Chapter 13
The Shrimp Festival landed on the third Saturday in October and the island showed up all at once.
The festival square ran along the waterfront from the harbor to the marina.
Vendor tents lined both sides. The smell was fried shrimp and funnel cake and salt air and the particular sweetness of a crowd that had been doing this together for twenty years.
Kids ran between the booths. Dogs were on leashes except for the ones that weren't. The Ferris wheel at the south end turned slowly against a sky that couldn't decide between blue and gray and had chosen both.
Kirstin wasn't working.
For the first time since college, she was at the Shrimp Festival without a clipboard or a vendor list or a radio clipped to her hip.
Morgan and Addison had handled everything.
Riley/Banks had the operation running so clean that Kirstin's absence from the planning side was barely felt, which told her something about how good those two were at their jobs and something else about how much she'd been holding onto that she didn't need to hold.
She was wearing jeans and a tank top and her hair was down and Beck was beside her and Hudson was on a leash that Hudson didn't respect.
Jon's booth was halfway down the strip. SAILOR JON'S in hand-painted letters across the front.
Jon behind the counter in his Hawaiian shirt, barefoot because Jon was always barefoot, serving shrimp baskets and Coronas.
He'd been doing this since Kirstin was four.
He had help this year. Todd was working the fryer.
A girl from the high school was running drinks.
Kirstin stopped at the booth.
"Hey, baby girl."
"Hey, Dad."
Jon looked at Beck. Then at Hudson. Then at the leash Hudson was ignoring.
"You eat yet?" Jon asked Beck.
"No, sir."
"Don't call me sir. Eat." He put two shrimp baskets on the counter. "Both of you."
They ate standing up at the booth while Jon served customers and told stories and made every person who came to the counter feel like they were the first person he'd talked to all day.
Kirstin watched him do it and felt the old thing, the love and the exhaustion and the pride of being Jon Green's daughter at the Shrimp Festival.
Except today the exhaustion was gone. She was on the other side of the counter for the first time.
She was eating a shrimp basket instead of making one.
She was standing next to a man who had his hand on the small of her back and she was just a person at a festival.
They walked the strip. Hudson drew a crowd wherever he went because Hudson was a golden retriever at a public event and golden retrievers at public events are magnets for every human within fifty feet.
Beck let people pet him. He let kids get on the ground with him.
He stood with his hands in his pockets and watched strangers love his dog and he didn't rush any of it.
Tyler found them near the funnel cake booth.
He didn't walk up. He sprinted. Noah was behind him, moving faster than his usual calm but maintaining the dignity of a kid who refused to run in public.
"BECK!"
Beck turned. Tyler hit him at full speed, arms around his waist, the greeting of a kid who had decided weeks ago that this man belonged to him.
"Hey, bud."
"Are you going to be at the facility Monday?"
"It's Saturday, Tyler."
"I know but are you?"
"Yeah. I'll be there."
"Good because I've been working on the front foot thing and I think I fixed it but Noah says I didn't and Noah's wrong."
Noah arrived. "I'm not wrong."
"You're a little wrong."
"I'm not wrong at all."
Beck dropped to one knee. "Show me Monday. Both of you. We'll figure it out."
Tyler fist-bumped him and took off toward the Ferris wheel. Noah stayed for a second.
"He didn't fix it," Noah said quietly. "But he's closer."
"I know," Beck said. "Don't tell him."
Noah allowed himself a small nod and followed Tyler into the crowd.
She took his hand.
They walked past the craft tents and the lemonade stand and the face-painting booth where three kids were getting their cheeks done in Braves colors because the island still had opinions about baseball.
Morgan and Brady were somewhere in the crowd.
She'd seen them earlier, Morgan with a clipboard because Morgan would carry a clipboard to her own funeral, Brady beside her with a Diet Mountain Dew, patient as ever, because festivals were Morgan's natural habitat and Brady had accepted that.
Luke and Addison were at the Riley/Banks tent. Addison was talking to a vendor with the precision of a woman closing a deal. Luke was leaning against the tent pole with his cap backward, watching his wife work, content to stand there all day.
The baseball toss booth was at the end of the row. Three stacked pyramids of weighted bottles. Stuffed animals hanging from the ceiling. A teenager working the counter with the energy of someone who'd been standing there since nine and would be standing there until close.
