frequently slip into her speech, particularly when she’s stressed. “You should not be going to sea in a boat you have no business trying to sail. You need to come home und get some help.”
This isn’t the first time we’ve had a conversation about me seeking professional help, but I don’t need a therapist to tell me that I’m the only one who gets to decide how long my grief should last, that it’s not my job to make other people less uncomfortable around me. I am not ready to get on with my life. I am not in the market for a new soul mate. And I’m really fucking tired of sharing a bedroom with my sister and a two-year-old.
“I’ll check in when I get to the Bahamas.” Behind me, a bright blue cargo freighter loaded high with shipping containers closes the distance between us. “I have to go, Mom, but I’m okay. Really. I’ll call you from Bimini. Ich liebe dich.”
I slip the phone into the pocket of my shorts, feeling it vibrate with an incoming call as I hug the edge of the channel near the breakwater. Mom is probably calling back to talk some sense into me, and I suspect my phone will silently blow up until I lose the signal. But I can’t worry about that when there’s an enormous ship bearing down on me.
The freighter rumbles past, gulls wheeling and squabbling over the fish churned up in its wake. Sport fishers speed past. Other sailboats. The high-rise skyline of Fort Lauderdale recedes, and the sapphire Atlantic stretches off toward the horizon. The sea is languid, and the air is light.
It’s a perfect day for running away from home.
Half a mile offshore, I turn the boat into the wind and put the engine in neutral. The mainsail raises easily enough, fluttering as it catches the breeze, but I’m not entirely sure the sail is all the way up the mast. Even after the jib is unfurled and the sails are trimmed, I don’t know if I’ve done everything correctly. But the boat is moving in the proper direction. It’s not on a collision course with any other vessel. Nothing is broken. I consider it a victory as I shut off the engine and settle back against a cushion for the six-hour sail to Miami.
These waters aren’t completely unfamiliar. Ben and I once sailed to Miami and anchored for the night in the old marine stadium basin. Another time we spent the weekend at Biscayne National Park. Sailing to the Bahamas was going to be our first test to see if we could survive long-term living on a thirty-seven-foot boat. It seemed big until I went aboard the first time and saw that it was like a floating tiny house. Could Ben and I have managed living on top of each other? Would our relationship have lasted? The never-knowing is lodged in my heart like a stone, a constant dull ache that throbs during moments like these, when I wonder what our future might have been.
A bottlenose dolphin breaks the surface beside the boat, drawing me out of my head. I can’t help but smile, remembering an argument we had about dolphins. Ben called them rapists and murderers. “Don’t be fooled by their permanent smiles and happy chatter. They’re assholes.”
“Animals don’t live by a moral code like humans,” I countered. “So maybe you should be more outraged by actual rape than dolphins doing what dolphins do. Humans are the real assholes here.”
He stared at me a long time, then flashed the grin that made my knees go wobbly. “God, Anna, how fucking lucky am I that you’re mine?”
A second dolphin joins the first and they crisscross in front of the boat, playing chicken with the five-knot hull speed. They leap out of the water, showing off for each other, and it almost feels as though Ben sent them to me, which is ridiculous, but I watch them until they peel away, heading for wherever it is dolphins go.
“You were supposed to stay with me.” My words float away on the breeze. “Why did you go somewhere I can’t follow?”
Not sure if I’m talking to the dolphins or Ben. Either way, I get no response.
Sunset is fading into darkness when I motor the Alberg into a marina on the inside of Miami Beach. Ben circled No Name Harbor as our destination for the night, but I have never dropped anchor by myself, let alone in the dark.