Chapter 18
EIGHTEEN
PAUL
Dad is on the dock at seven-fifteen with a bag of tomatoes and a level of confidence that concerns me.
He’s wearing a clean shirt. A clean, ironed shirt.
My father has not ironed a shirt since Mom’s funeral, and even then I’m pretty sure Justin did it for him.
But here he is, standing at the end of the dock like a man with a mission, holding tomatoes from his garden in a brown paper bag and wearing a shirt that has actual creases in the sleeves.
“Morning,” he says.
“Whose funeral?”
“What?”
“The shirt. You ironed it.”
“A man can take pride in his appearance.”
“You haven’t taken pride in your appearance since 2014. What’s happening?”
He adjusts the bag of tomatoes the way someone adjusts a bouquet of roses. “Vivian mentioned she’s coming by to see the yacht this morning. I thought I’d bring her some things from the garden.”
“So the tomatoes are for Vivian.”
“They’re good tomatoes.”
“Dad. It’s seven-fifteen in the morning. You’re wearing a pressed shirt and carrying produce like a courting ritual.”
“I’m being neighborly.”
“You’re being something.”
He gives me the look—the one that says I am your father and you will stop talking now. I stop talking. Not because of the look. Because I want to see how this plays out.
Grandma Hensley arrives at eight in a golf cart she definitely doesn’t have a license for. She’s wearing a floral blouse and her good sun hat—the one that costs sixty dollars and deserves the exposure, according to her—and she’s brought a Tupperware container of something that smells like cinnamon.
“Harold.” She says his name like she’s confirming an appointment.
“Vivian.” He holds out the bag. “Tomatoes. Cherokee Purples. Best ones of the season.”
She looks in the bag. Looks at him. Looks at the tomatoes again, like she’s evaluating both the produce and the man presenting it.
“These are acceptable,” she says.
Dad beams. Dad never beams. My father’s emotional range typically spans from content to mildly amused, with occasional detours into stubborn. But right now, standing on the dock with a bag of accepted tomatoes, the man is beaming.
“I brought you banana bread,” Grandma Hensley says, handing over the Tupperware with the same energy a diplomat uses to exchange treaty documents. “Don’t read into it. The recipe yields two loaves and I only need one.”
“You’ve been making that recipe for forty years and you’ve never once had a spare loaf.”
“Well, today I did.”
“Because I was coming?”
“Because flour was on sale. You are not the center of my baking decisions, Harold Spencer.”
He opens the Tupperware. Takes a piece. Bites into it. Chews slowly, deliberately, like a man savoring something that has nothing to do with banana bread.
“Best you’ve ever made,” he says.
“It’s the same recipe I’ve been making for forty years.”
“Must be the company.”
Grandma Hensley adjusts her sun hat. There is the faintest pink on her cheeks, which I have never seen in my life and didn’t think was possible.
“Well,” she says. “Show me this yacht.”
They walk toward the yacht together. Not touching. Not holding hands. Just walking, side by side, at the pace of two people who’ve been circling each other for longer than I’ve been alive and are in absolutely no rush.
I watch them go. Then I go back to the dock office and start my day, which should involve invoicing and scheduling but will probably involve something else entirely because nothing on this dock goes according to plan anymore.
Aidan is on the dock at nine with a stuffed elephant.
I’ve seen the elephant before. Small, gray, missing its left eye.
One ear has been resewn with thread that doesn’t match—white thread on gray fabric, careful stitches, probably Emma’s work.
The trunk is limp from years of being held.
The whole thing looks like it’s been through a war, which, given what I know about this family, it basically has.
“That’s Stomper,” Aidan tells me, unprompted, because Aidan tells me everything unprompted. “He’s an elephant.”
“I can see that.”
“He’s had a hard life.”
“He looks like it.”
“He lost his eye in the Great Washing Machine Incident of 2023. Mom tried to fix him but he was in the hospital for two days.” He means Emma’s sewing kit. “He’s been through a lot. But he’s tough.”
“Good quality in an elephant.”
Aidan sits on the dock box near my boat, Stomper in his lap, kicking his feet against the wood. “Mom says Stomper is my emotional support animal. Like a therapy dog but smaller and he doesn’t need walks.”
