Float Plan - Trish Doller Page 0,20

fish flop around inside. They’re so much smaller than the mackerel, and I can see myself slicing open a finger. I hold the pail out to him. “Never going to happen. I will happily cook them, but if you want these fish for dinner, you’re going to have to clean them yourself.”

Keane looks at me. His eyes are hidden behind sunglasses, but the corners of his mouth twitch like he wants to laugh. Finally he grins and accepts the bucket. “Fair enough.”

I take over the tiller.

“So, Anna,” he says, slicing open the belly of a fish no longer than his hand. He’s brutally efficient, yet somehow gentle. “Do you mind my asking how old you are?”

“Twenty-five. You?”

“I’ll be thirty at the end of the month. On the thirtieth, in fact.”

“My mom always called those magic birthdays. When your age is the same as the date,” I say. “Mine happened when I was five.”

“And was it magic?”

“Well, I got everything I wished for,” I say. “My grandma made me a cake with purple roses, I got a princess doll with a light-up tiara, and my dad took the training wheels off my bike. It seemed magical at the time, but in retrospect, my expectations were pretty typical for a five-year-old.”

“On the other hand, you’ve had twenty years of believing that certain birthdays hold magic,” he says, and a beat later: “I’d wish to be twenty-five again.”

There’s a note of something in his voice that keeps me from asking why. He does nothing to fill the uncomfortable silence as he finishes the fish. Even after he comes back from putting them on ice, Keane sits in the cockpit, staring off toward the horizon. We sail this way for miles, running along the Exumas chain, until it looks like the sun is touching the ocean. If the red sky in Bimini was the work of an angry artist, this one is messy purple fingers dragged slowly through gold.

“Christ,” Keane finally mutters. “Aren’t we a gloomy pair? You, missing your Ben, and me, all maudlin over the shite hand I’ve been dealt. Then this sky happens, and I think it must be God asking me how I dare wallow in self-pity when he’s giving me this gift.”

“You still believe in God?”

He shrugs. “Of course. Don’t you?”

“He hasn’t done me any favors lately.”

“I can see how you might feel that way,” Keane says. “But moments like these remind me how much worse my life could have turned out.”

“Worse than losing your leg?”

“Aye,” he says. “I could have been the guy who did this to me.”

I want to know what happened, but I don’t want to pry, and Keane doesn’t elaborate. Instead he stands. “Think I’ll go fry that fish. Hungry?”

“I told you I would make dinner.”

“I’m feeling restless.”

He leaves me on deck as night settles and stars populate the sky. Pans rattle and Keane whistles a nameless tune while he cooks. Ben and I never got comfortable using the stove when we were underway. The pitch and yaw of the boat made conditions too unpredictable. We almost always brought picnic foods so we could avoid cooking. But Keane seems unbothered by the wind and waves. It’s maybe an hour later when he brings up a citronella candle and what’s left of the bottle of wine I opened in Bimini, then returns with plates of flying fish with steamed potatoes and cabbage.

He takes the helm and I fork off a bit of fish. The outside is crisp, while the inside is delicate, not fishy at all. “This is better than anything I could have made,” I say. “I’m feeling pretty spoiled.”

“Remember it with fondness,” he says. “Because when we’re making the passage from the Turks and Caicos to San Juan with no land in sight and the possibility of eight-to-ten-foot swells, you’ll be wishing for something other than instant soup and noodles.”

“Seriously?”

“It can get ugly.”

“God, I would never have been able to do that by myself,” I say. “I barely made it from Miami to Bimini.”

“But you made it.” Keane takes a drink from the wine bottle and offers it to me. Putting my lips where his have been seems too personal, but I push the thought aside. It’s only wine. “Even I wouldn’t want to do a solo passage to San Juan, though.”

“Do you think I’ll be able to sail the Caribbean by myself?”

“Absolutely,” he says. “You’ll be island hopping again, so you’ll make good time unless you run into bad weather. Since it’s nearly