Chapter Sixteen
The Salty Crab
Sam
From Memorial Day to Fourth of July to Labor Day, a lake town rarely sleeps. Our population swells by close to a thousand percent, hovering there on weekends and weekdays alike. Nights are for live music and campfires, afternoons are for young parents pushing strollers through Palmer’s Park Amusement Park, and sweltering days demand air conditioning or submerging in lake water.
As a general rule, locals like me avoid the lake itself on major holidays. I used to drive into Omaha or close myself in my home office, treating the day like any other. I’d pick up a ribeye steak and eat it alone on my back deck while music and laughter dotted the lake from shore to shore, watching the fireworks explode into an onyx sky and wishing I had someone to ooh and aah over them with.
Now, it means planning my youngest son’s bachelor party around the busyness of the Fourth of July. Graham despises being the center of attention, but Jordan decided to do something to mark the momentous impending life change, so we’re going to take the boat out. We’ll go to The Salty Crab, a hole-in-the-wall across the lake, and Graham can pretend it’s just a normal evening.
On this first Wednesday of July, after everyone is done with work for the day, we meet at my house. Jordan is leaving Jolene with Sydney and Colton thought Milo would have more fun with Indi and Cheyenne. Graham is ticked that Jordan bought him a t-shirt that says Sorry ladies, this guy is getting married, and refuses to wear it. Nash took Jordan’s “old money” theme seriously by showing up in linen, boat shoes, and a fedora that looks like it belongs in the sixties.
Graham frowns when Nash reveals a stack of matching hats, but he’s a good sport, so he puts it on his head like the rest of us. Unlike our plain ones, though, his says I’m The Groom!
Nash whistles, long and low, when we reach the dock. “Shoot, Sam. Did you let Dolly girl have free pick of the whole marina?”
“Try the entire Falls Lake district of marinas,” Jordan says. He squats at the bow of the boat to unknot the rope. “We walked through three different marinas before circling back to the first for this boat.”
“It needs a name,” Colton declares.
Graham studies the navy and white fiberglass hull of the Sea Ray through critical eyes. “Could somehow mashup Sea Ray and Del Ray?”
“Too formal,” Jordan says.
Nash folds his arms over his chest. “Aren’t boats usually named after women? It should be something romantic.”
“John named their boat The Jacqueline ,” Graham offers, referring to Ember’s parents.
The adoptive ones, that is. Her biological parents treated my son’s wife-to-be like she was dispensable. I might’ve been a workaholic father who was partly absent, but I would never lay a hand on my sons.
“Or,” Jordan says, “something meaningful in general.”
Colton hops into the boat to take the rope from Jordan and keeps one hand braced on the dock post. “How about Rich Girl? You know, like the Daryl Hall song. ”
“Or Gas Guzzler ,” Nash teases.
Graham and Jordan glare at them.
“Okay, okay. Not in the joking mood. Got it.” Colton pauses. For the first time since he pulled in fifteen minutes ago, he meets my gaze directly. “How about The Delilah? For Hazel.”
No one says anything. I know how much it took for him to say that. Graham and Colton have been the most welcoming of Hazel into our lives, but I don’t know where Colton stands on grieving his mother. I do know he loved her. All three of the boys did, in their own ways, but Colton’s soft heart might have loved her the most.
Even if he’d never admit it.
My relationship with Kathleen started with instant, fiery attraction. It was fostered, sometimes miserably, by my desire to provide when she got pregnant with Jordan only a few months later. Independently, she could have provided for a child. Even still, I convinced myself—and, somehow, her—that we could work. We could be a family.
We couldn’t, not in the long run. But I wouldn’t change it. Not when I have three incredible sons—and a daughter—because of her. She might not have ever been truly mine, but she was theirs. Because of her decision to stay with me all those years ago, we get to celebrate tonight.
“Or,” I say, “we could call her The Indigo.”
Jordan frowns.
“ The Indigo Delilah ,” Colton counters. When no one objects, he nods once. “Okay, then. That’s decided. Hop aboard and let’s take a selfie to send to Indi with the name. She will love it.”
“Translated,” Graham says, stepping into the boat, “she’ll disown us.”
