Page 31 of His Loving Wife

“Should I lock the door?” Andrew asks.

“No,” I say, playfully pushing him away from me. The kids sound wide awake.

“Yeah, I need to get moving anyway. I have to be at the boat rental place in less than an hour.”

“No wonder the kids are full of energy. Today we’re going sailing.”

Andrew stands, adjusting his clothes and begins to walk to the door. “Are you coming with us?”

“I think I might try. And Andrew?” He waits inside the doorframe and looks back. “Thank you for everything.”

He smiles. “Let’s just make today the perfect day, okay?”

“Deal.”

Chapter 15

Now

I used to love the water. As kids, it seemed to be the only activity Aster and I both enjoyed. We didn’t like the same games or toys or television shows, but we both loved going to the lake in the summer.

After my parents’ divorce, Mom stayed in the home where we had grown up. Dad bounced around from city to city, until he eventually retired and bought a small cabin by the lake. After the kids were born, we began visiting him in the summer, and it seemed my love for the water outweighed the bitterness I had toward him.

“Are you ready?” Andrew asks, interrupting my thoughts. He’s standing on the dock, having just brought the boat back to the vacation house.

It’s a standard fishing boat with a covered center console and a motor on the back. It’s over twenty feet in length, mostly white, with a thick black trim around the sides and chrome railing along the edges. There are padded seats on either end of the boat. The idea of stepping onboard makes my knees buckle.

“Awesome,” Noah shouts, running up behind me. “I’ve already got our fishing gear ready to go.”

“I have a few more things I need to check,” Andrew says. “It wouldn’t be a bad idea to take some sandwiches for the trip.”

“I’ll make some,” I say, almost too eagerly, turning back toward the house.

Andrew grabs my arm. “You’re okay with this, right?”

“I’m fine,” I say, but my words sound like they are choking. “It’ll be fun.”

On my walk back into the house, I pass Willow. Her eyes are wide, fixated on the boat.

“Cool,” she says. “Noah, take my picture.”

I go back inside, standing by the counter. I exhale and close my eyes, try to shoo away the worries in my mind.

Dad lived at the lake house up until his death. We’d continue to visit him there; his social calendar was far too busy for him to see us. I did it out of duty and the fact I thought my children deserved a grandfather more than I deserved the right to hold a grudge. We made many great memories there, not quite powerful enough to wipe away the bad ones from my childhood, but enough to let me know I made the right decision in allowing him to remain in our lives.

Two years ago, my dad went out fishing in the afternoon, as he always did. Everything had been typical, except for the fact he never returned. Another fisherman spotted his boat the next day. It was floating in the middle of the lake, empty except for a lunchbox and some fishing gear. Dad was nowhere to be found.

The initial worry didn’t settle in until much later. My father was stubborn and selfish, but undeniably self-reliant. A series of assumptions crossed my mind about what might have happened. Maybe he returned as usual, his boat had become untethered and drifted away, and Dad was out and about somewhere, unaware there was currently an active search taking place. Or maybe he’d run into trouble, but found a way out of it, again unaware how the situation might present itself to onlookers. Wherever he was, he was safe, the same old son-of-a-bitch he’d always been.

Four days later, we received the call that divers had found a body in the lake. We still don’t know exactly what happened. Dad followed safety regulations to a tee; I can’t imagine he would enter the water in an unsafe area, let alone leave his lifejacket on the boat. Whatever happened, the end result was my father had died, his body already bloated and swollen. At least that’s the image Aster conveyed after she made the identification.

Selfishly, I was happy she’d been called to identify his body and not me. Although I’m too stubborn to admit it, Aster is in some ways the stronger of the two of us. The most like Dad. She was always his girl, and I was always Mom’s. Whether they’d intended for that to happen after their divorce or not, our allegiances were divided, a separation that impacts my relationship with my sister to this day.

I had a complicated relationship with my father, but that didn’t ease my mourning. I missed him intensely, in a way I might not have predicted before his death. I’d lived a vast majority of my life without him—that part wasn’t new. I suppose I thought when the time came, I’d have some type of warning. With Dad, that wasn’t the case. He was there, then he was gone. The last time I’d seen him—three months before he died—there was no indication it would be the last time.

Aster and I had planned a weekend to sort through his belongings at the lake house—we were the only two left. Dad was an only child, and the only family he had left other than us was a long line of bitter ex-wives, our mother included. We spent the days going through each drawer and closet, mostly trashing what was left behind. In the afternoons, we’d unwind on the dock, looking over the water that had taken our father’s life so suddenly. A peaceful looking beast, it was.

By the end of our trip, Andrew had decided to drive up with the kids. Aster had talked us into taking the boat out, and that’s when the panic first set in. Out there on the water, the land and trees a pinprick on the horizon, I felt like I was suffocating. Like the same dangers that had claimed my father’s life were rising, ready to swallow me whole.

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