Page 60 of Passing Ships

“Are you pregnant again?”

She shakes her head as she swipes at her eyes. “No, I’m not. I’m being serious. I know you don’t need it, but damn if you don’t deserve it,” she whispers.

“Maybe …”

“Just answer me this: what do you feel when you’re with him?”

The corner of my mouth twitches.

“Not those feelings. These feelings,” she says, tapping my chest just above my heart.

I glance away from her as I contemplate the answer.

“It’s like my mind is always racing and there’s so much constant background noise, but when he opens his arms and I crawl into them, everything goes quiet,” I admit.

“There it is,” she declares.

“What?” I ask.

“Peace.”

Lennon

Sebastian and I run to the butcher shop at the wharf to pick up four bone-in rib eye steaks and then pop into the market for potatoes, zucchini, and onions while the girls take a sleepy Leia in for a shower and a nap.

“I think Gramps is going to retire at the end of this season,” he says as we make our way back to the cabana.

“Sebby? Retire? Yeah, right,” I say.

“I’m serious. This morning, he asked me and Anson if we knew anyone who had boating experience and was looking for a job. He’s been scheduling himself for charters less and less. He doesn’t do any deep seas anymore, sticking to brackish waters only. I think he’s ready to hang up his captain’s hat.”

“I can’t see him sitting at home all day,” I say.

He and Nana are getting up there in age, sure, but they’re both still spry.

“I don’t think he intends to do that, but he wants to slow down. Show up when he wants, goof off with Donnie Dale, and just relax and fish for fun,” he explains.

I nod. That makes sense.

My first earliest memories of Gramps are of him having fun, standing tall and strong at the helm of his old fishing boat, The Minnow’s Heart. He was as much a part of it as the ropes and sails. I’d sit on a crate near the stern, legs dangling over the edge, watching the waves cut through the hull as we cruised out of the harbor before dawn. Gramps always called the sea “our true north,” and he said that old boat was our compass, always pointing the way forward, no matter the weather. Sebastian and I learned a lot back then. Gramps may be a quiet man, but he didn’t need words to teach us. We learned by watching him. His hands, thick and scarred from years of hauling nets, coiling rope and checking engines. “Watch the birds, boys,” he’d say, nodding toward the seagulls circling overhead. “They know where the fish are.” He’d stand at the bow, scanning the horizon with those sharp blue eyes of his, the one’s that both Sebastian and I inherited, like he could read the ocean better than any map or radar ever could. He trusted his instincts and we trusted him. That’s what makes him such a good captain, and a good grandfather. The best. He didn’t just lead, he let us find our own way, even if it meant messing up a few knots or dropping a line too soon. He’d just chuckle, and the sound made us feel like nothing could go wrong as long as Gramps was there. I miss that old boat, she was the one that he started the charter company with, and she’s been retired for many years now. She wasn’t big, but she was sturdy. You could hear every groan and creak in her bones. Gramps convinced us that the boat was alive, that you could feel her mood if you paid close enough attention. Sebastain and I would lie on our bellies with our ears to the deck and try so hard to listen. The thought makes me laugh now. If she did speak, she had her own language and only Sebby could understand it.

I wonder where The Minnow’s Heart is now?

“Maybe you could come to work a few charters,” Sebastian says, pulling me from my memories.

“Sure. But I’m only here for two more weeks.”

“No. I was just thinking, if you do move back and take that job on Oak Island, you could come on part-time. Work a couple of days a week. You said the Coast Guard would be four ten-hour days, right?”

“I haven’t worked on a fishing boat since I was in high school, Seb.”

He shrugs. “It’s like riding a bike. If you can captain one of those big ole Navy ships, you can captain one of our vessels.”

Those days on the boat with Gramps, observing the life he carved out on those waters, the respect he had for it, is what drove me to enlist. He taught me that the sea wasn’t something you conquered—it was something you worked with. Something you learned to understand.

“I don’t know, brother. The Coast Guard isn’t a sure thing yet, and Wade wants me to buy into his business. But one thing is for sure: I need to come home because I don’t want to get the call one day that Sebby’s gone and I missed his last years,” I say.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Gramps doesn’t have a foot in the grave,” he bellows.

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