Chapter 16 #2
“Delilah.” I hold up a hand. “I need to walk the dock with you. There are logistics.”
“Logistics.” She says it the way a child says vegetables. “Levi, he wants to talk logistics.”
“Let him talk logistics. That’s what we’re paying him for.”
“You’re paying me for dock space,” I correct. “The logistics are free. And mandatory. Because if a hundred and fifty people are on that yacht at the same time, I need to know about weight distribution, power draw, water supply, waste pump-out, and emergency egress.”
“You are the least romantic man I’ve ever met,” Delilah says. “You’re talking about waste pump-out at your own wedding venue.”
“It’s not a wedding venue. It’s a marina.”
“It’s a wedding venue now. Accept it.”
Levi nods. “Whatever you need.”
We walk the dock. I show them the reinforced slip. The new fender system. The upgraded electrical panel that can handle the yacht’s shore power requirements. I explain the water hookup, the pump-out schedule, the security perimeter I’ve planned along the dock to keep the media out.
“We’ll need to restrict access to this section of the dock starting three days before the wedding,” I say. “No press, no public, no kayakers pretending to be lost. I’ve already talked to the harbor patrol about water-side security.”
“You’ve thought of everything,” Delilah says.
“I’ve thought of the things that can go wrong. There are more of those than you’d expect.”
Delilah is already aboard the yacht, rearranging invisible furniture. “The cake table goes here. No—here. Actually, maybe here. Levi, what do you think about a dessert wall?”
“I think you should have whatever you want.”
“That is the correct answer.” She pulls out her phone. “I need to call Amber about the crab cake situation. And the shrimp tower. And whether we can do a raw bar on a yacht without someone getting food poisoning.”
“Nobody is getting food poisoning at my marina.”
“See, you just called it ‘my marina’ again. If it’s your marina, then this is your wedding. You’re invested now.”
I am not invested. I am responsible for dock infrastructure and safety compliance. Those are different things.
“What about the ceremony layout?” She flips open her binder.
There’s a diagram of the yacht’s bow deck covered in her handwriting and little sketches of flower arrangements.
“Aubrey wants chairs in a semicircle facing the water, with an aisle down the center. She says the bow gives us the best backdrop—open ocean, sunset timing at seven-thirty.”
“The bow is stable enough for that if the water’s calm. If it’s choppy, people in those chairs are going to feel it.”
“It won’t be choppy,” Delilah says with confidence like she has decided the weather will cooperate with her wedding and expects the ocean to comply.
“I’ll have the stabilizers checked,” Levi says, because he’s the one who understands that the ocean does not take requests.
I am good at this. This is what I do—identify problems, build solutions, make things work.
There’s no emotion in a fender system. There’s no grief in a piling calculation.
I can talk about weight distribution and emergency egress without anyone noticing that standing on this dock, planning a wedding, makes my chest tight in a way that has nothing to do with engineering.
A wedding. On my dock. The dock where Holly used to sit in the evenings with her feet in the water, reading papers from her first graders, laughing at the ones who drew pictures of her with enormous hair because she did have enormous hair and they weren’t wrong.
I push that thought down. File it under things I’ll deal with later. Which is where I file most things.
Delilah is taking pictures of everything. The yacht from the dock. The dock from the yacht. The marina from every angle, probably for her binder, which has tabs and color-coding and a section labeled “Flower Emergencies” that I choose not to ask about.
Levi walks beside me, quiet, observing. He’s the kind of man who listens more than he talks, which I respect, because I am also that kind of man and we recognize each other.
“The dock can handle it?” he asks.
“I built it to handle it.”
“Good.” He pauses. “Paul, I want you to know—this isn’t just a business arrangement for us. You’re in the wedding party. You’re family.”
I don’t know what to do with that. I’ve been treating this as an engineering project with a large fee attached, and now Levi is calling me family in the same tone he’d use to tell me he likes my boat.
“I appreciate that,” I say, which is the most I can offer without my throat doing something embarrassing.
“Delilah wants to go over the ceremony layout with Emma and Aubrey this week. Can we use the dock office?”
“It seats four people and smells like burned coffee.”
“Perfect.”
I’m in the dock office after they leave, updating the marina schedule to account for restricted dock access during the wedding week, when I hear Emma through the open window.
She’s on her deck. The houseboat is ten feet away. I can hear almost everything that happens on that deck, which is a fact I try not to think about because it implies a level of proximity that I haven’t fully processed.
“Okay, guys. Come sit down. I have some news.”
Three sets of footsteps. The creak of the bench. Aidan’s voice: “Is it good news or bad news? Because if it’s bad news, I want a snack first. Bad news is easier with snacks.”
“It’s good news.”
“Can I still have a snack?”
“After.”
Millie’s quiet voice. “Is this about the wedding?”
“Sort of. It’s about the week of the wedding. You know how I’m going to be really busy photographing everything?”
“You said it was the biggest job of your life,” Jenna says. “You said it four times.”
“Thank you for counting.” Emma pauses. “So I need someone to be with you guys during the rehearsal and the wedding day because I’ll be shooting from morning until late. And your dad called.”
Silence. The particular kind of silence that happens when someone mentions Matt.
“Dad’s coming?” Aidan’s voice is different. Higher. The sound of a kid who just received unexpected good news and doesn’t trust it yet.
