B009XDDVN8 EBOK (52 page)

“Charts?” I said. “You need charts, Harry? I’m disappointed.”

“You’re just showing off your ignorance there, Johnny. I haven’t done the ditch in a while and them engineers, they’re always changing things. You take a wrong turn, and before you know it, you’re floating like an oil-soaked gull in the Gulf.”

The final thing I bought was a cell phone, prepaid. Only one now, since I wasn’t anymore on the run. And a cheap one, without all kinds of spaces for all kinds of stored contacts, because there was only one number I cared about.

It was a slow sail through the gorgeous scenery, and all in all it was the most time in one stretch I had ever spent with my daughter. I thought we would talk all about it, the ordeal, the trauma, those hours and days of terror she spent in the backseat of Holmes’s car, but we barely mentioned it. In fact, we barely talked about anything deeper than the color of the sunset or the coolness of the breeze. At first it was frustrating, like there was this great gap between us that we both were afraid to fill, but then the frustration eased as I realized this was how it was between us, and probably how it always would be. Sometimes you say all you need to say with your very presence.

But once I did push her for an answer. I wanted to know, I needed to know, what she felt when she realized I had come to Derek’s house to rescue her. It was selfish of me, of course, I wanted some acknowledgment of my hero moment. Was she surprised? Was she pissed at me? Was she thrilled to her bones?

“The whole time, I knew you would come,” said Shelby, when I finally prodded her hard enough. “And then you did. Eric says you’re the Batman.”

“He reads too many comic books.”

“Uh, yeah, he does, and you should do something about that. But still, because of him I wasn’t surprised when you appeared. I was just a little pissed that it took you so long.”

“I got hung up,” I said.

“What’s going to happen to those men?”

“Something bad, I hope.”

“What did the police say?”

“That they’d take care of it.”

“I hope they never get out,” she said with a note of bitterness that stopped me from asking anything more.

And that was it, the sum total of our chat about her abduction and rescue. She wasn’t going to say anything more to me, I was just her daddy. That’s why they invented therapists. But she often leaned her head on my shoulder as we sat on the bow, admiring the sunset, and that said enough for me. Which was a good thing, because on the ride up she spent more time talking with Harry than with her father. Harry let her fuss around the boat, happy to have someone to whom he could explain all the ins and outs of the maritime arts, all the stuff I couldn’t care about in the least. Harry taught her how to drive the boat, how to read the gauges and charts. He turned her into his navigator, and she loved it. And I think she grew to love him, too, which touched me in a way I hadn’t expected and made me think again about my dad.

We relaxed and sunned ourselves and ate like kings on what Harry cooked on the cookstove in the galley: tugboat scampi, ragtime catfish stew. Shelby’s skin darkened from the sun and she eschewed her overwrought eyeliner and every day, to my eyes, she grew more beautiful. In South Carolina, we stayed an extra night at one of the marinas because Harry knew someone
who knew someone in the Department of Natural Resources. We arrived in Beaufort on the
Second Chance
out of Fort Lauderdale and left on the
Slim Chance
out of Port Royal, the boat now legally registered and fully titled to one Harry Conahan of Newport News, Virginia.

“What are you going to do with it, Harry?” I said.

“A boat this slick don’t really fit me.”

“Why not? You’re a man of the world.”

“But not this world. Fiberglass is like a woman I fell in with from New Orleans, nimble and quick when you first gets hold of her, sure, but when she goes, she goes fast. Wood’s like my first wife, dependable. This time I’ll keep what I got. My boat upstate is homey.”

“It’s a clunker.”

“But it’s my clunker. And if I can sell this for near what it’s worth, I can get out of that debt I was telling you about and have enough leftover for a party.”

“A hell of a party.”

“Sure will be,” he said. “Me and them Koreans, we’ll be playing dominoes till dawn.”

All the time Shelby spent with Harry gave me plenty of time to think, and plenty of time to talk on the phone, and who I was talking to was Caitlin. We spoke at length, multiple times a day, we talked about our lives together, about the kids, the house, the lies.

There was something about talking on the phone with my wife as we churned up the waterway that was addictive. It was as if she were a different person entirely, one with whom I had never talked before. It felt vaguely illicit. Outside of her physical presence, with her intimidating beauty and her disapproving eyes, I felt brave enough to open all my truths to her, all but one. And she, assured now of the safety of her daughter, and with the distance loosing her natural reticence, seemed to feel the same. We talked more on that trip up the ditch, and talked about more, than through the whole of our married life together.

And this is what we determined, both of us, with sadness and regret, but not without a touch of optimism for the future: our marriage was finished, was irrevocably over, our marriage was dead. Like a salmon washed up on shore, its belly bloated, its eyes pecked out by a crow, dead.

And yet, still we talked.

Even after we agreed that our past had been more barren than we had ever imagined, that our present was based on quicksand, and that our future together would revolve around shuffling Shelby and Eric back and forth between us until they graduated into their own lives, we continued to talk. Each morning while I drank my coffee as the sun rose full of promise on our right, I could barely wait to place my first call of the day to her. And each evening, as the sun died to our left and I digested another of Harry’s feasts, I looked forward to opening a beer and making that final call of the day. The relationship I was creating with the woman on the phone was nothing like what I had developed with my wife, and I couldn’t get enough of it. It was maybe the truest thing I had ever held in my life.

But it was over before it even started. And the closer we got to home, the more bereft I felt. It was as if all I had to grab on to anymore was this thing we had created for ourselves over the phone, this fragile beautiful thing with the lifespan of a copper butterfly. And our week was just about up.

“I’m confused, Harry,” I said on the final afternoon of our trip north, as Shelby piloted us up the James River. “And I’m scared, and I’m confused about why I’m scared.”