Jordan shakes his head with reluctant affection. “No, she won’t.”
“If she does,” Nash says, raising his hand, “I volunteer as tribute to step in as the fourth sibling.”
We laugh. After everyone has boarded The Indigo Delilah , Colton holds his phone out for a selfie. He sends the picture before we can review it, and a moment later, one comes back of Indi, Cheyenne, and Milo at Hazel’s flower shop.
Colton shifts his phone slightly away after we’ve all seen it. But even from my place at the helm, I notice how he looks at the picture for a heartbeat longer than normal.
“Theoretically,” Nash says, butter dripping down his wrist, “lobster is a great idea. Summer food at its highest class. Until you are served that lobster. Then you remember you have to eat another meal after because it’s so much work for one sliver of meat.”
Jordan leans forward on the bench to peer around Graham. “Exactly. You could be like me—order food that comes prepared and doesn’t burn calories while eating it.”
“That—” Graham points at Jordan’s fried shrimp basket “—is a toddler meal.” He mock shudders. “Thank God I’m not sleeping anywhere near you tonight.”
Jordan frowns and pulls his food closer to him on the splintery wooden tabletop. “Says the guy who practically ate the entire appetizer of calamari by himself. Thanks for asking if we wanted any, by the way. It’s fine. We didn’t.”
“I did,” Colton objects, glancing up from his crab leg. Salty butter is smeared across his cheek, just like when Kathleen and I brought the boys as kids. “Disturbingly, I like squid when it’s been deep fried and dipped in rémoulade sauce.”
Nash crunches on a Vickie’s salt and vinegar potato chip. Smart, choosing those over French fries. Seagulls loiter at the hem of the deck seating, waiting to swoop in on dropped fries. “ Everything tastes good when it’s deep fried,” he says. “Have you ever tried alligator? Oh, my god, one time when me and Jordan—”
“No,” Jordan interrupts. “Do not tell them that story.”
“One time,” Nash continues, undeterred, “we were assigned to a homicide case on the northern edge of L.A., and Jordan was hungry for seafood. But let me set the stage here.” He lowers his voice to a conspiratorial stage whisper. “The neighborhood could’ve been featured in a horror movie. We were obviously in an unmarked car, but it might as well have been a uniformed cruiser, considering the Charger stuck out like a sore thumb. Black cats wandered along the pothole-laden roads, druggies smoked on severely compromised front porches, and—”
“Okay, Hemingway. We need a little disclaimer,” Jordan says dryly. “ I was running on four hours of sleep because I had a six-month old daughter at home. Uncle Nash over here was bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and clearly cataloging our surroundings to sell to Universal Studios. Minor detail, though.” He gestures blandly at Nash. “Carry on, if you must.”
I hide a smile behind my napkin while Nash animatedly tells his story about a wrongly advertised restaurant in the Los Angeles slums. Something in my chest loosens. It’s been years since my sons have been together for more than a day or two. With Nash thrown into the mix, it’s like they’re just brothers for once. Bickering harmlessly and tossing around insults laced with a healthy dose of love.
It makes me feel less like our family is broken, and more like we’re fractured. Fractures heal, if only with time and patience. I’m determined to heal this family if it’s the last thing I do.
I’ll never strive for perfectionism, because nothing is perfect behind closed doors. I would know—I watched my parents in public versus at home. I just want us to be what I once dreamed of on a July afternoon with Hazel the summer before she left for Georgia.
Happy .
I might always be working on balancing life with fatherhood and work. Graham might always struggle with open communication. Jordan might never be fully relieved of the guilt he carries with him from overseas or his PTSD from last August’s shooting.
And Colton…
I glance at my middle son. He’s telling the story of when twelve-year-old Graham jumped out of his skin because Colton had hidden behind his bed, complete with hand gestures and a high-pitched squeal. I sigh inwardly.
He’ll be okay. I don’t know how, and I don’t know when. But if there’s one thing as strong as his tenderness, it’s his tenacity. If Colton wants something bad enough, he will find a way to get it. That went for the bull riding chaps he wanted when he was only ten, and that goes for everything now.
It might mean sacrificing on a level he’s never met before, though.
