Page 40 of The Captain
I thumbed back.
Me:1100 works. Bring anything with “Typhon” on it. Thank you.
I didn’t tell her I was grateful for an officer who understood how to be a person in a room where uniform usually wins. Ididn’t tell her I needed numbers to lean on because my legs were shot.
When I looked up, my dad stood at the edge of the pen aisle like a dock post that had always been there. He must have come in quiet. He always did. He took in the sling, the towels, my face, in that order.
“Ma fille,” he said, not surprised and not curious, because he is the kind of man who waits for you to bring him your trouble in your time.
“Papa,” I said, and the word broke something small.
He kissed my hair, a father’s benediction, the kind that makes you furious because it’s simple when nothing else is. “Do you need me to move steel,” he asked. “Or only to stand here and be the tallest thing in the room.”
“Stand,” I said, laughing on an inhale that hurt. “Please.”
He stood. It helped.
Later, walking alone, I took the long way through the facility, the one that takes you past the rehab freezer and the old photos and the wall where we keep the names of the ones we couldn’t bring back. I stopped at the sink and finally let the tears go the way you let a wave that’s too big roll you once so you don’t crack your head on the next one. I pressed both palms to the cool metal and let my shoulders shake without sound. I counted to twenty. I washed my face.
Back at the pens, the world had not fallen apart without me. It never does. That’s the humility and the cruelty of this work: the ocean keeps moving, with or without your pretty feelings.
My phone lay face down under the towel like a patient I hadn’t decided to triage. I lifted the corner, as if the device might bite me. No new texts.
Behind me, the Kogia took a clean breath. I put my hand on her flank and felt the small slide of muscle under skin. Living. In and out. The smallest obedience.
“Breathe,” I told her. And then, because I am not a woman who lets a man own the best thing he said to her, I told myself.
I didn’t have to decide anything about Jacob in that moment. I didn’t have to call him back or throw my phone in the river. I didn’t have to pick a villain or forgive a thing I did not yet understand. I had to keep two animals alive and be ready to face a uniform at eleven and say the words that would move resources where they needed to go.
My father’s quiet shape at the edge of the aisle steadied the whole room. Tamika’s watchful silence, Miguel’s strong hands doing big things without asking for praise, Becca’s soft orbit that never crossed a line. They were close without crowding. Present without prying.
It sank in that I was held up by good people who wanted nothing from me but the chance to help.
I was lucky, even with salt still burning the back of my throat.
I could hold the distance and the not knowing and the ache like a handful of sharp shells. I could bleed a little and still do the work.
I ran my hand down the Kogia’s side again, counting. “One,” I said to her. “Two. Three.” I kept going until my voice stopped shaking and the numbers were a rope I could hold.
Outside, the tide kept time. Inside, my chest found a slower setting.
I didn’t know who Jacob was to me. I knew who I was to the water. I chose that and let the rest sit where it had to.
17
JACOB
The surf lapped at my ankles, a warm, indifferent pull that didn’t care about the sting on my cheek or the ache in my chest. I stood there, water dripping, my breath ragged, the mother’s screams still echoing—pedophile, creep, monster.
The little girl’s question—Who’s Lily?—cut deeper than the slap.
Camille’s shocked eyes, wide and unreadable at the edge of the dune, were a blade all their own. I’d wanted to run after her, explain, make her see I wasn’t what that woman said. But her silence, her distance, told me she didn’t want me. Not now. Maybe not ever.
I trudged to my duffel, the sand heavy under my feet, and dropped beside it. I thought about calling Camille, spilling everything—Lily, the water, the failure that lived in my bones.
But what could I say?
I saved a kid and got called a monster, and I’m drowning in a name I can’t let go.
