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“So, what do you want to do before your boat excursion this afternoon?” I asked. Since I didn’t swim, I was never comfortable on a boat, and they would be going without me. But there were a couple of hours until then.
“I heard that there’s a little town on the island with an outdoor market. Could we go check it out?”
“Absolutely.” I glanced over at Audrey, who was nodding in agreement, even though I knew that she wouldn’t want to do that. “You can stay here, if you want.”
She hesitated, her focus shifting to our daughter. “Would you be okay with that?”
“It’s fine, Mom. I know you’d rather hang out at the pool.”
“And you’re eager to escape me.” Audrey’s voice was light, as if it was a joke, but I saw through that. She was hurt.
“What do you mean?” I asked, as if I didn’t already know what happened in the lobby last night.
Christine sighed. “I might’ve tried to get a little space to myself last night. I just felt a little… overwhelmed.”
It was on the tip of my tongue to suggest that Audrey was smothering her, but I held it back for the sake of keeping the peace. A big part of co-parenting was picking my battles.
“You’re only sixteen,” I said. “It’s not safe to wander off on your own.”
“It’s not like I could’ve gone far. The island is tiny.”
I shot her a stern look. “Not the point.”
I could see that she wanted to roll her eyes, but she looked down at her plate instead, stabbing a scrambled egg with her fork harder than necessary.
“To be fair, she didn’t leave the lobby,” Audrey said, her voice soft in a way that it only ever was for our daughter. “She even made a friend.”
“Yeah, she was cool. Even has pink hair.”
My food arrived then, and I was glad that I didn’t have to think of something to say. It was jarring to hear them talk so casually about the woman who I was secretly seeing.
The rest of breakfast passed without much talking. Christine finished eating and pulled out her phone, texting with her friends, and Audrey spotted yet another couple of her new friends that she’d met on the island, so she excused herself to go chat with them.
One thing about Audrey was that she was a social butterfly. So different from me that it was astonishing we’d ever been a couple.
After I finished eating, I went to my bungalow for a quick shower before catching a shuttle ride to the village with Christine.
When the shuttle dropped us off—along with about a dozen other tourists—the little town was bustling with activity. There were people everywhere, weaving their way around the stalls of an outdoor market. It started at the edge of the town square and stretched farther than I could see in the large space between old buildings with faded paint. The air was thick with the scent of woodsmoke, cooking meat, and the ocean’s saltiness, even though we were in the middle of the island.
It was nearly noon, and the midday heat was oppressive, rising from the asphalt as we wove our way through the crowd of people, but it was cooler once we got beneath the colorful canopies covering the stalls.
Christine was smiling at my side, her eyes darting from one place to another as she shifted her weight from one foot to the other, as if she couldn’t decide what to do first. It reminded me of when she was much younger, and I felt a warmth that had nothing to do with the heat of the day.
“Look at these fruits,” she said, hurrying forward to a stall where a man was cutting open a papaya. Next to his cutting board was a bowl full of fruits, and I didn’t recognize half of them.
Christine pointed to one with a spiky, green outer shell. “What’s that?”
The man grinned, showing off a gold tooth. “That’s soursop. Would you like to try it?”
She nodded eagerly, and we watched as he sliced it in half, revealing the white pulp inside. After removing the core, he scooped out the pulp and put some into a paper cup for Christine.
“Don’t eat the black seeds,” he said. “They’re toxic.”
“What?” I barked, ready to snatch the cup away, but she was already taking a bite of the fruit.
“Don’t worry, Dad. I won’t eat the seeds.”
Her voice was so confident, a reminder that no matter how I thought of her, she wasn’t really a kid anymore.