Jordan reaches across Graham’s plate of blackened mahi-mahi, to Graham’s chagrin, and grabs a handful of Nash’s salt and vinegar chips. Around his crunching, he looks at Colton. “How’s it going at the lake house? You know, with, well, everything?”
Colton shrugs and drops his wadded-up napkin in his basket. “Fine. Milo has adjusted well.”
“And?” Jordan presses. “What about you?”
Colton stiffens next to me on the bench. “What about me?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Jordan says dryly. “Maybe, how are you doing? It’s not every day you get fake engaged to your childhood best friend to become temporary guardian of a four-year-old half-brother. I mean, shoot, Collie. How are you?”
“I’m fine,” Colton says evenly. A little too calm outwardly, I imagine, for the riot of emotion he might be feeling inwardly. “Nothing between us has changed.”
Graham narrows his eyes. “You’re lying.”
Cheeks full of lobster, Nash nods. “You have the same tell as Jordan does. Both of your eyes dart to the side—Jordan’s go left, though, and yours go right.”
“He is the former detective,” Graham says.
“Hey,” Jordan protests, “what about me?”
Colton’s jaw tightens. He shakes his head and braces his palms on the edge of the table to scoot off the bench. He mumbles something about getting another drink before he disappears into The Salty Crab.
Jordan starts to stand, but I hold up a hand. “I’ll talk to him. You two keep trying to talk Graham into wearing that t-shirt.”
Graham’s frown deepens. “I won’t wear it, so don’t waste your breath.”
“Oh, come on,” Nash says. “YOGMO, right?”
Jordan squints. “YOGMO?”
“Yeah,” Nash replies. “You Only Get Married Once.”
Graham gestures stiffly at me. “Dad’s literally going to get married for the second time, and some people—”
“Okay,” Nash concedes, a chip clasped between his fingertips. Jordan steals it and pops it in his mouth. “Let me change it to GOGMO—Graham Only Gets Married Once. You have to…”
Tucking my greasy napkin under my basket, Nash’s words fade as I cross the sandy deck to go inside. The Salty Crab smells exactly like it did twenty years ago. Briny seafood, deep grease embedded into plaster walls, and sweaty drinks on cork coasters. Tiny square tables are covered in red and white checkered tablecloths, waitresses wear denim cutoffs and Salty Crab tank tops, and there are enough pictures crammed on the walls that, in the event of a flood, you could build a raft with the wooden frames.
Colton isn’t at the bar. He might think I don’t know much about his life, but I’ve stayed up to date with his career. I know my son. I know he’s sober, that he has been since he was nineteen and narrowly avoided a DUI. I also know he hates confrontation, and that being overwhelmed makes him close in on himself.
I weave through the packed restaurant and out the front door. Sultry wind pushes my shirt against my chest. I grasp the brim of my hat to keep it in place, and gravel crunches under my shoes as I walk down to the docks. The Salty Crab sits on a jagged point with shoreline on three of its four sides. Colton escaped to the dock where The Indigo Delilah is tethered, conveniently just out of our table’s view.
He doesn’t look up when I sit down next to him on the sun-warmed boards of the dock. He tossed the shoes and the fedora he didn’t want to wear into the Sea Ray. Based on the undone buttons of his linen shirt, he considered discarding that, too.
I squint heavenward. A seagull flits across the deep blue sky. “Matt at the marina told me he recommends keeping a spare suit or two in the boat. Never know when you might need a dip in the lake.”
The way he stares at his knees, saying nothing, tells me he isn’t interested in Matt’s suggestion. Not that I’d expect him to be. He clearly has things on his mind, and if he doesn’t want to talk, so be it. But I’m not going anywhere.
I’ve spent enough time being inaccessible to my sons.
“You know your brothers only mean the best for you.” My words break into the tense silence. “Right?”
My loud, adrenaline junkie, middle child who prefers to be the center of attention remains quiet.
“I know you don’t have Tripp in your life right now,” I say. Based on the way his shoulders tense, I’ve struck a nerve. “A lot has been thrown at you, and I get that. But you need people, Colton. I’m not Tripp and I’ll never try to be. I am here, though .”