I don’t say anything. I just listen, because I’ve learned that with Aidan, listening is the job.
“I’ve had him since I was three. Dad gave him to me.” He pauses. “Before Dad was... before things got weird. Stomper was from the good part.”
The good part. Before the trains. Before the garage. Before the divorce and the moving truck and the houseboat and a life that looks nothing like the one this kid was promised.
“He helps me sleep,” Aidan says, quieter now. “When it was really bad—when Mom and Dad were fighting and I could hear it through the wall—I’d put Stomper over my ear and squeeze and it made the sound go away. Not really. But kind of.”
My chest does something that I refuse to name.
“Stomper’s a good elephant,” I say.
“The best elephant.” He hugs Stomper against his chest and then hops off the dock box and runs toward the houseboat, because Aidan doesn’t walk anywhere. He runs, he crashes, he arrives. That’s his mode.
I watch him go. The gray elephant bouncing against his side, held by the trunk, dragged through the world by a kid who’s been holding on to it since before everything fell apart.
I go back to the invoice. The numbers don’t make sense. Nothing makes sense. I start over.
Emma comes by the dock office at ten to talk about the wedding rehearsal timeline.
She’s got a binder. Not as elaborate as Delilah’s—no color-coding, no flower emergency section—but organized like she manages three kids and a freelance career and a leaky houseboat.
Tabs labeled in her handwriting. Shot lists.
Lighting notes. A hand-drawn diagram of the yacht deck with camera positions marked in red.
“I need fifteen minutes on the bow before the ceremony for test shots,” she says, flipping to a page. “The light at six-thirty is going to be different from the light at seven-thirty, and I want to know what I’m working with.”
“You can have fifteen minutes.”
“And I need access to the upper deck during the ceremony for overhead angles.”
“Overhead angles.”
“Looking down at the aisle. It’s a thing. Trust me.”
“I trust you.” It comes out before I can stop it. Not about photography. Not about camera angles. Just—I trust you. Sitting in my dock office, going through logistics, I said it like it was the most natural sentence in the world.
She looks up from the binder and holds my eyes for one second longer than logistics requires.
“Good,” she says. Then back to the binder. “I also need to talk about Matt.”
I didn’t expect that. I set my pen down.
“He called last night,” she says. “Confirmed his flight. He’s coming Saturday.”
“That’s good.”
“It is. It’s good.” She closes the binder, opens it again, and closes it. “The kids are excited. Aidan has been making a list of things he wants to do with his dad. It’s fourteen items long. Number seven is ‘teach Dad to identify crabs by species.’ Number twelve is ‘introduce Dad to Mr. Paul.’”
“I saw item twelve on the list.”
“He showed you the list?”
“He shows me everything.”
She smiles, but it’s the careful one. The one that’s held together with effort.
“I’m scared,” she says. “Not of Matt. Matt’s just Matt. He’s not mean, he’s not dangerous, he’s just... absent. And every time I let the kids get their hopes up, I’m the one who has to put them back together when he doesn’t follow through.”
“He confirmed the flight.”
“He confirmed everything last time too. And then he called from his garage—his climate-controlled, custom-shelved garage—and said he couldn’t make it. There’s always a reason. The trains always win.”
She goes quiet. Her eyes drop to the binder, to the shot list, to the diagrams of a wedding she’s been hired to capture, and her hands are gripping the edges like it’s the only solid thing in the room.
“Emma.”
Her chin lifts.
“If he doesn’t come, I’m here.”
I’m not sure what I mean by that. Whether I mean I’ll watch the kids or help with logistics or just be present in the way Matt has never been. I just know that the sentence is true and it came out of my mouth and I’m not taking it back.
“Paul...”
“It’s not a big thing. I’m just saying. Whatever happens. I’ll be right here on this dock.”
She blinks. Her eyes are doing the thing they do when she’s trying not to cry, which I know because I’ve seen it exactly three times and each time it’s made me want to fix something. Tear something down and put it back together stronger.
“Thank you,” she says.
“You’re welcome.”
She picks up the binder, stands up, walks to the door, and turns around.
“You’d be terrible at crab identification.”
“I’ve been working this dock since 1987. I know every species within a mile.”
“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 happens at 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!”