Chapter 3
Three
RIOS
The ocean was louder on this side of the island. Not the lazy slap of the sound, but a steady hush and thrum that lived under everything, like a heartbeat you only noticed when the house was quiet.
Caroline’s place almost never got quiet.
“Logan, shoes off before you run upstairs!” my sister called from the kitchen. “I am not mopping again tonight.”
“I forgot!” came the six-year-old’s earnest bellow, followed by the unmistakable clatter of sneakers being toed off at speed and launched toward the hall tree. One missed and pinballed off the baseboard. Logan whooped like he’d scored a goal.
Aubrey padded past me with the composure of a much older kid, a baby bottle balanced expertly in one hand, burp cloth over her shoulder. “Tio Rios, can you test the temperature? He likes it warmer than I do.”
“Sí, jefa.” I took the bottle, tipped it to my wrist. “Perfect.”
She nodded, satisfied, and took it back with grave efficiency.
At eight, she had the soft voice and serious eyes of someone who’d decided she was an assistant adult.
Mother’s helper in a ponytail and mermaid pajamas.
She bent over the bouncer where Eli vibrated with righteous fury at having to exist here on the floor when there were clearly greater heights in the world (arms, shoulders, ceiling fan).
“Here you go, squish.” She coaxed the nipple into his mouth, and the fury dissolved into hungry snuffles. “Teamwork,” she told him. “You and me.”
“Bless you, baby girl.” Caroline passed through with a stack of plates. She brushed a kiss over Aubrey’s crown and aimed a look at me that said she’d slept maybe four hours total in the last two nights and would do it all again without complaint. “How many tacos did you eat? Be honest.”
“An even dozen.”
She snorted. “Liar.”
“Okay, eleven and a half. Logan stole one and ate just the tortilla.”
“Carbs are life,” Logan announced from the stairs, hopping down each step like it was a personal trampoline. He stopped beside me and peered up with chocolate ice cream ringed around his mouth like a villain mustache. “Daddy says I can help him fix the deck light tomorrow.”
“That so?”
“Yeah. Because I know how to hold the flashlight still. He said that’s the most important job.”
“It is.” I nodded solemnly. “No ship was ever saved by a wobbly flashlight.”
My nephew considered this, nodded, and sprinted for the bathroom. A beat later, the sink squealed to life, water blasting tile, followed by Hoyt’s patient baritone: “Buddy, hands under the water. Under. That’s right.”
I leaned my hip against the long kitchen island and let it all wash over me—the clink of plates, the hiss of the dishwasher, the sweet-milk scent of Eli’s formula, the lemon cleaner Caroline favored, the faint sunscreen tang that seemed baked into every surface from a summer lived outdoors.
The house was a riot of color, reflecting all the warmth and chaos we hadn’t had growing up.
Caroline and Hoyt had built it together until it felt like something durable and loved.
It was a good house. A home meant for comfort and relaxing.
My shoulders didn’t get the memo.
They ached, coiled and ready, even here.
Even safe. Night was the worst, and nights here had stacked up like cups in a game, all the sounds of a family layered one on top of another.
Eli’s midnight snaps into wakefulness. The soft pad of Caroline’s feet.
Hoyt’s murmur. The click and whine of the monitor.
The house settling. The ocean. The ocean again.
My body cataloged each one, searched for threat in domestic noise, and never quite believed me when I said there wasn’t any.
I hadn’t told my family the truth. Not all of it. I was home because the Navy and I had agreed to part ways “quietly,” and quiet had never been so loud in my head.
“Earth to Rios.” Caroline slid a glass of water in front of me. “You drifting?”
“A little.”
“Drink.” She bumped my elbow with the glass until I took it. “And go sit down. You did dishes last night. You are officially off duty.”
“You cooked.”
“I assembled tacos. That doesn’t count.” Her mouth curved. “Besides, you’ve been kid-wrangling for three days. Hoyt owes you hazard pay.”
“Add it to my tab.” Hoyt appeared with Eli scooped easily into the crook of one arm.
He pressed a kiss to Caroline’s temple as he passed and transferred the baby with the kind of gentle muscle memory that made you trust him with anything.
“Your presence has been requested for bath time. You wanna swap bedtime?”
“I’m always on bedtime. ’Tis my lot in life.
” She angled her head into his shoulder for one second more with an expression of bliss that said she wouldn’t have it any other way, before peeling away, already gathering Logan’s abandoned art project and sweeping glitter-escaped sprinkles into her palm. “Aubrey, grab the story basket?”
“On it.” Aubrey eased the now-dozy Eli from their mother’s arms, jostled him with practiced rhythm, and marched upstairs like a tiny general escorting a prisoner of war to a very soft cell.
