Irene can’t stand to hear another word. She moves to the captain’s seat. Niles is now on his knees on the bow banquette, earbuds in. He’s as still and majestic as a figurehead.
The earbuds, she supposes, are useful for blocking out his mother and sister.
Irene leans in to Huck. “They’re fighting back there.”
Huck nods to let Irene know he’s heard her, but he doesn’t seem to care. Maybe he’s thinking about Agent Vasco. Or, more likely, he’s trying to pick a good spot to anchor and cast. The engine noise makes most conversations impossible and yet the mother and daughter’s discussion has escalated to a screaming match. It’s impossible to ignore them.
“I’ll just ask Dad to pay for it, then!”
“Be my guest! See how far that gets you!”
“…bitter because Misty is way cooler than you…”
“Misty is twenty-six years old. She should be cooler than me…”
“I’m calling him now and telling him to book me a plane ticket home. I don’t want to be here! The only reason we’re here is because of Niles!”
“…selfish little…”
“…I have children, I’m going to love them all equally…”
“…sick, Altar…”
“I don’t care!” Altar screams. “I hate you and I hate Niles!”
Finally, Huck leans over to Irene. “I know it’s difficult, but you have to let them go. They obviously have things to work through.”
Irene wipes away the tears that are rolling down her cheeks. She’s crying for them but also for herself and for all families that have been broken.
Turns out, she’s not as tough as she thought.
When it sounds like Galen and Altar might actually come to blows—Galen grabs Altar’s phone and holds it over her head, threatening to throw it overboard—Irene moves up to the bow with two light tackle rods. She touches Niles on the back.
When he turns to see Irene holding both rods, his face lights up. Irene feels more tears building behind her eyes but she’ll be damned if she’s going to cry in front of Niles.
This last round of chemo is either going to put him in remission or it isn’t.
It’s going to put him in remission, Irene thinks. And right now, she’s going to put this kid on a fish.
A higher power must be with them because on his third cast, Niles gets a bite, and Irene can tell just by the bow of the rod that it’s something big—but what? There aren’t too many big fish to be found inshore, at least not that Irene has experienced firsthand.
Niles has a natural instinct for what to do. He reels with surprising tenacity and lets the spool go when the fish runs. He keeps the rod tip up and the handle pressed into his jutting hipbone. “What’s it gonna be?” Niles asks.
“I’m not sure,” Irene says.
Huck comes to check on them. “Tarpon, from the looks of it,” he says. “Big one.”
Sure enough, a little while later, Niles Goshen reels in a tarpon that is a big fish by anyone’s standards.
“I didn’t think it was the season for tarpon,” Irene says.
“It’s not, really,” Huck says. “But once in a while, the universe throws you a favor.”
They’re going to take the tarpon home. Huck gives Galen the card of a taxidermist who can stuff and mount it. Galen looks relieved and defeated. Altar is either asleep or pretending to be asleep behind her sunglasses.
Galen pulls Irene aside. “You have a good man there,” she says, nodding at Huck. “It’s clear how much he cares about you. I hope you don’t take that for granted.”
Irene can’t think of how to respond. He’s not my man? We’re not together? I’m just the mate on his boat? What if Irene were to tell Galen that, back on the first of the year, she had been a married magazine editor living in Iowa City, but then her husband was killed in a helicopter crash, and his secret life was revealed. Galen wouldn’t believe it. But if she did believe it, she might understand that everyone has her baggage and her sad stories. What differentiates people is how they choose to deal with them. Irene has done pretty well, she thinks, assuming the FBI aren’t waiting on the dock when they get back.
“I take nothing for granted,” Irene says.
On the way back to Cruz Bay, the sky darkens and there’s one loud thunderclap, followed by a torrential downpour. Irene hands the Goshens a couple of waterproof ponchos to hold over their heads; they are squeaking and squealing like they’re going to melt. As Irene stands under the canvas Bimini with Huck, she catches sight of Niles kneeling on the bow. His arms are open, his head back. He’s embracing the earth and all of her aspects.
It’s just rain, he seems to be saying. I will survive it.
The Goshens disembark early—they’ve barely been on the water for two hours—and Irene feels a strange melancholy, watching them go. She realizes she’ll never know what happens to the Goshen family. Will Altar have her birthday party? Will Niles live to be an adult? Will he hang the tarpon he caught off the coast of St. John in his home and gaze on it with pride in his fifties, in his sixties? Irene will be forgotten, lost, as soon as tomorrow or the next day. He will never know how hard Irene was rooting for him.
“Wow,” she says to Huck. She’s wet—and cold for the first time since she’s been here.
“D,” he says. “For difficult.”
“There’s no charter tomorrow, correct?”
“Correct,” Huck says. “You get a day off, unless something comes up at the last minute, which has been known to happen.”
Irene nods and wraps her arms around herself. She’s shivering.
Huck notices and holds his arms open.
She stares at him.
“I’m just offering you a hug,” Huck says. “That was tough on you and the news I greeted you with was no picnic either.”
Irene takes a tentative step toward him. He wraps his arms around her. It has been…well, a long time since a man held her like this. Russ, before he left for his “business trip” after Christmas? Had he hugged Irene or kissed her goodbye?
