Chapter 2
The drive home took eleven minutes.
Kirstin had timed it once, years ago, for no reason she could explain to anyone who asked.
Sailor Jon's to her driveway, eleven minutes if you caught the one light on Harbor Road green and didn't get stuck behind a tourist doing twenty on the causeway curve.
Late September, no tourists. She caught the light. Eleven minutes.
The island changed on the drive. Jon's end was the harbor, the strip, the bars, the restaurants, the noise.
Her end was trees. Live oaks closed over the road a mile past the elementary school and didn't open again until the pavement ended at the gravel loop of her driveway.
The marsh was on the left in the dark, silver when the moon hit it, invisible when it didn't. Palmettos crowded the shoulders.
The road narrowed until it felt like it belonged to one person, and most nights it did.
Her headlights swept the circular drive and caught the porch.
Jon was sitting on her steps.
Barefoot. Corona in his hand, lime wedged in the neck.
His truck was parked off the drive on the grass where he always parked it, close enough that the walk to the porch was short, far enough that he wasn't blocking her in.
He had his back against the railing and his legs stretched out and he was looking at the sky like a man who'd been out here for a while and hadn't minded.
Kirstin parked. Cut the engine. Sat for a second.
She loved him. She wanted to go to her beach.
She loved him and she wanted to sit in her chair in the dark with her book and the water and the tiki torches and the particular silence that came from being alone on a piece of sand that nobody else knew about.
Both of those things were true every time he showed up on her porch, and both of them were true right now.
She got out of the car.
"Hey, baby girl."
"Hey, Dad."
"Good night?"
"Long night."
He took a sip of his beer and watched her come up the steps. She sat down beside him. The porch boards were warm from the day and cool from the evening and the live oaks above them moved in whatever breeze was coming off the water.
"Busy?" he asked.
"Midweek busy."
"Right." He said it like midweek was a concept he respected but had never fully participated in.
Jon Green ran a bar. Jon Green also treated every shift like a conversation he was having with whoever walked through the door, and when the conversation ended, he went home.
The inventory, the ordering, the books, the staffing, the liquor license, the health inspection prep, the vendor negotiations, the broken ice machine, the blown speaker from the Fourth of July that still hadn't been replaced.
That was Kirstin. It had been Kirstin since she was twenty-three.
He didn't know that. Or he did and he'd never said it. She'd stopped trying to figure out which one it was around the time she turned twenty-six.
"I was thinking," Jon said.
"Dangerous."
"About the kitchen."
Kirstin leaned back against the railing. Her kitchen. The one she'd been talking about redoing for two years. New counters, new cabinets, tear out the tile backsplash and put in something that didn't look like it came with the house in 1994, because it had come with the house in 1994.
"What about it?"
"Nate Riley does good work."
"I know Nate does good work."
"So call him."
"I will."
"When?"
"When I'm ready."
Jon took a drink. The Corona was almost empty. He tilted it back and finished it and set the bottle beside him on the step, careful with the placement, because an uneven surface required attention.
"You've been ready for two years, Kirstin."
"Have I?"
"You picked the countertops in February."
"I picked the countertops. I didn't pick a timeline."
"You picked a timeline. You pick a timeline for everything. You picked a timeline for the festival three months out. You picked a timeline for the bar's insurance renewal six weeks early. You've got a timeline for everything except the things that are yours."
She didn't answer that.
The live oaks moved. Something small ran through the underbrush near the edge of the yard, fast and invisible. The ocean was there, past the trees, past her spot on the beach, the sound of it low and steady in the dark.
"Luke's new guy came in tonight," she said.
Jon perked up. "The ballplayer?"
"Ethan Beck."
"Hell of a player. I watched him rob a home run in the NLDS two years ago. Went over the wall in left-center. Full extension." Jon mimed the catch with his Corona-free hand. "Prettiest thing I've seen on a baseball field since Luke's double."
"He wore a hat inside."
Jon looked at her. "So?"
"So I made him take it off."
"Since when do we care about hats inside?"
"Since tonight."
Jon looked at her for a long moment. Then he finished the last drop of his beer that wasn't there and set the empty bottle down again.