Hoyt watched her go, pride bright and unhidden. “She’s a good kid.”
“They all are,” I said. “Even the sugar-possessed one.”
“Logan! Five-minute warning!” Caroline sang toward the upstairs hall. She glanced at me. “You look like someone hit your pause button.”
“Thinking.”
“Dangerous.” Hoyt jerked his head toward the door. “Come on. Porch.”
We stepped through the wide sliders onto a wrap-around porch that ran the length of the house. The Atlantic stretched black-blue beyond the dunes, the horizon a thin smear of silver under a sky littered with stars. Ceiling fans whirred lazily overhead, and somewhere out of sight a neighbor laughed.
I kept one hand on the railing as we settled into Adirondack chairs. Old habit: touch the boundary, know where you are. The railing was solid and slightly warm from a day of sun. My back found the angle of the chair and protested. I breathed through it.
Inside, bath chaos started in earnest—Logan’s dramatic odes to the injustice of shampoo, Aubrey’s patient narration for Eli’s benefit, Caroline’s, “You will not flood the hallway, I mean it.” A family symphony.
“Day three crash,” Hoyt said, not unkindly.
“What?”
“You.” He propped his feet on the railing. “You come in on adrenaline, you ride on reunion and momentum for forty-eight hours, and then the noise catches up. It’s a good noise,” he added quickly, like he was afraid of offending me on his own porch. “But it’s noise.”
“It is a good noise.” I scrubbed a hand over my face, scruff rasping my palm. “I love being here.”
“But?”
I huffed a breath that wasn’t quite a laugh. “But I don’t remember how to sleep in a house.”
He didn’t fill the silence, instead letting the ocean fill it for a minute.
“Is that new?” he asked at last.
“Newish.” I tipped my head back and stared up at the night. “It’s been worse stateside since I discovered how loud ‘quiet’ is.”
“You talk to anybody about it?”
I made a face. Talking wasn’t high on my list of things to do.
Wind lifted the edge of the outdoor rug and let it drop. Somewhere below us, sand shifted in the dark. I traced the line of the dune fence with my eyes until the urge to pace eased.
“I will,” I said finally. “I just… needed to get out first.”
“Of the Navy?” Surprise tinged my brother-in-law’s tone. Of course it did. I still hadn’t told them the truth of why I was here.
“Of the box I was in.” I flexed my hands on my knees. “I’m not ready to give you the long version.”
“You don’t owe me an explanation.” He said it with the ease of truth. “You know that, right?”
“Caroline is gonna want one.”
“She’s gonna want to know you’re all right.” He tipped his chin toward the sliding door. “She knows where you’ve been doesn’t come with easy stories.”
“It’s not a story,” I said, sharper than I meant to. I sucked in a breath, dropped my voice. “Sorry.”
Hoyt’s mouth did that small not-smile he used when he was deciding to absorb rather than deflect. “What do you need tonight?”
I thought about saying nothing. I thought about lying and saying I was fine, because we all had our roles and mine had historically been the unflappable one, the one who could make a joke and shift the topic with a grin and a shoulder, the one who was made of angles and calm.
Honesty tasted like copper. “A place to be awake that doesn’t keep your whole house awake with me.”
“Yeah,” he said softly. “Figured.”
Aubrey’s voice floated out through the screen, high and earnest as she continued the bedtime story: “—and then Max said, ‘No gators in the bathtub,’ and Logan said, ‘But what if they’re baby—‘ and Mama said, ‘Nope.’”
Hoyt chuckled, thumb running along the arm of his chair. “You could take the guest room, but the baby monitor might make you crazy.”
“It’s not the monitor,” I said. “It’s… everything. And none of it is wrong.”
“I know.”
He let that sit. I let it sit with him. We’d both learned the usefulness of not rushing a fix. I appreciated his steadiness. Caroline deserved that in her life after where we’d started.
“You’re still welcome here as long as you want,” he said after a bit. “This is your home as much as ours. But I do have a thought.”
“Hit me.”
“The boat,” he said.
I looked at him, and he looked back like he’d placed his piece on the board, and now we’d see if I moved mine.
“Are you gonna say you haven’t used it much this summer, and you don’t have time for sails because Eli eats hours like Pac-Man?”
“All true.” His mouth twitched. “But that’s not why I’m offering it.”
“Why are you offering it?”
“Because you sleep better when you can hear water hit hull,” he said simply. “Because you like walls you can touch without getting up. Because you’re a man who checks the perimeter, and a 40-foot ketch is easier to check than a 3,500-square-foot house.”
I stared at him. “That was disturbingly accurate.”