No, she remembers. She had been in Coralville returning some Christmas presents for Milly. She had been angry at Russ for leaving over the new year, and as punishment, she had denied him a proper goodbye.
She tries to remember what Christmas had been like. It was just the two of them in the morning in front of the tree, opening gifts. They had talked to each of the boys on the phone and they had joined Milly for the Christmas lunch served at Brown Deer.
Had they been intimate? Had they hugged and kissed? They’d held hands, she remembers, during the Christmas Eve service at First Presbyterian.
That had been nice, Irene supposes, but it hadn’t offered the comfort or the rush of this hug. Irene fits into Huck’s arms perfectly. His body is solid and warm. Can she trust him? She feels like the answer is yes—but she would have said exactly the same thing about Russell Steele. She would have said Russ was beyond reproach.
“Let me take you to dinner tonight,” Huck says in her ear. “Maia is with Ayers and I have an idea. We’ll go over to St. Thomas.”
St. Thomas is bigger, and they can be anonymous. For some reason, this suits Irene better than being seen out in Cruz Bay, where everyone knows Huck and might guess who Irene is.
“Okay,” she says.
Irene meets Huck back at the dock at six thirty. He told her to dress up and so she’s wearing a spring-green linen sheath with a belted middle, a dress she bought for Baker’s high-school graduation thirteen years earlier—right around the time that Russ met Rosie, although she tries to put this thought out of her mind.
Huck is wearing a blue button-down shirt, ironed khakis, and if Irene isn’t mistaken, there’s a navy blazer folded across the back of the captain’s seat.
This is a real date.
Huck has wine on the boat. He pours her a glass of Cakebread chardonnay—she can’t believe he remembered what kind of wine she likes—and he opens a beer for himself.
“We aren’t going far,” he says. “Just over to the yacht club in Red Hook. Fifteen minutes.”
They cruise out, nice and easy, across Sir Francis Drake Channel as the sun sets. Irene considers sitting in the bow and letting the wind catch her hair—it’s out of its braid tonight—but instead, she sits next to Huck where she can listen to the music, Jackson Browne singing “Running on Empty.” The sky glows pink and blue and gold; Huck is humming; Irene’s wine is crisp and cold. There is nothing wrong with this moment.
The world is a strange and mysterious place, Irene thinks. How is it possible that Russ’s web of deceit and his secret second life led Irene here? She laughs at the absurdity of it. Huck never met Russ but Russ certainly knew that Huck existed. What would Russ think if he could see Huck and Irene now? It turns Irene’s mind into a pretzel just considering it.
They pull into a slip at the St. Thomas Yacht Club and a cute young man in white shorts and a green polo hurries over to help with the ropes. He offers Irene a hand up to the dock.
“Captain Huck,” he says. “Good to see you again, sir. It’s been a while.”
“Good to see you, Seth,” Huck says. “Are we all set inside?”
“Yes, sir,” Seth says. “They’re ready for you. Enjoy your dinner.”
Huck offers Irene his arm and walks her down the dock. He’s wearing his blazer now and Irene is soothed by how at ease he seems and how gentlemanly he is as he opens the door to the club and ushers Irene inside.
The hostess, a stunning young West Indian woman, greets Huck with a kiss and introduces herself as Jacinda to Irene, then leads Huck and Irene to a table by the front window that overlooks the docks and the water. Irene can see the twinkling lights of St. John in the distance.
Theirs is the only table set. They are the only people in the dining room.
“Is it…always this empty?”
“The kitchen normally isn’t open tonight,” Huck says. “But they owe me a favor.”
So they are having a private dinner. The whole club, all to themselves.
“The prime rib is very good here,” Huck says. “I don’t know about you, but I’m sick of fish.”
They eat like royalty: Warm rolls with sweet butter, organic greens with homemade papaya vinaigrette, prime rib, baked potato with lots of butter and sour cream, and, for dessert, sabayon and berries. Huck and Irene drink wine with dinner, then end with a sipping rum, a twenty-five-year-old El Dorado that is even better than the Flor de Caña, Huck says.
They do not talk about the Vickerses’ arrest or what it might mean. They don’t talk about Russ or Rosie or real estate fraud or Todd Croft or frozen accounts. Irene pushes all that away, though during the natural lulls in the conversation, it feels like she’s holding an unruly mob behind a door. It feels, as they finish up dinner, like Agent Vasco has just taken a seat at the table; that’s how badly Irene wants to talk about it.
Instead, she says, “The mother on the boat today thought we were married. She said, ‘You have a good man there.’ She said she could tell how much you cared for me.” The instant these words are out, Irene feels her cheeks burn.
“I hate to break it to you, AC,” Huck says. “Everyone who gets on that boat thinks we’re married.” He reaches for Irene’s hand. “And everyone can see how much I care for you.”
They head back to the boat, hand in hand. There are stars overhead and it feels like there’s a bright, burning star in Irene’s chest. What is happening?
Huck helps Irene down into the boat. Before he turns on the running lights, he takes Irene’s face in his hands and he kisses her. The kiss is sweet but intense—and there is no room for thoughts of anything or anyone else, not even Agent Vasco.