Chapter Thirty-One
The irony of the name stenciled on the side of the fishing boat, Knot Enough, wasn’t lost on me.
Sure, it pointed to the fact that the boat was a bit of an eyesore, but it also summed up just about everything there was to say about my relationship with my father.
He wasn’t a bad guy, just absent for more of my life than he was present.
It was a picture-perfect morning. And I hated it.
Not just because of the trip itself, which, of course, would be torturous, stuck bobbing in the middle of the ocean with my father’s second family. No, I hated it because the world had the audacity to keep spinning when mine had tipped completely off its axis.
Leo was gone.
Not left-me-at-the-airport gone. Not I’m-just-not-ready-for-this gone.
Gone.
Like he’d been plucked from the narrative entirely. Deleted. Forgotten. By everyone except me. And I couldn’t make sense of any of it.
Over the sputtering engine, the captain shouted, “We’re gonna motor about four miles past the reef line into the Caribbean, where the big ones are really biting, while Kai, my first mate, mixes up some of the best spiced rum punch this side of the Placencia Peninsula.”
Marin frowned. “Shit, did he say we’re going into the Caribbean?”
“It’s mahi-mahi fishing. Of course we’re heading out into open water.” Dad laughed, slipping off his flip-flops and handing them to Kai before climbing aboard.
I leaned into Marin. “What’s wrong?”
“I thought we’d be staying near the reef. I’ve just been known to get a little seasick, but only in choppy water. I’m sure this’ll be fine. Let’s give it a shot. I’m not bailing on you to fly solo with your dad and his kids.” She reached for Kai’s hand as he aided her onto the deck from the dock.
“I don’t want you to get sick. It’ll ruin your whole day. I’ll be fine,” I told her, even though I wasn’t exactly sure that was true.
“Gurl, haven’t I told you, I’m your ride or die. Or should I say boat or die? On second thought, how about we not say ‘die’ when we’re heading out onto the open sea.”
With a snort, I slung an arm around her shoulders and gave her a squeeze. “You’re a really good friend, Marin, in case I haven’t told you lately.”
After a quick safety demonstration from the captain, Kai got to work on his legendary rum punch, and a deckhand passed out rods, offering help with baiting the lines.
Shira and Allegra, happy to enjoy the boat ride but morally opposed to harming any and all marine life, headed to the front to sunbathe, leaving Dad, Cannon, Marin, and me to fish.
The sun beat down from a cloudless sky, the horizon bleeding into the shimmering sea like a watercolor left too long in the rain. The boat rocked gently beneath us, the occasional squawk of a gull overhead the only sound above the slap of waves against the hull.
I sat near the stern, sunglasses hiding my eyes, a rod in my hands I hadn’t bothered to bait.
My dad was up front, fiddling with Cannon’s life jacket, while Shira slathered sunscreen on Allegra’s shoulders and pointed out something in the distance, another reef maybe, or a pelican dive-bombing for fish.
Marin lounged beside me, her baseball cap pulled low and a can of La Croix at her feet.
At first, the sea was calm, like a glass-bottomed pool. The water was so clear you could almost see all the way down to the reef. But as we crossed from the shallow turquoise into deeper blue-green, the waves started to swell. And once we hit the navy depths, they really began to roll.
I glanced over at Marin, who had taken on a pale, olive cast and was gripping the railing so hard her knuckles had gone white.
“Oof, you don’t look so hot,” I said gently.
“I don’t feel so hot.”
I brought her a bottle of cold water, rubbed her back, and asked, “What do you need? What can I get you?”
“Nothing. I’ll be fine. I took some Dramamine, so I’m just waiting for it to kick in. Once it does, though, it may knock me out, which could be for the best. Just didn’t want you to think I croaked.”
The captain dropped anchor and announced we’d reached a good spot for catching mahi-mahi.
I lifted my rod to cast, but it was heavier than I expected, nothing like the one I’d used the time I had gone fly-fishing with Dad.
I’d been just about twelve. Mom was off honeymooning in Spain with husband number three, and Dad had agreed to watch me for the week.
Cannon and Allegra were at art camp somewhere in the Adirondacks, and Shira couldn’t leave her yoga studio, so Dad took me to Wyoming on his annual fishing trip.
I don’t think we exchanged more than a handful of sentences that whole week.