Kirstin stopped. Beck kept walking for a step, then felt her hand pull him back.
She was staring at the top row. A big brown bear. Oversized, ridiculous, the kind of prize nobody ever wins because the bottles are weighted and the balls are light and the whole thing is designed to take your money.
She pulled Beck to the counter.
"I want that one," she said. She pointed at the bear.
Beck's eyes went from the bear to her to the bottles.
"Three balls," he said to the kid behind the counter.
The kid glanced at Beck. Then at the sign taped to the front of the booth. Handwritten on cardboard, the letters uneven:
NO FORMER MAJOR LEAGUE PLAYERS ALLOWED.
SORRY. THIS IS LUKE BANKS' FAULT.
"Sorry, dude," the kid said. He pointed at the sign. "Can't let you play."
Beck read the sign. Then he turned to Kirstin.
Kirstin looked at the kid.
"That sign has no regulatory authority," she said. "It's not posted by any licensing body, it doesn't reference any municipal code, and you can't deny service based on a customer's prior employment. That's discriminatory on its face."
The kid stared at her.
Beck stared at her.
"Settle down," the kid said. "He can play."
He put three balls on the counter. Beck picked up the first one. Weighted it in his right hand. The good hand. He looked at the pyramid. Six bottles, stacked three-two-one.
He threw. The ball hit the center of the bottom row and the whole pyramid exploded. Bottles scattered off the back wall and hit the canvas and the kid flinched.
Kirstin's mouth twitched.
Second pyramid. Beck threw again. Same spot.
Same result. The bottles went everywhere.
A small crowd was forming behind them. Someone said "Is that Ethan Beck?
" and someone else said "He plays for the Braves" and someone else said "He used to play for the Braves" and the kid behind the counter was already reaching for the bear.
Third pyramid. Beck took his time. He turned the ball once. Looked at the bottles. Looked at Kirstin. She was watching him with the expression she'd had at the batting cage when she'd stood next to Dr. Reeves and watched someone truly elite perform.
He threw. The pyramid went down. Clean. Hard. Every bottle off the shelf.
The kid unhooked the bear and handed it to Kirstin. It was enormous. She had to hold it with both arms. The brown fur was soft and the eyes were plastic and it was the most ridiculous thing she'd ever owned and she held it against her chest and she was happy.
"That'll be twelve dollars," the kid said.
Beck reached for his wallet.
"I want one too."
They both turned. A girl, maybe six, standing behind Kirstin's legs, staring up at the prizes with the focus of a child who has identified a target and will not be redirected.
Beck glanced at the girl. Then the booth. Then his wallet.
He put another twelve dollars on the counter.
The kid set up three more pyramids. Beck threw three more times.
Three more pyramids went down. The kid handed the girl a bear, a pink one, and the girl took it and walked away without saying thank you because she was six and the bear was all that mattered.
Her mother appeared ten seconds later. "I'm so sorry, she just?—"
"It's fine," Beck said. "She's got good taste."
The mother's eyes went from the bear to Beck to Kirstin holding her own bear with both arms.
"Thank you," the mother said.
"Yes ma'am."
She took her daughter's hand and they disappeared into the crowd.
She shifted the bear to one arm and took his hand with the other and they kept walking.
They found Luke and Addison near the lemonade stand. Luke had a plate of shrimp he'd gotten from Jon's booth and was eating it while Addison talked to a vendor about next year's tent layout. Luke saw Beck and pulled out his phone.
"You see this?" Luke said. "Fourth quarter. Watch this play."
Beck leaned in. The two of them huddled over Luke's phone, replaying something from a football game that had aired that morning. Luke pointed at the screen. Beck shook his head. Luke replayed it. Beck grabbed Luke's wrist to tilt the phone. They were gone.
Addison stepped beside Kirstin. They stood together watching their men watch a screen.
"You look so happy," Addison said.
"I am," Kirstin said.
"So does he."
Kirstin watched Beck. He was laughing at something Luke was saying about the replay, his head tilted toward the phone, the curls falling, the late afternoon light on his face. He didn't know she was watching. He was just standing at a Shrimp Festival with a friend, being a person, and he was happy.
"You guys should come over after," Addison said.
Kirstin kept her eyes on Ethan a moment longer. Then she turned to Addison.
"Maybe tomorrow?"
Addison smiled.