Chapter 44
The Docks Lead You Home
The marina is quiet. The water, serene.
Many of the boats are dark and shut down for the night. But there are some that have their evening lights on.
I walk quickly down the docks, the lights helping to guide me.
I’m anxious to get eyes on Bailey—and on Owen.
But I slow down as I pass by those active boats: a couple having a late dinner on their deck, an older man drinking a bottle of beer, a family pulling their suitcases on board, ready to head out at first light.
It strikes me, all at once, the similarity so disorienting. It’s almost like being back on the docks in Sausalito. What it felt like every night in Sausalito—the magic of passing all those floating homes on the way to mine.
And, suddenly, it’s five years ago again.
It’s five years in the future. I am simply doing what I do every night.
I’m walking the docks after a long day—all those floating homes (all these boats) carrying their life stories, their own private dreams that only this small piece of the sea will ever get to know.
I’m feeling it move through me. The sense of peace that the water gives. The peace and the quiet and the certainty. All of which comes for me and comes back to me. Because here I am again, doing it.
I’m walking the docks again—heading home, again. To them.
I know which boat I’m looking for before I even know that this is the boat I’m looking for. It’s one of the first boats in the International Yacht Club quay—large yachts far in the distance, the smaller deep-sea boats on the berths closer in.
It’s the boat I know the most about. The same make and model of the boat in Santa Cruz.
In Marina del Rey. The French-manufactured boat that I learned how to operate, so I’d be prepared to navigate it anywhere.
Nicholas had shared this with Owen. He had shared it with him so that if tonight hadn’t worked out the way we needed it to, we’d have the means to run. This time, the three of us, together.
But it had worked out, hadn’t it? It had worked out enough that we don’t need to run, not anymore. Together, we get to do something else.
Before I step on board, I take one last look around. I look out at the docks and the marina and the town just beyond. The hundreds of lives going on just beyond this: weddings and late-season tourists and someone (somewhere) saying a final goodbye to a person they won’t get back.
It started on a dock. And that’s where it ends.