Chapter 21 #2
He’s trying. I can see him trying. And the trying is almost harder to watch than the not-trying, because it means he knows. He knows he failed. He knows what he lost. And he’s here, in pressed shorts and a tourist T-shirt, attempting to prove he can be different.
Aidan gives him the official tour. The houseboat bow to stern—his room, the galley, the deck where Stomper dries, the fairy lights I strung the first week. Matt nods at everything. He asks questions, touches the walls of Aidan’s room and says, “You did this yourself?”
“Our neighbor helped with the shelf brackets. Mr. Paul.”
A quick, controlled expression skitters across Matt’s face. The marina guy?”
“He’s our neighbor. He runs the marina. He makes us pancakes on Saturdays, and he jumped into the ocean to save Stomper when he fell off the dock.”
“Sounds like a good guy.”
“He’s the best.” Aidan says this with the absolute certainty of an eight-year-old who has decided something and sees no reason to qualify it.
Matt’s smile tightens at the corners. Just barely. Just enough for me to see from the doorway where I’m pretending to wipe the counter.
“So,” Matt says. “Your mom told me you have a list?”
I didn’t tell him about it. Aidan must have mentioned it at lunch yesterday.
Aidan pulls the folded paper from his pocket. “Fourteen things. I narrowed it down to a top five, but if we have enough time, we can do all of them.”
Matt takes the paper. Reads it. His expression starts soft—amused, maybe touched. His jaw tightens for half a second before he smooths it out. I don’t know which item caused it, but I can guess.
“This is great, buddy. Let’s see how many we can knock out today.”
They start with the boardwalk. Bikes rented from the shop near the brewery. Aidan, Millie, and Matt pedaling down the boardwalk in a line, Millie’s daisy dress replaced with shorts and her helmet slightly crooked. Jenna stays behind. Says she has homework. It’s summer.
I let her stay.
Paul is on his boat when I come out to the dock. He’s sitting on the deck with a mug, staring at the harbor. He sees me and nods.
“They went biking,” I say.
“I saw.”
The distance between our boats is ten feet. It feels like a canyon.
“You’ve been quiet,” I say.
“Didn’t want to crowd the situation.”
“You’re not crowding anything, Paul.”
He looks at me. Really looks, the way he did in the office when I put my hand on his chest. Steady. Full of something he hasn’t said out loud.
“He seems like he’s trying,” Paul says.
“He is.”
“That’s good. For the kids.”
“For them,” I repeat.
Neither of us says what we’re actually thinking. The dock stretches between us. A gull lands on the railing Paul repaired yesterday. The silence isn’t the good kind—not the kind that holds something warm. This silence has edges.
“I’ll be here,” Paul says. “Whatever you need.”
“I know.”
He goes back to his coffee. I go back to my houseboat. The canyon stays exactly as wide as it was before.
The cracks start at dinner.
The seafood restaurant on the boardwalk is loud and bright, and Matt orders a bottle of wine without asking if I want any, which is such a small thing, such a meaningless thing, except that it’s the kind of thing he always did—decided for both of us, assumed his preference was the default.
I order water. He doesn’t notice.
Aidan is mid-monologue about hermit crab habitats when Matt’s phone buzzes. He glances at it, and puts it face-down on the table. Aidan keeps talking. Matt’s eyes drift to the phone, back to Aidan, then back to the phone. He picks it up.
“Sorry, buddy. One sec. Work thing.”
He types for thirty seconds and puts it back down. Aidan picks up where he left off, but the rhythm is different now. He’s talking faster, like he’s trying to get the story out before the next interruption.
Millie sees it, like always. She puts her fork down quietly and stares at her plate.
Jenna sees it too. She pulls out her own phone in solidarity or protest—I can’t tell which.
“Jen, phone away at dinner,” I say.
“Dad has his out.”
Matt looks up. “That was work.”
“And this is homework.”
“It’s summer,” Matt says.
“Then I guess neither of us needs our phones at dinner.”
Silence. The waitress appears with appetizers. The moment passes. But it doesn’t disappear. It sits under the table between us, invisible and heavy.
Matt’s phone buzzes three more times during the main course. He doesn’t pick it up, but his eyes track to it each time, and by the third buzz, Aidan has gone quiet. Not upset-quiet. The other kind. The resigned kind. The kind that says I’ve seen this before and I know what comes next.
