She laughed. “My mom would freak if I started going to church.”
“Your mom loves you. She wants you to find whatever helps you heal. She might surprise you.”
Emma considered that, looking out at the water where the dolphin had been. The sky was deepening now, gold giving way to peach.
“Maybe.”
“I’ll take that,” he said, gesturing toward the ignition. “You want to start her up and get us home?”
“Yes!” She dropped her legs and put her hands on the wheel, but then she looked up at him. “And Eli?”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you for not screaming at me. For being kind.”
His heart cracked a little. That was such a low bar.
“You never have to thank me for that,” he said. “That’s baseline. Kindness is what you should expect from every man in your life, and don’t settle for less.”
She nodded slowly. Then she turned back to the wheel and twisted the key that hung on a floatie, looking determined to follow that advice.
Once they were dockedand tied, Eli could have sworn he noticed the smallest shift in Emma. Something in her shoulders had loosened. She walked beside him with her hands in her pockets and her ponytail swinging, more like when he’d met her a few months ago when she and her brother had visited.
They spotted Seamus again, this time reaching into the box and pulling out a stack of books.
“Need help, Seamus?” Eli asked.
“Wouldn’t mind if you’d give me a hand to get these inside,” he said, raising his stack.
“Sure thing.” Eli looked down at the box, a smile pulling. “Are these Bibles, Seamus?”
“They sure are! Fifty of them.”
Eli reached into the box and pulled out a compact Bible, smaller than standard, with a deep blue cover. The front was embossed with a silver fish—simple, almost like a sketch—and below it, in clean lettering:Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men. Matthew 4:19.
“For boaters?” Eli asked on a soft laugh.
“For the kids in my Abundant Catch program,” he said, his eyes brightening. “We ordered these with our logo. We used the money from the fundraiser. You know we raised almost double our goal? Thanks to your boy Roman Matteo donating that signed Jaguars football. People went nuts for it.”
“That’s awesome,” Eli said, remembering how excited Seamus had been about the donation—and how the gesture had delighted his niece, Lacey, now Roman’s fiancée.
“You know about the scholarship?” Seamus asked Emma.
She shook her head.
“The Artie Wylie Memorial Scholarship.”
“It’s named after my grandfather?” she asked, her voice rising. “He sure loved to fish.”
“That he did, young lady. When we were younger and the Wylies and Lawsons visited Destin, Artie was my favorite fishing buddy. Great man.”
Emma’s expression softened. “He was,” she said quietly. “He was the best grandpa in the world.”
“Well, his name is doing good work down here.” He leaned forward, offering the stack of books to her. “Here. Take one. Consider it a gift from the Abundant Catch.”
Eli braced himself. He expected the polite deflection from a kid who’d most likely never held that book in her life and probably felt like this little trip to the marina had turned into one long Bible study.
But she took a book from the top of the pile.
