Chapter 23 #2
“He got a notification from some model train forum. I saw it on his screen when he came back to the blanket. Not work. Trains.”
She says it without anger. Without disappointment. Just flat, factual reporting from a sixteen-year-old who has stopped being surprised.
“Jen.”
“I’m fine, Mom. It’s not new.” She goes to her room. The door closes. The bass starts.
I stand in the galley. My dead coffee maker is on the counter. Harold’s tomato is on the windowsill. My children are in their rooms processing another round of almost-enough.
Matt texts at five.
Matt: Sorry about cutting today short. Work emergency. I’ll make it up to them next visit.
I stare at the text. Next visit. There’s always a next visit. A next time. A next chance. Matt lives in a perpetual state of next while his children grow up in the reality of now.
I don’t respond.
I put Aidan to bed at eight.
Stomper is out of the ziplock bag and back in his spot under Aidan’s arm. The list is on the nightstand, unfolded. I can see the pencil marks from across the room. He crossed off the items they completed: fishing, ice cream, boardwalk bikes. More than half the list is uncrossed.
“Mom?”
“Yeah, bud.”
“Is Mr. Paul mad at us?”
The question hits me right in the sternum.
“He’s not mad at anyone. Why would you think that?”
“He hasn’t come over. He didn’t make pancakes on Saturday. He wasn’t at the dock when we left this morning.”
“He’s got a lot on his plate, baby. The yacht wedding is coming up.”
“He had a lot on his plate before, too. He still used to come over.” He pulls Stomper closer. “Did I do something to make him stop?”
“Aidan. No. Absolutely not.”
“Then why did everything change?”
I sit on the edge of his bed. Smooth his hair back. This kid. This brave, hopeful, list-making kid who invited a stranger to be number twelve and meant it with his whole heart.
“Sometimes grownups need time to figure things out,” I say. “It’s not about you. It’s never about you.”
“That’s what you said about Dad.”
I close my eyes. Breathe.
“Get some sleep, bud. Things will look different in the morning.”
“You always say that too.”
He rolls over. Tucks Stomper under his chin. Closes his eyes.
I pull the door shut and lean against the hallway wall, pressing my palms flat against the wood, breathing through the tightness in my chest.
Then why did everything change?
Because I changed it. Because I asked for space from the one person who never needed to be held at arm’s length, and gave time to the one person who has never used time well.
Millie is asleep when I check on her. Book open on her chest. Lamp still on. I mark her page, close the book, turn off the lamp. Kiss her forehead.
Jenna’s light is off.
I knock softly. “Jen?”
“I’m up.”
I open the door. She’s lying on her bed staring at the ceiling, earbuds out for once.
“How many?” I ask.
She knows what I mean. “He checked it nine times at the beach. Plus the call that ended the day. So ten total.”
I sit on the edge of her bed. She doesn’t pull away.
“Mom.”
“Yeah.”
“Mr. Paul doesn’t even look at his cell.”
“He has one.”
“I’ve never seen him look at it. Not once. Not at Millie’s reading. Not at dinner. Not when he’s on the dock working. He’s just... present.”
I don’t say anything. My sixteen-year-old just handed me the clearest piece of wisdom anyone has offered in the past week, and she did it while staring at her ceiling in the dark.
“Dad’s not going to change,” she says. “You know that, right?”
“Jen —”
“I’m not being mean. I’m being honest. He loves us. I believe that. But loving someone and showing up for them are two separate skills, and Dad only has one of them.”
Millie said something similar three days ago. Trying and doing aren’t the same. My children are handing me the truth in pieces, and I keep trying to assemble it into a picture that doesn’t hurt.
“I don’t need him to be perfect,” Jenna says. “I just need you to stop waiting for him to become somebody he’s not. Because while you’re waiting, somebody who’s already that person is sitting on a boat ten feet away wondering why you sent him away.”
I reach out. She lets me take her hand. We sit in the dark for a while.
“When did you get so wise?” I ask.
“Born this way. You just don’t usually notice.”
She squeezes my hand once, then lets go. Rolls over. Conversation finished.
I close her door. Walk through the narrow hallway. Past the dead coffee maker. Past Harold’s tomato on the windowsill. Past the fairy lights switch by the screen door.
I step out onto the deck. The night is warm. The marina is quiet. Paul’s boat sits in its slip, dark and still. No light in the porthole. No movement on deck.
But I know he’s in there. I know he’s awake, because Paul Spencer hasn’t slept well in eleven years and the last few nights haven’t helped.
I reach for the fairy light switch. Pause.
He counts the seconds. I don’t know how I know this, but I do. He lies in his cabin and counts how long it takes me to turn off the lights, and the knowing of that—the tender, ridiculous, devastating knowing of that—is what breaks me open.
I flip the switch. The lights go dark.
Tomorrow Matt flies home. Tomorrow the space I asked for becomes the space I live in, and I’ll have to decide whether I want to keep living in it or walk ten feet down the dock and knock on a hull.
Ten feet. That’s all it is. Ten feet of weathered wood between the wrong choice and the right one.
I go inside. I don’t sleep either.