Even so, out on the river with the current tugging at our legs, Dad carefully showed me how to thread the line and flick the rod, and for once, we were in sync.
And maybe for the first time ever, I felt a little bit close to my father.
But then, near the end of the trip, as we packed up the gear, he glanced over and said something like, “Not bad for a tagalong week.” He meant it as a joke, but it stuck with me, the idea that I would always be an unplanned invitee, an afterthought.
Because the truth was, I didn’t really fit into his new life, or Mom’s either.
It was then that I started building one of my own.
And the thing no one tells you is, once you get used to moving through the world in a way that doesn’t include anyone else, it gets so comfortable, so predictably safe that it only gets harder to make room for someone else.
Something that had become painfully clear in the way I couldn’t make room for Leo.
A couple of bigger swells hit the boat, and Marin suddenly went from pale khaki to army green.
“I think I’m gonna go . . . hic . . . and have a lie down in the cabin . . . hic.” She held a clenched fist in front of her mouth, as if desperately holding back whatever was threatening to come up.
“Want me to go with you?” I asked, feeling terrible that she’d even attempted this trip, now seeing her look more like a pimento olive than my best friend.
“No, I’d like to . . . hic . . . maintain my image of resilience and not have you see me . . . hic . . . curled up in a fetal position begging Poseidon for mercy,” Marin said and shuffled off to her self-imposed exile belowdecks.
“You know, she should really have stayed out here in the open air,” Dad murmured after Marin had already left. “She’s only going to feel worse inside. Do you need any help baiting your line?”
“No, I’ve got it.”
I skewered a slimy chunk of sardine onto the hook and cast it into the water. Cannon meandered off to the back of the boat, texting and completely oblivious to the gorgeous view, leaving Dad and me alone.
We gripped our poles side by side, the silence broken only by the sharp smack of water against the boat’s fiberglass hull. Like in Wyoming, we fished in peace and quiet, just a handful of words traded, nothing anyone would mistake for real conversation.
He reeled in and recast, then glanced at me sideways, finally breaking the awkwardness with, “So . . . have you been having a good time?”
The question echoed in my mind, dull and distant, like someone tapping on glass underwater.
Had I been having a good time?
The easy answer was no. Not after everything.
Not with the tension with Mom. Or the fact Matty was in Belize trying to get back into my good graces.
And especially not with Leo gone, vanished in the most impossible way, leaving behind only the imprint of his presence.
I could still feel him, somehow. The warmth of his hand at the small of my back, the shape of him next to me in bed, the way he always seemed to know what I needed before I said it.
And yet, it was like he’d never existed. No one remembered. Not Marin. Not Mom. Not even me, if I wasn’t careful. The details were already starting to feel slippery, like a dream I couldn’t quite hold on to.
And on top of that, there was the wedding itself. My parents, their tangled histories, my own resentment and exhaustion, all of it had bubbled up and out, like a pot left on the stove too long.
I wanted to scream, to cry, to laugh at the absurdity of it all. But mostly, I just wanted to go back to that hidden beach and feel the sun on my skin with Leo beside me, making dumb jokes about pirate treasure and eating our melted bars of Belizean chocolate.
Instead, I was here.
I wrapped my hands tighter around the fishing pole and swallowed the salty air thick in the back of my throat.
“Have I been having a good time?” I repeated, finally returning to his question. “Um . . . some parts,” I said. “The rest . . . I’m still trying to make sense of.”
Dad looked at me as if he expected me to continue.
“It’s complicated,” I exhaled.
“Complicated how?”
“Just complicated. Dad, can I ask you a question?”
“Course you can.”
“Why are you here?”
“You know I love to fish.”
“No, not here here,” I said, turning to face him. “Like here in Belize. Why after years of avoiding Mom would you come to her wedding?”
“I told you. We’ve buried the hatchet. We’ve both moved on, and honestly, we’re in good places now.
And I’ve come to realize that there’s really no point holding on to old baggage when there’s room for something lighter .
. . like, I don’t know, mutual respect and maybe even a bit of joy for one another.
Before everything got so messy, your mom and I were real friends.
The kind who rooted for each other no matter what.
I think after all these years, we’ve finally found our way back to that place.
Certainly sooner would have been more ideal, but better late than never. ”
“And what about me? Where did I ever fit into any of that? Because honestly, it never felt like I did.”