“He’s coming the week before the wedding. He’s going to take you guys for the whole week—beach, fishing, whatever you want to do. He’ll have you during the rehearsal dinner and the wedding day so I can focus on work.”
“For real?” Aidan again. “He’s actually coming?”
“He said he’s coming.”
“But is he actually coming? Because he said he was coming for my birthday and then he didn’t come.”
The dock goes quiet. I stop typing. Through the window, I can see Emma’s back on the bench, her arm going around Aidan, pulling him close.
“He said he’s coming, buddy. He bought the tickets.”
“He bought tickets for my birthday too.”
Emma doesn’t say anything for a second. When she speaks, her voice is careful. “I know. And I know that was hard. But he promised, and I’m going to hold him to it. Okay?”
“Okay.” But Aidan doesn’t sound convinced. Aidan sounds like a kid who has learned, earlier than any kid should, that some people don’t keep their promises.
Jenna’s voice, flat and sixteen and over it: “If he doesn’t show up, I can watch Aidan and Millie. I’ve done it before.”
“You’re not responsible for —”
“I know. But I can. I’m just saying.”
“Me too,” Millie says quietly. “I can help.”
“Nobody needs to plan for him not showing up. He’s coming.”
The confidence in Emma’s voice sounds like something she’s constructed—assembled from parts, bolted together, not quite solid.
She’s selling it to the kids because they need to buy it, and she’s selling it to herself because the alternative is admitting that even now, even after the divorce, Matt still has the power to let them down.
I close the laptop. Sit there in the dock office with the water stain on the ceiling and Holly’s sticky note in the logbook and the sound of Emma putting her family back together ten feet away.
Aidan again: “Mom? If Dad comes, can he meet Mr. Paul?”
Another silence. Longer this time.
“We’ll see, buddy.”
“I think they’d like each other. Mr. Paul is grumpy and Dad is... Dad. It’d be funny.”
“It would be something,” Emma says. “Now go get your snack.”
The bench creaks. Footsteps scatter. The screen door bounces twice.
I sit in the office for a long time after that.
Matt is coming. The father. The real one—the man who has legal rights and shared history and DNA in common with those three kids. The man who had Emma for years and chose model trains. The man who bought birthday tickets and didn’t show up.
I’m not jealous. Jealousy would require me to believe I have a claim on something, and I don’t. I’m the neighbor who makes pancakes and carries sleeping children and rescues crabs from toilets. I’m not their father. I’m not Emma’s anything—not officially, not in a way that has a name.
But I’ve heard Aidan talk about his dad before. The hope in his voice. The careful way he mentions him, like he’s handling something he knows might break. And I’ve seen Emma’s face when Matt comes up—the way she braces, just slightly, like she’s preparing for impact.
I think about what Emma told me in the galley. The garage with the climate control. The custom-painted caboose. Being second place to a hobby. And I think about Aidan’s voice just now—he said he was coming for my birthday and then he didn’t come—and something hot and sharp settles behind my ribs.
I know what it’s like to grow up with a father who shows up.
Dad was there for every game, every bad day, every dock repair I messed up as a teenager.
He was there when Holly died. He was there the morning after, making coffee in my kitchen without being asked, not saying anything, just being present.
That’s what fathers do. They show up. They stay.
Matt bought tickets and didn’t come.
I’ve rebuilt dock pilings that were more reliable than that.
Part of me—the part that’s been making pancakes and teaching knot-tying and letting an eight-year-old fall asleep against my arm at fireworks—that part wants to walk over to Emma’s houseboat and say something.
I don’t know what. Something like I’m here or I’m not going anywhere or your kids deserve better than a man who treats showing up like it’s optional.
But those aren’t my words to say. Those kids have a father. He’s coming next week. And if he doesn’t —
I stop that thought.
I pick up my pen and go back to the marina schedule.
I write in the restricted dates for the wedding week, double-check the power calculations for the yacht.
verify the pump-out schedule, review the security perimeter plan, and do the work.
Handle the things I can control. Let the rest be someone else’s problem.
Through the window, Emma’s houseboat is quiet.
The fairy lights on her deck are off. The sun is going down behind the marina, turning the water orange and gold, and the yacht in its reinforced slip is catching the last light like a promise.
Next to it, Emma’s houseboat looks like a toy.
Next to that, my fishing vessel looks like a lunch box.
We are three very different boats tied to the same dock, and I’m not sure what that means but I think about it more than I should.
I think about Holly. Not in the way I usually think about Holly—the ache, the absence, the grocery list on the sticky note. I think about what she’d say if she were here. If she could see me sitting in this office, listening through a window, falling for a woman I’m too careful to reach for.
She’d give me the look. The one that made me pick up my boots for eleven years.
Paul Spencer, she’d say. If you don’t go over there, I swear —
Yeah. I hear you.
I close the logbook. Turn off the office light. Walk out onto the dock.
The marina is settling into evening the way it always does—the water going dark, the boats creaking in their slips, the pelicans calling it a day.
The yacht gleams white against the fading sky.
A light comes on in Emma’s galley. I can see her silhouette moving through the kitchen, probably starting dinner, probably doing it alone the way she does everything alone.
Not because she wants to. Because she learned to.
I stand there on the dock for longer than I should, hands in my pockets, watching that galley light. Then I walk to my boat, go inside, and close the door.
Not tonight.
But soon.