"He good-looking?"
"Dad."
"I'm asking."
"You're fishing."
"Baby girl, I own a bar. I'm always fishing. Is he good-looking?"
Kirstin picked at a splinter on the porch step. "He's got a bad shoulder."
"That's not what I asked."
"It's what I answered."
Jon laughed. Quiet. Easy. The same laugh she'd been hearing her whole life, the one that said he was entertained by the world and the world was entertaining him back.
Her mother had left when Kirstin was nine.
Jon had raised her alone. He'd done it with Corona and Jimmy Buffett and a bar that smelled like fried shrimp and a philosophy that amounted to: the day's going to happen whether you're ready or not, so you might as well enjoy the parts you can.
She'd spent her whole life organizing the parts he couldn't see.
"You know what this island needs?" Jon said.
"More parking."
"A law office."
The words sat on the porch between them.
"A law office," Kirstin said.
"Small one. Somebody who knows the island. Knows the people. Real estate closings, contracts, permits. Everybody drives to the mainland for a lawyer. Nobody wants to drive to the mainland for a lawyer."
"You're talking about me."
"I'm talking about the island."
"You're talking about me, Dad."
He shrugged. The Jimmy Buffett shrug. The one that said I'm not going to argue with you because arguing takes energy I could spend on something better, like this beer that's already empty.
"Maybe I'm talking about both."
Kirstin looked at the yard. Brady had done it for her.
The landscaping, the path to the beach, the little deck down there with the roof and the chairs.
She'd asked him and Morgan and sworn them both to secrecy, and Brady had spent two weekends grading the path and building the deck and Morgan had helped her pick the tiki torches and the lanterns and neither of them had told a soul.
That spot was hers. The bar was theirs. The house was hers.
The kitchen she hadn't started was hers. The beach was hers.
The bar prep materials were in the second bedroom closet. Top shelf. The box was taped shut. She'd taped it shut four years ago and she could feel the tape from here.
"I'm happy, Dad."
"I know you are."
"The bar is good."
"The bar is great."
"I like my life."
"I know you do, baby girl." He put his hand on her knee. Once. Brief. The calluses from thirty years of bottle openers and bar rags and fishing line. "I just don't want you waking up one morning and realizing you built my life instead of yours."
The live oaks moved. The ocean was out there. Her spot was out there, the chairs and the deck and the book she was halfway through, waiting for her in the dark.
"I didn't build your life," she said. "I built ours."
"That's what scares me."
She turned to look at him. He was watching the yard. The porch light caught the lines around his eyes and the gray in his hair and the tan that never faded.
"Why does that scare you?"
"Because your mother said the same thing. Right before she left."
The sentence landed in the dark between them and stayed there.
Kirstin didn't move.
Jon didn't move.
The ocean kept going. The live oaks kept going. The island kept going, indifferent to the things people say on porches at midnight.
"I'm not Mom," she said.
"No," he said. "You're not. Your mother left because she wanted something else. I'm afraid you're staying because you think you can't."
She opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.
Nothing came out.
Jon reached over and took her hand. Gently. No fuss. The thing in his hand was already safe and he was just confirming it.
"You could do anything, Kirstin. You know that, right? You could go anywhere. Be anything. And I'd be fine. The bar would be fine. I'd hire somebody. I'd burn the place down and retire. I'd fish."
"You don't fish."
"I'd learn."
"You'd be terrible at it."
"I'd be spectacular at it. I'd catch fish that don't exist yet."
She laughed. The tired one. The late-night one. The one that only came out when she was sitting next to the person who'd raised her and he was being ridiculous in a way that made the world feel manageable.
"I don't want to leave," she said.
"I know."
"I love the island."
"I know you do, baby girl."
He was quiet for a moment. The ocean filled the space.
"Then why do you love that damn bar so much?"
She put her head on his shoulder.
"Because it's ours, daddy."
Jon put his arm around her. They sat on the porch in the dark with the kitchen she hadn't started and the box she hadn't opened and the man at the bar she hadn't stopped thinking about since he took off his hat.