“I’m always confused there, Johnny. Confusion for me is like water to a fish, I wouldn’t know how to breathe without it. My theory’s always been, if you ain’t confused about something, then you’re living wrong.”

“Is that why you drink?”

“That’s why I fish. Fishing calms the nerves, eases doubts. Fishing makes sense. I drink because I like it.”

“I owe you, Harry.”

“No, you don’t. I made out fine, and had an adventure to boot.”

“You’ve been a good friend.”

“We been good friends is more like it.”

“I’m going to miss you.”

“I ain’t dead yet, sonny. You know what that thing is jutting out there?”

“Yes I do.”

“I like that wife of yours.”

“So do I.”

“Good,” he said. “About time you knowed it.”

In the distance was the long stone jetty that led to the Patriots Landing marina. As Shelby drove us closer, I made my way around to the bow of the motorboat and stood, leaning forward on the guardrail, shielding my eyes from the sun as I searched the docks. We were already sliding into the inlet when I saw them, two figures, a woman and a boy, both peering out at us just as I was peering in at them.

And I wasn’t confused one bit about what I felt.

I
T WAS A
sunny day in Vegas when I said good-bye to Augie one last time.

Three of us stood in front of the tombstone, Ben and Selma and I. The stone was a simple rectangle, carved with the applicable dates, the inscription: A G
OOD
S
ON AND A
G
OOD
F
RIEND
, and the name: A
UGIE
I
ANNUCCI
, D.D.S.

“Nice touch,” I said to Selma. “Somewhere his mother’s smiling.”

“I should have put something snazzier on it,” said Selma, leaning heavily on her cane. “He would have liked something snazzier.”

“You did fine,” I said.

“Truth is, I didn’t know much about him.”

“He was a good son,” said Ben. “Instead of going to college, he took care of his dad when his dad was sick.”

“That’s sweet,” said Selma.

“He didn’t make much of a deal of it,” I said, “but it was bigger than he wanted to admit. He was that kind of kid.”

“And he was a good friend,” said Ben.

I kneeled down and said softly to the stone, “I followed your advice the whole way, bub. They paid and we’re still here. Thanks.” I reached into my pocket and pulled out an old twenty-dollar bill, three pieces taped together. I put it right on top of the
grass, spread it out as best I could. When it curled up, I spread it out again. That’s when the words on the headstone got fuzzy.

“You can’t leave it there,” said Selma. “Someone will take it.”

“I hope so,” I said. “Maybe it will end up buying one last drink.”

When I stood and turned around, I tried to hide my tears with a smile. Shelby was there, and Eric. And Caitlin, too. Imagine that.

We didn’t fly into Vegas, we drove. It wasn’t quite on the way, but it was close enough. The family had decided to make the trip on the spot, all of us. And the spot on which we made the decision was at Patriots Landing, right in front of our house, or what was left of it.

After hugs and tears of greetings, the four of us had walked together from the dock to the house. And as we made our way up the hill, my father’s rusted green toolbox was still in my hand. I had thought of giving its contents away, tossing it to some charity to be free of the burden, but just as quick as the idea came I strangled it until its eyes bulged. A hundred thou, free and clear, finally. Not as much as I expected to move on with, but still something. And for a lot of reasons I needed something. At the end of our walk we stood before the blackened shell of what had been our George Washington, now a charred pit of refuse and rubble wrapped in yellow police tape. Clevenger had said he was going to help me extract whatever equity I had in the place, and this was his way. There was never anything subtle about Clevenger. If he had any charm at all, that was it.

“I have a contractor coming out tomorrow to level it,” said Caitlin.

“Good.”

“The neighbors have been complaining.”

“I bet they have.”

“We’ve been cited.”

“I always wanted to be cited,” I said. “But in the
New York Times
, not by the Patriots Landing Homeowners Association.” Eric laughed at that, which I liked. “Did you guys find anything worth keeping?”

“I found my baseball glove halfway burned,” said Eric. “I finished the job.”

“Good boy.”

“Everything was junk,” said Caitlin.

“Before or after the fire?”

“Are you suddenly getting philosophical on us, Dad?” said my daughter, smiling.

“Hey, I’ve read Camus,” I said.

“Dad.”

“What?”

“The
s
is silent.”

“Oh, those funny little French.”

“The insurance company wants to know if we’re going to rebuild,” said Caitlin.

“I don’t think so,” I said. “Unless you…”

“No, that’s fine,” said Caitlin. “That’s great. We can sell the lot, I’m sure. Someone will build something bigger, grander, some great monstrous house with a movie theater in the basement. They always do.”

“So what are we going to do?” said Shelby. “I mean, living-wise?”

“Any ideas?” said Caitlin.

“Maybe we’ll take the insurance proceeds and buy you that Patrick Henry you always wanted,” I said, “while I get an apartment in Divorcé Estates.”

“Sammy’s dad lives there,” said Eric, “and he says it smells like old socks dipped in pee.”

“I think we’re done with Patriots Landing,” said Caitlin, “don’t you?”

“God, yes,” I said.

“Let’s go someplace new,” said Shelby.

“Are you sure?” I said. “What about Luke?”

“That’s over,” said Caitlin. “I think the police showing up and asking about Shelby was a bit too much for Luke’s parents to take.”

“He’s a jerk anyway,” said Shelby.

“Remember what I told you?” I said.

She looked at me, fresh faced and happy, and smiled like we were coconspirators, like we were suddenly in a league of our own. “Let’s get out of Virginia. I’m sick of Virginia.”

“You and me both,” I said.

“And Eric will survive a move as long as he doesn’t have to play Little League,” said Caitlin.

“Just no winters,” said Eric. “I already quit skiing.”