Chapter Eighteen
Eighteen
FINN WOULD TURN out to be a gear guy.
Remember how decked out he was for mini golf?
Double it for kayaking.
He brought a helmet. A helmet.
Plus a wet suit, neoprene shoes, and—rather on-theme—gloves.
I’d googled kayaking after he asked me, trying to get a sense of what I’d just signed up for, and I’d watched more than one extreme sports video of dudes kayaking down waterfalls, slamming into rocks, and basically murdering themselves.
Those guys needed helmets.
But as far as I could tell, the Escapes Cruise Line version of kayaking was just … paddling peacefully around a lagoon.
Maybe we’d see a turtle. Or something.
Anyway—my gear amounted to a swimsuit, some shorts, and a pair of water shoes I borrowed from Ashley. She’d handed them over at the door of her bridal suite that morning in a robe, looking quite, um, tousled.
“I can’t believe how hard you are crushing Operation Conquest,” she said. “It’s working!”
I nodded. “Right?”
Next, she noticed my neck. “Is that a hickey?”
“Yesterday, you thought it was Tabasco sauce.”
She covered her mouth. “Who gave it to you?”
But I shook my head. “It’s a whole saga,” I said.
She would normally know all the details already. But it’s a lot of work being a bride, and there had been no crannies of time when I could grab her and share. And it certainly wasn’t happening now, with Brody clanking around in the room behind her. I wasn’t even sure whose side he was on.
“Did you take my sunscreen?” he asked Ashley right then, and she turned back to answer.
Sunscreen. I’d be needing that today.
When Ashley turned back to me, she took one more look at my neck and then gave me a sly smile. “You should tell Finn it is Tabasco sauce,” she said. “And then dare him to lick it off.”
“Ashley!” I scolded, looking both ways down the hall.
But nobody would overhear. The bridal suite was above the waterline. Definitely not with the wedding block.
“How is it rooming with Harmony?” Ashley asked then, wrinkling her nose.
“That’s—another whole saga,” I said, implying I’d have to tell her later.
Would I tell her later? I had never withheld anything from Ashley. But things were already different now. Seeing Ashley and Brody framed through the doorway in their matching robes? They really looked like a married couple.
Did husbands and wives tell each other everything? Could I trust Ashley now to keep anything between just us two? By the end of this week, she and Brody would be married. She was going to take his last name—and leave “Ashley Burton” behind for the very unfortunate “Ashley Cockburn.”
And even though Brody’s last name was technically pronounced Coh-burn, that didn’t make it any better. Once you saw it written out—on a name tag, or a wedding invitation, or, maybe worst of all, the back of a sports jersey—you couldn’t unsee it.
As Pete liked to say: Ouch.
But there was no reasoning with Ashley. This was happening.
They’d already put a down payment on a house and merged all their bank accounts and everything.
Before we knew it, they’d be making little Cockburn babies.
Soon, she’d belong to him.
Which meant, I realized with a sting of loss, that she wouldn’t belong to me anymore.
That’s when Brody called, “Ash? I need you.”
Ashley glanced back, very pleased to be needed, and then blew me a goodbye kiss.
As I walked down the hallway, she popped her head out to call after me, “I want all the details the minute you’re back!”
I turned around to say, “You got it!”—not even sure if that was true.
But she’d already closed the door.
In the elevator, I ran into my dad. His arms were full of bags of paper flowers.
I took a couple from him to be helpful.
“Hey, sweetheart,” he said.
“Dad,” I said then. “Are you busy?”
He obviously was.
“Not at all,” he said.
“Could I talk to you for a minute?”
“Sure. Of course.”
He was headed to give those bags to my mom, but we paused at a little outdoor seating spot along the way and set the bags on a table.
“I need to tell you something,” I said.
“Okay,” my dad said. “Shoot.”
“I know about you and Mom.”
My dad’s eyes widened. He looked—caught. “You know—?”
“About all of it,” I said. And then, in a move that felt like revealing a state secret, I said, “I heard you. Through the vent on the stairs.”
“You heard…?” He waited for me to clarify, like he was hoping we had different definitions of all of it.
“I heard everything.” Then I leaned in to whisper, “About Mom wanting a divorce.”
My dad frowned, like he wasn’t sure how to feel about me knowing. Then he glanced around and said, “Please don’t tell your sister.”
“Of course I won’t,” I said. “I wasn’t even going to tell you.”
“Why are you telling me?”
“I heard you say you were going to try to change Mom’s mind.”
My dad nodded.
“How’s that going?”
My dad shook his head.
“Because I decided something last night, and you need to know about it.”
My dad nodded, like Tell me.
“I decided to help you.”
“Help me?”
“Help you change Mom’s mind.”
