Chapter 21 #2
I thought I’d see him and he’d instantly annoy me with how unchanged he was.
I’d tell him about Bennie then he’d easily sign the papers because he had places to go and things to see.
Out of every flying piece of debris in the shitstorm of my life, he was supposed to be the easiest to clean up.
But that’s not how any of this is. It’s one more thing I didn’t see coming on top of everything else.
I’m getting married to one man yet don’t want another to be with anyone else.
I want him here helping me and not warming someone else’s bed.
I’m the biggest hypocrite who has ever lived.
My eyes burn like they’ve been blasted by a blowtorch.
“You okay?” Cap asks.
I shake my head, barely able to swallow around the barge-sized lump in my throat. Barely able to get a full breath in my lungs. Out the window, Nash is gone. He must have gone inside.
“Wanna talk about it?”
I shake my head again, unable to make words. I came here to fix things, and it all feels more broken.
A woman pushes a stroller down the middle of the street and disappears around a corner a block away.
Out of sight, a dog barks and a truck backfires.
On another continent, some man is spending our money.
In my mother’s skull, there’s a growth that feels much bigger than four centimeters.
In a stack of envelopes on my desk, there are bills with due dates.
And in the house right next to me, Nash has a life that has nothing to do with me.
I am so fucked.
Cap clears his throat. “Want a hug?”
I look at him; he’s serious.
At the same time inexplicable tears start running down my cheeks, my torso droops across the center console, face-planting me into his shoulder.
A painful sob rolls up my throat and out of my mouth, my shoulders shaking as my cries echo around the car.
Between Cap’s cane and oxygen tank, it’s not really a hug; he sits there with his hands in his lap and fake foot frozen on the floorboard like a maimed statue.
I don’t care. I cry the very first tears I’ve shed since this whole disaster started into his salty, marijuana-scented shirt.
I cry and I cry and I cry, and Cap simply lets me.
He doesn’t move and he doesn’t say anything; I don’t need him to.
I need him to let me drain myself dry of heartache and worry, and that’s what he does.
When I’m done, I sit up, thumbing the last lines of moisture from under my eyes.
“Sorry,” I tell him with a sniff. “Allergies.”
A slight smile cuts through his beard. “Better than the screaming.”
I snort; Cap might be funny.
“Barbecue?” he asks as I turn the key. “My treat.”
I look at him sideways. “You have money to treat?”
His thick brows raise. “Got a lot more money than you, kiddo.”
Of course he does. Everyone has more money than me. If I had any tears left, I’d let myself cry all over again.
“Barbecue sounds great, Cap.”
He grunts.
“Dad.”
I roll my eyes, but I also feel a little bit better.
For the next hour, Cap explains the ins and outs of flounder gigging as we sit in a loud restaurant that smells like sweet sauce and mesquite smoke and eat burritos filled with coleslaw, pork, and mashed potatoes. By the time I drop him off, things seem less dire.
“I made life harder than it needed to be,” he says as he gets out of the car. “I have a feeling your mom raised you better.”
“How’s that?”
He shrugs, adjusting the oxygen tank on his shoulder. “You’ll figure out what you’re here for, and this will all work out.”
Before I can tell him how untrue that feels, he closes the door and disappears down the maze of docks, limping as he goes.
The sky is ablaze with bubble-gum shades, making every boat a near-black silhouette.
The splinters and chipped finishes that exist by day are gone, replaced by a picturesque beauty. A scene changed by the angle of light.
In the quiet of the car, I text Reese a picture of the turtle, then force Bennie to talk to me even though she’s busy with Gypsy. I’ve only been gone for two days, but I’ve missed her voice.
“What’s Grandpa like?” she asks.
It strikes me how easily she says it: Grandpa.
She’s wholly unbothered by the fact we haven’t known him and now we do.
I am so resistant to calling him dad, and here she is throwing familial titles around like it’s no big deal.
It makes me think if I tell her about Nash, she might not hate me forever.
“He’s kind of weird,” I admit with a laugh. “And funny—maybe really funny. He grunts a lot. And has a fake leg and a mermaid cane.”
“A pirate,” she says, delighted.
I think of Sunny the Psychotic Tour Guide calling him the same thing and shudder.
“Something like that.”
“Are you with anyone else?”
My brows pinch. “Anyone else?”
“Yeah,” she says. “Is anyone else helping you?”
“No.” My pulse picks up, but the lie comes easy as I trace the line of the steering wheel. “Just me and him.”
“Oh,” she sounds almost disappointed. “Have you done anything scary?”
“Scarier than meeting a strange man and looking for lost gold?” I laugh a little. “No.”
“Mom,” she groans. “That’s how it works. You don’t find treasure if you aren’t brave and doing scary things. That’s what they do in the movies. It’s the whole reason the treasure is never found to begin with. Everyone else is too scared or not looking at the place right in front of them.”
Now she sounds like Sylvia.
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
My mom shouts “Supper!” and we end the call with love yous and miss yous exchanged. Bennie might not care that I’m gone, but today, at least, she likes me.
Two blocks away from Nash’s house, I park along the street and ignore how bad this plan is and how poorly it could go.
Rolling my suitcase behind me on the streetlight-lit road, I deflate with sad relief at the empty driveway. Nash isn’t home. Of course not. I read the same text he did.
Skirting around his yard to the not-guesthouse, the humiliation of my reality nearly swallows me whole.
I can’t afford another night at one of these hotels.
I can’t afford anything. Other than sleeping in my car, this is the only idea I have.
Maybe this is the brave thing Bennie was talking about.
Instead of sword fighting or exploring gold-laden caves, my version of doing something scary is sleeping on my estranged husband’s accidental futon without telling a soul.
The door to the shed opens easily, but before I close it, I look at the dark house.
Nash’s house. His beautiful house that he bought on his own when he wasn’t with me because it was good enough to stop roaming for—even for a few years—when I wasn’t.
The painful reality of that braids itself into the thick heat of the night air and burns my lungs with my next breath.
On the futon in the dark, staring at the ceiling, I call Jonathan.
He tells me about his day, and I tell him about mine—about everything we didn’t find at the plantation and eating barbecue with Cap—but the entire time we talk, I’m far away from it all.
Like someone else is speaking while I tread the waters of my thoughts.
“You aren’t bothered Nash is helping with this?” I ask, picking at a thread of the beach towel I’m using as a blanket. “Worried or anything?”
Jonathan chuckles through the line. “Of a former traveling substitute teacher?”
“He’s a little different though,” I say, distracted. Wondering what Nash is doing. “Has a house. A dog. He’s lived here for three years.”
He makes an amused sound. “Still willing to drop everything to chase a pie in the sky treasure, though.” He pauses. “Do I have a reason to be worried?”
“No.” I have a spool’s worth of towel thread tangled around my fingers. “Of course not.”
We talk for a few more minutes, but it’s only after we hang up that I register he called my plan for saving everything pie in the sky.
And it’s only when Nash’s headlights finally paint the walls of the shed after midnight that I let myself fall asleep.