He shakes his head and looks away from me, but I see the tear running down his cheek. It becomes a drop on his chin that he doesn’t brush away. “You should be with Graham. It’s his night,” he says blankly. “I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine,” I counter. “I’m right where I should be. Graham is fine. Talk to me, Colton.”
He shakes his head again, more firmly this time. He gets to his feet, and I do the same, but I stand still when he paces to the end of the dock. He stands there, wind ruffling his dark curls and flapping at his unbuttoned shirt. Unmoving, he looks out over the vast, white-capped blue water. I stay where I am, my hands in the pockets of my linen shorts.
But I don’t stay quiet.
“One of these days, Colton, you’re going to have to stop running,” I say evenly. Loud enough to be heard over boat engines and loud enough to be heard over his hurricane force thoughts. “I can’t stop you, and neither can anyone else. But you can only trip so many times before you fall. I’ve been there—I’ve fallen. It hurt like hell . I would never, not on my worst day, wish it on anyone. But if you don’t stop running, Colton, your legs will eventually give out.
“You don’t have to talk to me,” I continue, fighting the emotion building in my throat, “but I am here. I haven’t been for a long time, and I know that, but I am now. Tell me about everything important. Tell me about nothing important. Just…” My voice breaks. “Just let me in, Colton. Please. ”
He spins around and crosses the distances between us with long, brisk strides. Words pour out of him, like a cloudburst in the middle of a steaming July day.
“You want to know how I’m doing?” he asks. “Join the club, because I wish I could tell you. I wish I knew what to tell myself. I don’t know. The only thing I’m good at is being slowly and tortuously torn out of my grasp even though they say it’s not. I’m the temporary guardian for my dead mother’s four-year-old son, and then what? After these three months? What happens to Milo when it goes to court, and I can’t keep him, and my teenage sister sacrifices a future of her own just so he doesn’t go into the system? What happens when summer ends and I break up with my fake fiancée, who is the only woman I have ever loved? What happens when I’m too washed up and broken to continue competing, but I have nothing else left? What happens then, Dad? What happens then?”
Sobs wrack his tall, broad body. His eyes are bloodshot, his chest heaving with the effort of breathing. At his sides, his clammy hands have curled into fists that he lifts to pound against his temples.
He’s breaking in front of me. Piece by piece, he’s coming apart, and I do the only thing I can do.
I walk up to him and I put my arms around him like I should’ve been there to do when he was six and he scratched his knee. When he was ten and couldn’t understand the math problems on his homework. When he was twelve and his mother left for good. When he was seventeen and competed in his first rodeo. When he was twenty-one or twenty-three and won his first and second world championship. When he was twenty-five and broke things off with Cheyenne. When he was twenty-seven and watched the love of his life marry someone else. When he was thirty and he found out that his mentor had been in an accident.
For the thousands of times I should have held my son, I do it now. He’s as tall as me, and as broad, but I hold him like I would have held that six or seventeen- or twenty-three-year-old boy. He doesn’t like it. Tremors course through his shuddering body, and he pushes his fists into my chest, but I only hold him firmer.
Minutes, or maybe only seconds later, he finally gives up the fight. He doesn’t reciprocate the hug and his tears don’t dry, but his head drops to my shoulder.
His body quakes with sobs, and I hold him.
My phone vibrates in my pocket with a call, and I hold him.
A northwest wind blows, lifting goosebumps on our skin, and I hold him.
I don’t talk. I don’t tell him he could be good at anything if he gives himself the chance to be. I don’t tell him he could be what Milo needs long-term if he wanted to be. I don’t tell him I know what it’s like to love one woman and to lose her, but I also know what it’s like to get her back.
If I said those things, he wouldn’t hear me.
Instead, I say the only thing that encompasses everything in one statement.
“I love you, Colton,” I say, and when I say it, I mean it with every fiber of my being.
He doesn’t say it back. He doesn’t even meet my eyes when his body stops shaking and I release him.
I know he heard me. Because for a split second, he completely stilled at my words. And when he’s ready to say it back to me, I’ll be here. Waiting with another one of the hugs I should’ve given him all the years before this.