Float Plan - Trish Doller Page 0,48
in turning back.”
“The hardest part is behind you.”
He means the sailing, but the same could be applied to Ben. I’ve lived so many hard days since his suicide. Waking up to emptiness. Holding on to pain. Having a future without him still feels scary—and a little unfair to his memory—but it’s time to move forward. “So, what are you going to do now?”
“Well, about that…” Keane scratches the back of his head. “When I told you I had to get to Puerto Rico, it was … not entirely true.”
“Not entirely?”
“It’s a convenient enough place to land,” he says. “But there’s no real reason I need to be here.”
“No guy who knows a guy?”
Keane shakes his head.
“So you helped me just … because?”
“You were a mess, Anna.”
I laugh. “Well, I’m still a mess, so maybe you should stay.”
Keane’s eyes meet mine. “Only if you’re asking.”
I could laugh it off as a joke and release him from his service, but these past weeks have knocked the rust off my life. Keane has helped me become a sailor. He’s also pulled me out of the emotional black hole I’ve been living in since Ben died. If I ask Keane to stay now, it’s not because I need him. “I’m asking.”
The corner of his mouth tilts up and he nods. “Then I’m staying.”
“What do people do for fun around here?”
“We could walk around Old San Juan and look at the Christmas lights, if you’re up for it,” he suggests. “Maybe get some dinner. I’ve only been here once, briefly, on a delivery job.”
“That’s different.”
“What?”
“You not being the expert.”
“San Juan is a bit too developed for my tastes,” he says. “Give me a surf shack on a rough-and-tumble coastline and I’m a happy man. But I wouldn’t mind seeing the Christmas lights. Down here in the tropics, it’s easy to forget about the holidays.”
I reach into the cooler for a couple of fresh bottles of beer and notice a man walking toward us on the dock carrying a red duffel with an airline baggage tag on the handle. There’s a familiarity to his stride, but before I can connect the dots, he waves and calls out, “They told me I might find my brother down here, but all I see is a bog warrior from County Kerry.”
Keane’s laugh is loud and joyful. “It would take one to know one, wouldn’t it?”
He practically leaps off the boat into a grinning, backslapping hug. This man looks like an older version of Keane, a few inches shorter and slightly thicker around the middle. Definitely a Sullivan.
“Anna,” Keane says as I step onto the dock, Queenie at my heels. “This bastard would be my brother Eamon. Eamon, meet Anna Beck.”
Eamon Sullivan pulls me into a hug as if we’re old friends. “Now I understand why my little brother didn’t want to come home for Christmas this year. He wrote that you were a fine bit of stuff, but that doesn’t do you justice.”
Color creeps up the back of Keane’s neck. “I did not call her a fine bit of stuff.”
“No, you didn’t,” Eamon says. “You said she was beautiful.”
“Jesus, you’ve got a big mouth.”
Eamon laughs like an older brother whose teasing hit the mark—and he sounds so much like Keane that it’s kind of surreal. Eamon winks at me. “He wasn’t wrong.”
“I apologize for my brother,” Keane says. “He doesn’t often stray from the bog, so he doesn’t know how to behave in polite society.”
They dissolve into laughter again and hug each other once more.
“Permission to come aboard?” Eamon says.
“Granted.” I gesture toward the cockpit and scoop up Queenie. She’s better at getting out of the boat than getting back in. “Come sit. Have a beer.”
“If you continue saying such things, Anna, I’ll have to propose.”
Keane opens a round of beers and we sit in the cockpit, listening to Eamon talk about the family back home in Ireland. His accent is bolder, and he talks faster than Keane, so I can’t always keep up, but I work out that everyone is meeting at the pub for Christmas dinner and they all miss Keane, even Claire.
“Mom would have packed a goose and black puddings if she could,” Eamon says, opening his duffel. “But she did send along fruit scones for your birthday and I’ve brought something even better.”
He pulls out a bottle of Irish whiskey and Keane inhales with reverence. “I take back every evil thought I’ve ever had about you, Eamon. You’re the best brother in the world.”
“And although