Epilogue
I’m fifty-three now.
The Summer still smells the same—salt and sunscreen and fried dough drifting in from somewhere along the a Main Street. Or maybe it’s just that summer always smells like memory if you let it.
Music spills out of a bar as we pass. A cover band. Something familiar, warped just enough to feel distant, like it’s echoing from another life. I don’t even know the song, but my chest tightens anyway. It loosens a door I don’t open anymore.
“Daddy?”
I look down. Hayden’s hand is warm in mine, sticky as melted ice cream drips down from her waffle cone, streaking her fingers and wrist. She’s eight—sun-browned knees, wind-tangled hair, the world still wide open in front of her.
“You okay?” she asks.
“Yeah,” I say too fast. Then I soften it. “Yeah, sweetie. I’m okay.”
I hand her a napkin. She laughs like it’s the funniest thing that’s ever happened and licks at the runaway ice cream with total focus. We slow our pace, heading toward the marina, the boards warm under my sandals. Boats rock gently in their slips, lines creaking, masts clicking in the breeze.
She hops up onto a bench and swings her legs, humming, ice cream forgotten for the moment.
I stand there and stare at the water.
That’s when it hits me.
Not all at once. It never does.
It comes in layers. The slap of water against fiberglass becomes laughter. The smell of diesel turns into beer and sunscreen and charcoal smoke. I see bodies sprawled on a deck at dawn, empty bottles rolling, someone cooking eggs they don’t remember buying.
Those summers.
My summers.
The best years of my life.
And the worst.
Back then, I thought time was elastic. That you could stretch it, bend it, make more of it if you wanted badly enough. I didn’t know how quietly it slips away.
I love my daughter more than anything. I wouldn’t trade her for a second of my past.
But God.
If I had known how fast it all goes…
I turn—and stop.
My breath leaves me like a punch to the gut.
There it is.
The boat.
Same name painted on the stern. Artemis.
Same home port beneath it—Plymouth, Massachusetts.
Boats don’t change that. Ownership comes and goes, but the bones stay the same.
It’s an unspoken rule. You leave her regal with her birth name- the one she gets when she’s first hoisted down into the water for the first time.
My hands start to shake.
I walk closer, slow, like it might disappear if I move too fast. I rest my palm against the hull. Solid. Real. Teak decks gleaming in the moonlight.
I close my eyes.
And it all rushes back.
The music. Last Night by the Stokes.
The late nights that blurred into morning.
Beth laughing in the galley.
Tony at the grill.
The boys shouting over each other.
The water at midnight—black, endless, full of promise.
Her.
Always her.
The heat. The hunger. The way everything burned brighter because it couldn’t last.
When I open my eyes, tears are running down my face.
I don’t bother wiping them away.
“Daddy?” Hayden says, hopping down now, worry replacing playfulness.
I crouch in front of her, swiping at my cheeks, embarrassed and undone all at once.
“It’s okay,” I tell her. “Just… memories.”
She considers that, serious in a way only kids can be. Then she presses her half-eaten cone into my hand.
“Here,” she says. “Ice cream makes everything better, right?”
I laugh. A real one. It cracks something open and seals something else shut.
“Yeah,” I say. “It does.”
Later that night, after she’s asleep—sunburned, exhausted, happy—I sit on the balcony with my phone.
I don’t know why I do it. Curiosity, maybe. Nostalgia. A need to know where everyone landed.
Beth first.
New Jersey. Married. Golden retrievers. Smiling kids. A life that looks warm and earned.
My thumb hovers over Add Friend.
I don’t press it.
Some doors are better left closed.
I scroll through a few more names. Faces I recognize but don’t really know anymore. Lives that moved on without me.
Then—
Her.
Everything is private.
Of course it is.
Her profile says one thing: Chicago.
She was always a city girl.
I hesitate, then Google.
Her name. Chicago. Sales rep.
It doesn’t take long.
There she is, in a business profile photo. Tailored suit. Same hair, though the sun has taken its toll. The years have etched themselves more deeply into her face than into mine.
She looks weathered.
Still beautiful.
She’s selling IT security software now. Corporate. Polished. Professional.
Still single, from what I can tell.
Something tightens in my chest.
Sad for her.
Sad for us.
Sad for what might have been if we could only control our tempers and ourselves.
I close the browser before the ache can hollow me out.
Outside, the music starts up again. Another cover song drifting through the warm night air.
I slip my phone away, take one last look at the dark water, and go inside.
Hayden stirs in her sleep when I take her hand, curls warm against her cheek.
Some summers never leave you.
They just learn how to hurt quieter.
And still, even after everything, the night smells like salt and possibility.