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“October.” Babette looks horror-stricken for me, but she tries to soften her gaze. “Her middle name is Katherine.”
“We didn’t know that,” Zoey cuts in, voice rising in alarm. “None of us knew that. You didn’t know, Kenobi. It’s okay.” She reaches for my hand, but I can’t—I can’t touch her.
I step back and clutch the edge of the pool table behind me.
Pain lances her face.
I’m sorry, Zoey.
“How’d you meet this girl?” Brian wonders.
“I met her the day before the mayday call.” I drag my gaze across the floor and walls, seeing the docks where she’d been tying her sailboat. “It was a sunny afternoon. She planned to leave the next day. To cross the rest of Lake Erie. A bucket list trip, she said, and I don’t know what she saw in me…” I shake my head. “Envy. Desire. But she said I should come along. It’d be an adventure of a lifetime.” A ball rises in my throat.
I swallow hard and inhale, “For the first time in my life, I had an easy out. The easiest way to leave this town. It was staring right at me. I thought about you.” I look up at Zoey and try not to break entirely. “I thought of all the adventures you were taking, of all the people you were meeting and new places you were seeing.” My eyes burn. I turn to Babette. “I thought about Mom and Dad. I wondered if they really knew something we didn’t. If vanishing from Mistpoint Harbor brought them more happiness than staying here—then why am I staying?”
Tears streak Babette’s cheeks. “You didn’t think about me?”
A knife plunges through me, but I hold her gaze. “I couldn’t,” I say painfully. “If I did, I knew I wouldn’t leave.”
She nods, understanding and wipes fiercely at her tears. “So you left with Augustine?”
“With Katie. The next day—the day before Christmas Eve—I climbed onto her boat, and I almost didn’t go.” I wish I hadn’t. I wish I turned back around. “The water was rough.” I cringe, remembering the way the boat pitched just at the docks. “Katie reassured me it was fine. She’s sailed in worse. I asked her for a lifejacket. I wore one. She didn’t.”
“Why?” Parry shakes his head repeatedly. “The winds were well over thirty knots that day. If her boat was small, it would’ve easily capsized.”
“She was confident,” I say sharply. “She convinced me to go out in a storm. I believed her when she said she knew what she was doing. I believed her when she said she didn’t need a lifejacket. That we’d be fine. Only when we were so far out and we couldn’t see land did I realize her confidence was false—and do you know how many times I’ve pictured telling her to wait? Convincing her to go another day?” I stare off at the wall again. “I didn’t though. I never told her to wait, and there we were, in the middle of hell.”
I still hear the hellacious wind.
I still feel the freshwater slap against the boat and the spray against my cheeks. The roar of the thunder—so loud, I couldn’t hear Katie yell at me to grab lines.
I helped as much as I could. With all I’d known growing up around sailboats.
In the bar, a sudden strike of lightning lights up the shabby space. I don’t flinch at the violent sound. I’m in another storm. The one from months ago.
“I never heard her contact the Coast Guard or the lighthouse.” This part plagues me. “I never heard the mayday call, Colt. I never connected the pieces between Katie and Augustine because I didn’t think Katie ever reached out for help. I didn’t think she would. She wouldn’t even wear a fucking lifejacket.” I hear my voice crack. “Everything happened so quickly once we were out there.” I gesture towards the lake. Eyes raw as I blink, as I fight hot tears and emotion that try to swallow me whole. “The boat capsized. I tried to reach for her, but we were swept away from each other. I floated. And she…” I intake a breath, and suddenly, Zoey’s hand is in mine.
Zoey.
I start bawling. I can’t stop. I can’t stop. Her arms are around me, and I struggle to hug back, my arms not working. My head spinning. Breath like a knot in my lungs and swollen throat. She hugs tighter. “I’m here. I’m here.”
“I left her to die,” I choke out. “I left her to die, Zoey—I didn’t go back for her.” Everything starts to spill out of me like I’m being ripped open. I wait for Zoey to be disgusted with me, but she never lets me go.
She never stops hugging me. “She was already gone, Kenobi.”
I’ve never deserved absolution, and maybe I always knew Zoey would try to free me. Because she loves me as much as I love her—but guilt is a powerful force. Still trying to wrench me under.
