Lexi
Lexi
It’s like an out-of-body experience, perhaps because I have one single focus as we step off this lifeboat. Everything else is dreamy and strange, too bright and loud. There is only Mae.
Her face as she sees me across the pontoon.
Her pigtails bouncing as she starts to run.
Her perfect little arms as they are thrown around my neck, and the smell of her, that indefinable essence of Maeness.
I sob into her shoulder, breathing her in, feeling every single gram of gratitude that a body can hold.
“Auntie Lexi! Auntie Lexi!” Mae says, hugging me tighter than she’s ever hugged me before, sinking into the firm padding of my life jacket.
I will never, ever, ever take it for granted that I get to be loved by this precious little girl. I pull back to look her over: the quizzical pale brown eyebrows, the freckles on her left cheek, her hair trying to weasel out of its long curly bunches. I’m dimly aware of Zeke behind me, of the people rushing to hug him, of the real world at the edges of my vision, but I don’t have space in my brain for all that. Not yet. Just Mae.
“Look,” she says, bouncing excitedly, radiating joy. “Look what I made!”
She’s drawn me a sign: Welcome Home Lexi, I Love You , it says, and I cannot think of a single more beautiful thing.
It takes at least three minutes for the world around Mae to come into focus. Penny, who pulls me in tightly and tells me she loves me. Marissa, her tears clouding her glasses as she swoops down on me for a hug. Ryan, Penny’s boyfriend, who to my surprise is crying, too. And Alyssa from the flat next door, a person I genuinely haven’t thought of once in the last two weeks, but am delighted to see, because she is so normal and so real.
Then the rest of reality starts to seep in slowly as I grip Mae’s hand. The press with their flashing cameras, and the crowds behind the makeshift railings constructed by the lovely people of Gilmouth marina, many of whom have come to hug me, too—I get the sense that they feel our houseboat’s adventure was theirs.
I take a deep breath. The air tastes so different. I can still feel the sea on my tongue, but there’s the flat taste of car fumes, too, and the dull warmth of a crowded place. The world is vivid and noisy: everyone is in color, their sunglasses and their phone screens shining in the morning sunlight.
“I can’t imagine what you’ve been through,” Penny says, still crying, pulling away from what must be our tenth hug of the last two minutes. “My beautiful, wonderful Lexi. I can’t believe you…”
I draw back to look at her. Her face has gone pale.
I’m still so poised for disaster that I feel my whole body stiffen in readiness for whatever it is she’s seen over my shoulder.
I spin. It’s Zeke, emerging smiling and ringleted from the crowd of his family. Rocking his life jacket, of course—he could’ve stepped off a fashion week runway. He catches my eye, and I can’t believe I ever worried about a single thing changing. The moment we’re looking at each other, it’s back to the two of us again, and right now I cannot wait to feel him slink an arm around my waist as we step into real life together.
“ That’s Ezekiel?” Penny says in a whisper.
I look back at her. My eyes widen.
“Penny? Are you OK?”
She’s reaching for Mae.
“What’s going on?” asks Marissa.
“Penny,” I begin, but she’s pulling me back, away from the water, away from Zeke. “Penny, what are you doing ?”
“Lexi, just move ,” she snarls, then she grabs at someone in a high-vis jacket. “We need to get through,” she says. “Lexi needs to get to the ambulance.”
“What? I’m fine,” I say, looking back over my shoulder. “I don’t want to get in the ambulance.”
I catch sight of Zeke once more before he’s whirled away in another hug, and then Penny is shoving me through an opening in the crowd, and someone is yelling at me, Did he kidnap you? Were you kidnapped? Smile, Lexi! Over here! And we’re running along the pavement to the pub, Penny scooping a confused Mae up into her arms.
She doesn’t stop until the door of The Anchor swings shut behind us.
“Mae,” she says, putting her down. “Marissa is going to take you upstairs so you can watch all the police cars out of the big window!”
Marissa kicks into gear, slightly breathless from the run here. “Come on, sweetheart,” she says, a hand on Mae’s shoulder. “I’ve still got your elves and dragons coloring book up there, too.”
“I want to stay with Lexi,” Mae begins, but Penny shakes her head.
“We just need five minutes, sweetie,” she says. “Then Lexi’s all yours again!”
Penny strides to the bar as Marissa pulls a reluctant Mae to the flat upstairs. The Anchor is always strange when it’s like this, silent and still. It’s not a place built for solitude, and the quietness makes it shabbier: you see all the chips on the wooden tables, the old beer stains on the carpet. It is unspeakably odd to be here. The ground feels like it’s slipping underneath my feet.
“What the fuck?” I ask, with force.
Penny pours herself a large tumbler of whisky, even though it’s barely eight in the morning. Her hands are shaking. She looks way too thin, and my stomach lurches as I realize that the lankness of her blond-streaked hair and the new hollows beneath her cheekbones are probably from worrying about me. She’s wearing a gray tracksuit that I’m pretty sure is mine, though living together for so long has meant that my and Penny’s wardrobes have mostly merged into one collection of similar sweatshirts.
I have a horrible, twisting sensation in my stomach. For a second, I contemplate just walking out and leaving Penny there with her whisky, secrets unspoken, but I know I won’t. I always want the truth.
“What’s going on, Penny?”
“ That’s Ezekiel?” she says, voice trembling. “That man on the dock, that is the man you’ve been at sea with? That’s the man you met here?”
“Yeah. That’s Zeke, yeah. Why?”
She takes a shaky breath and knocks back the rest of the tumbler, reaching for the bottle again.
“Whoa, easy, Pen.”
She hardly drinks these days. After going cold turkey during pregnancy, she decided never to go back to the heavy drinking— No more bad decisions , she’d said, then she’d put her hand on her belly and said, Not that I could ever regret this .
“His family only released one photo of him, and they didn’t call him Zeke, they called him Ezekiel, and…His hair was short in the photo, he didn’t have a beard…He didn’t look like that. He wasn’t on social media or anything, and…He didn’t look…I didn’t realize it was him.”
“You didn’t realize he was who , Penny?”
I’m gripping the back of the nearest chair. I can sense that whatever’s coming, I’ll need something to keep me steady.
“That man. Lexi…” Her voice drops to a hushed, awful whisper. “He’s Mae’s father.”