“Dad,” Millie says. “Aidan was telling you about the hermit crabs.”
“Right. Sorry. Go ahead, bud.”
“It’s fine.” Aidan pushes a shrimp around his plate. “I forgot where I was.”
He didn’t forget. He gave up. Everyone at this table knows it except Matt, who picks up his fork and says, “This fish is incredible, isn’t it?” like the conversation simply moved on rather than collapsed.
Dessert happens. Aidan recovers slightly because dessert has healing properties when you’re eight. Millie eats her key lime pie in small, precise bites, saying nothing. Jenna has her arms crossed, phone put away, watching her father with the same evaluating stare she gave him at the dock.
Matt pays. Tips well. Holds the door open for all of us.
In the parking lot, he crouches down and hugs Aidan. “Best day, buddy. We’ll do more tomorrow, okay? We still have stuff on the list.”
“Okay, Dad.”
“Love you, bud.”
“You too, Dad.”
He hugs Millie. Millie hugs back, but her arms are looser now than they were yesterday. Already adjusting. Already recalibrating how tightly to hold on.
Jenna accepts a side-hug. One arm. Brief.
Matt turns to me. “I was thinking—tomorrow I could take them to that aquarium up the coast. Make a whole day of it.”
“That sounds nice.”
“And maybe...” He hesitates. Runs his hand through his hair. “Maybe you and I could grab coffee sometime? Talk about the schedule, co-parenting stuff?”
“What specifically?”
“I want to be more involved, Em. I know I’ve dropped the ball. I want to do better.”
He’s standing in a parking lot under a streetlight, saying all the right words, and I want so badly to believe him. The girl I was at twenty-three—the one who said yes to this man because he seemed steady—she’s still in there somewhere, still hoping he’ll become the person she married him to be.
“We can talk,” I say.
He smiles, gets in the rental car, and drives away.
Aidan falls asleep on the short drive back to the marina. I carry him to bed. Tuck him in. Stomper goes under his arm. The list is still in his pocket, folded and refolded so many times the creases are going soft.
Millie is already in her pajamas when I check on her. Book open. Lamp on. She looks up.
“He tried, Mom.”
“He did.”
“It’s just...” She picks at the edge of her blanket. “Trying and doing aren’t the same, are they?”
I sit on the edge of her bed. Smooth her hair back. My ten-year-old philosopher.
“No, baby. They’re not.”
She nods and goes back to her book. I kiss her forehead and close the door.
Jenna’s light is off. I knock softly.
“I’m fine, Mom.”
“Okay. Love you.”
“Back at you.”
I close the door. Stand in the narrow hallway of my houseboat. Three children in their rooms. One sleeping with a folded list in his pocket. One reading with recalibrated arms. One behind a closed door, counting phone checks at dinner because somebody has to keep the honest record.
I walk out to the deck. The night air is warm. The marina is quiet. Paul’s boat rocks gently beside mine.
His light is on.
I sit on the top step. Hug my knees. Breathe.
Paul’s screen door opens. He comes out on his deck without a word. Sits in his chair. Doesn’t look at me. Doesn’t need to.
We sit in the dark, ten feet apart, on our separate boats. The water between us catches the moonlight. Somewhere down the dock, a fish jumps.
“Eleven,” I say.
“What?”
“Jenna counted. He checked his phone eleven times during lunch yesterday. Tonight was four more during dinner. She’s keeping a tally.”
Paul is quiet for a long time.
“I’m sorry, Emma.”
“Don’t be. He showed up. He’s making an effort. That’s more than he’s done in two years.”
“You deserve more than effort.”
The words hang in the dark between our boats. The water laps. The fairy lights hum.
“I know,” I say. “I’m starting to figure out what more looks like.”
I’m looking at it right now. Sitting on a boat in the dark, no phone in his hand, no place he’d rather be.
“Goodnight, Paul.”
“Night, Emma.”
I go inside, lock the screen door, and lean against it with my eyes closed.
Tomorrow Matt comes back. Tomorrow there will be more trying, more phone buzzes, more of Aidan’s hope meeting reality in real time.
Tomorrow I’ll stand on this dock between the man I married and the man who brings my daughter cookies for her dock readings, and I’ll have to figure out what kind of life I’m building.
But tonight, for five minutes on the deck, the canyon between Paul’s boat and mine didn’t feel so wide.
That’s enough for now.