“Lazy pirates,” I say, taking the journal. “Captains use punctuation. Otherwise, nobody knows when to pause dramatically.”
Poppy beams.
The sentence reads: The crab was fast. The crab was rude. I still respect the crab.
I press one hand to my heart. “This is powerful literature.”
Poppy grins so hard she loses one pigtail holder.
A woman watching from the picnic tables laughs softly. She is one of the marina moms, here for two weeks while her husbandworks remotely from their sailboat and their daughter decides whether she is “a boat person or a land intellectual.” She walks over as Poppy runs back to the mat.
“She never writes this much for me,” the woman says quietly.
I know that ache in a parent’s voice. The worry hidden beneath humor. The hope that maybe somebody else knows the right door into their child.
“She has a lot to say,” I tell her. “Sometimes kids need a new place to prove it to themselves.”
The woman looks at her daughter, then back at me. “Thank you.”
It is only two words, but they really affect me. For years, I thought usefulness was the safest form of love. If I could be needed, I could belong. If I could give enough, maybe the empty spaces would not echo so loudly. I still like being useful. That did not change.
But now I know usefulness is not the same as disappearing. Love does not have to turn me into a room with no windows. It can be a door. A road. A porch light left on. A man waiting without grabbing my hand and calling it rescue.
A metallic clank sounds behind me. I turn.
Hudson is near the kayak rack, crouched with a wrench in one hand and a scowl on his face. The rack belongs to the marina, technically. Hudson was hired to repair it for the season, also technically. In reality, he has already fixed the latch twice, reinforced the left side, adjusted the rental paddles by size, and quietly taught three teenagers why “looks fine” is not a safety assessment.
His dark hair is longer than it was in Cady Springs, curling slightly at the ends in the Florida humidity. His forearms are tanned, his T-shirt damp at the collar, his blue eyes narrowed on his task. He looks up and catches me watching.
My stomach still does the same foolish thing. Five months, and my stomach has learned nothing.
“Hydration,” he calls.
I lift my water bottle from the supply table. “Already ahead of you.”
He points at it. “Drinking, not displaying.”
The children turn as one.
Max whispers, “Is that your boyfriend?”
I look at Hudson, who is pretending not to hear while absolutely hearing.
“Yes,” I say.
Hudson’s gaze cuts to mine. I smile.
“Is he always bossy?” Poppy asks.
“Yes.”
Hudson stands. “Useful.”
I raise an eyebrow. “That is still under review.”
He walks over, wiping his hands on a rag tucked into his back pocket. The kids go very still in the particular way children do when a tall adult male enters their orbit and they are deciding whether he is scary, funny, or useful for lifting heavy objects.
Hudson crouches beside the pirate research station. Smart man. He looks at the driftwood, the shell pile, the crab drawing, and the sign Max has written in large uneven letters: NO LAZY PIRATES.