At that, he lifted his hand to rub his eyes. “Sweetie, I’m not sure you can help me. I’m not even sure I can help myself.”
“It’s not too late,” I said.
My dad looked away, like he was studying something in the ocean. Then he said, “I think it might be.”
“I love that you’re trying,” I said. “I can tell that you are.”
“I am,” he said.
“You’re doing all the right things,” I said.
My dad nodded, like that was good feedback.
And I cannot describe to you the shock I felt at what my dad did next, because such a thing had never, to my recollection, happened before.
He spoke in a whole paragraph.
A long one.
I’m telling you, the man must have been holding in an emotional Mount Vesuvius, because once he started talking, he couldn’t seem to stop.
There might have been more words in this one moment than all the words he’d ever spoken to me before that.
“You know,” he said, watching the ocean, “my parents never got along. They fought all the time. They barely tolerated each other their entire marriage. I never remember them laughing, or having fun, or even touching. And the thing they fought about was money. Every day, they fought about money. I grew up poor. Paycheck-to-paycheck poor. We were always struggling. So it seemed pretty clear to me that being poor was the problem. And when I met your mom … I just fell so hard for her. I wanted us to be happy. I always thought my number-one job was to work hard so that you kids and your mom could have a nice life. What if we lost the house? What if one of you got really sick? What if I became expendable at work? So I said yes to every opportunity, and I took overtime, and I gave it all I had. But everything’s a trade-off, JoJo.
You can’t be everywhere at once. Being at work meant that I wasn’t at home.
I told myself it was better that way. That the best gift I could give you kids was time with your mother.
I thought if I could just do that, we’d have nothing to be unhappy about. ”
My dad pressed his hands down on the ship’s railing. Then he took a deep breath. “Maybe I took your mom for granted. Or our family. But that was because, for me, there was never any question. You all belonged to me, and I belonged to you, and that’s just how it was.”
My dad looked down at the water, then up at the sky. “But I guess that wasn’t how it was. I worked too hard. I was gone too much. Your mom was unhappy. I thought I was the only one who was lonely.”
And then, I swear to god, my ex-marine dad’s eyes filled with tears.
“Have you said all that to her?” I asked.
“I’m just trying to get through this wedding,” my dad said.
“Yes,” I agreed. “But you’re also—at the same time—trying to save your marriage.”
“I’m not sure I can.”
“It’s not over ’til it’s over,” I said. “You should say all of that to Mom—exactly the way you just said it to me.”
My dad looked down at the water skimming the edge of the boat below. He nodded, like he was really considering it.
I felt an impulse to hug him.
But we really didn’t know each other that well.
Instead, I just stepped closer. “Dad,” I said. “I believe you. And I want you to know something: I am on your team.”
My dad frowned, like he hadn’t realized there were teams.
So I said, “You’re not alone.”
And then my dad sighed, like those were words he hadn’t realized he needed to hear.
As if she sensed us talking about her, my mom appeared on the deck, saw us, and started walking in our direction. I could tell, even from a hundred feet away, that she needed those flowers and she wasn’t too pleased with our dawdling.
My dad could tell, too.
“Talk to her,” I urged.
“She’s busy,” my dad said. “I don’t want to add to her stress.”
“It’s not stress to find out that your husband loves you madly.”
My dad blinked, like that was really a new way of framing it.
“Tell her,” I said. “Tell her you love her! Tell her you were gone all the time because you love her. Tell her that it wasn’t neglect—it was the opposite. Tell her how hard you were trying. She thinks you weren’t around because you didn’t care. Don’t let her leave you for the wrong reasons!”
My dad’s face was tight with worry. “Can you write all that down?”
“What?”
“What you just said.”
“I was just summing up what you just said.”
“But you’re saying it with a better vocabulary.”
“It’s not about vocabulary. It’s about speaking from the heart. And also setting the record straight. Have a real conversation with her, Dad. She might still leave you, but at least you’ll both know why.”
“I don’t want to seem like a whiner.”
“Wanna know what you seem like to me?” I asked.
My dad met my eyes.
“You seem like a man who loves his family very much. And who’s trying like hell to get it right.”
My dad was fidgeting. Vulnerability was not his favorite emotion.
“That’s your homework,” I said then. “Pull her aside. Tell her everything you just told me. Tell her you can change. And ask her to take you back on a trial basis.”
“A trial basis?”
I nodded. “Once that’s done, we’ll move on to phase two.”
“What’s phase two?”
“I don’t know yet, but we’ll figure it out.”
My mother was almost within earshot.
“More to come on this,” I said, giving him a little salute.
And then, I guess because he also wanted a hug but also had no idea how to make that happen … my dad just nodded and saluted me back.