaching the twins, making sure Olson didn't end up in the water again.
She never missed one of Dad's dolphin tours—even the ones where nobody spotted a single fin and Dad had to invent an elaborate excuse about seasonal migration patterns.
She was better at all of this than I am. The people part. She just knew how to show up—with coffee, with your name memorized before you'd finished introducing yourself. And that look she used to give me. I know you're scared. I love you anyway. Stop being ridiculous.
I can't hear her voice anymore. Nobody tells you that part of grief—not that you'll miss them, because everybody tells you that. That you'll forget the sound of them. That one morning you'll try to remember exactly how she said your name, and it'll be gone.
I press both palms flat against the desk. Hold them there until the wood pushes back.
Emma is on the houseboat deck. She's put her camera down and she's watching my father with the kids. The way she's standing—arms wrapped around herself, leaning against the railing—tells me she's seeing what I'm seeing. A seventy-two-year-old grandpa who isn't hers, showing up anyway.
I look away before she glances toward the office.
But before I do—before I can stop myself—I notice the way Millie is sitting at the end of the dock, her book closed in her lap, watching Harold with the twins.
Not reading. Just watching. With an expression that's quiet and hungry at the same time.
The expression of a kid who knows exactly what a grandpa is supposed to look like and hasn't had one in a while.
My hand moves before my brain catches up. I pick up my phone and text Dad.
Me: Millie likes A Wrinkle in Time. Bring the sequels tomorrow.
Three dots. Then:
Dad: Already in the truck.
Of course they are. The man is always three steps ahead.
I put the phone down. Pick up my pen.
At the bottom of the reinforcement plan, underneath the load calculations, I write:
Dolphin tour. 2 p.m.
It's not a decision. It's a note.
That's all.