Chapter 5 - The Ebb Tide
By nine o’clock, the Second Wind was as quiet as a church after the collection plate has been counted.
The guests had drifted away in small, murmuring clumps, their goodbyes to me hushed and respectful, their glances at Vanessa—who had spent the last twenty minutes scrubbing tea stains off her mint dress with a wet paper towel in the head—cold and clinical as winter fog. Phillip had driven her away in their black Audi twenty minutes ago, neither of them speaking a single word as the tires crunched over the gravel of the marina parking lot.
Sam and Pete stayed behind to help me clear the wreckage.
We didn't talk much while we worked. Sam swept the shattered pieces of Ruth’s tea set into a heavy canvas sail-repair bag, handling the shards of blue cranes with the careful, reverent movements of a man burying a shipmate at sea. Pete wiped down the sticky crimson fruit juice from the mahogany dining table with a bucket of salt water and a coarse rag, his movements rhythmic and steady.
I sat on the corner of the stern bench, the dark green velvet of my dress bunched around my knees, holding the small teak wooden box Daniel had left in the safe.
“You want me to drop these at the house tomorrow, Kate?” Sam asked, his voice low as he knotted the neck of the canvas bag filled with porcelain shards.
“No, Sam,” I said, looking out across the dark, oily surface of the marina where the red and green harbor lights blinked lazily against the black water of the breakwater. “Keep them here. In the captain’s locker. Until we make the drop off Catalina next Thursday.”
Sam paused, his weather-beaten hands resting on the neck of the canvas sack. He nodded once, slow and deep. “Aye. Catalina. Coordinates 33-24 North, 118-29 West. Right where he asked you to marry him under that canvas awning on the old cutter.”
“Forty-five years ago,” I murmured, my thumb tracing the brass inlay of the steering wheel on the teak box.
“He never forgot a bearing in his life, Kate,” Pete said, tossing his wet rag into the bucket with a soft splash. “And he didn't miss one at the end, either. That boy of yours… well, Phillip’s a good lad, but he married a squall disguised as a fair-weather day.”
“He’ll learn how to tack,” I said, standing up and shaking out the heavy folds of my velvet skirt. “Or he’ll founder. That’s the thing about the sea, Pete. It doesn't care who your father was. It only cares how you trim your sails when the wind shifts.”
They left around ten, walking down the wooden finger pier together with that slow, rolling gait of men who had spent more time on teak decks than concrete pavements.
I stayed on the Second Wind alone for a long time.
I walked up to the wheelhouse, turned on the amber chart light, and opened the small wooden box. Inside, beneath the legal deeds and the old gold wedding band that didn't fit Daniel’s fingers, lay a single folded piece of lined notebook paper written in his heavy, familiar block-letter hand.
Kate, If you’re reading this, Sam was smart enough to give you the key, and Vanessa just proved why I changed the locks on the rest of our lives. Don't mourn the tea set, sweetheart. Porcelain breaks. But the boat—and you—always knew how to ride out the worst of it. See you off the point next week. — D.
I folded the paper back up, tucked it safely inside the pocket of my velvet dress, and walked out onto the stern deck.
The wind had died down completely. The Marina del Rey basin was smooth as dark glass, reflecting the neon signs of the shoreline restaurants and the steady, blinking white light of the harbor entrance.
May you like
I reached out, picked up the bronze urn resting beside the empty space where Ruth’s tea set had stood, and gave the metal surface a gentle, affectionate tap with my fingernail.
“Don't worry, old man,” I whispered out across the dark water toward the open Pacific. “We’re still holding course.”
