Float Plan(13)

“Obviously, your situation is much more painful than mine,” Keane says. “But I do understand loss. For what it’s worth.” Before I can say anything, he stands. “After you’ve eaten, we can leave. Unless you’d like to go ashore and have a look around.”

“I’d rather keep going.”

With the sun rising behind me, I finish my sandwich. Keane makes coffee while I brush my teeth, get dressed, and braid my hair. Together we stow away our bedding and make the cabin secure for sailing.

“The wind will be on the nose today, so it could get a bit bumpy,” he says. “We can motor or attempt to sail.”

“Let’s sail.”

“That’s my girl.” The words are barely past his mouth when his neck goes red. “Just, um—a figure of speech.” He clears his throat. “I’ll get the anchor, shall I?”

In a matter of minutes, we pass from green water so clear you can see a bottom freckled with swimming fish and starfish as big as dinner plates, into a blue so deep it seems bottomless. Into the Tongue of the Ocean, a trench that stretches down more than a mile. The picture I snap of Chub Cay fading behind us is beautiful, but the reproduced color can’t even come close to the original.

“Does it ever get old?” I wonder aloud. “I mean, I can’t imagine growing tired of this blue, or the green around the islands. It’s so peaceful.”

“I reckon if you stay in one place too long, you might start taking it for granted,” Keane says. “But if you keep moving, everything holds its wonder. At least that’s been my experience.”

In this regard, he reminds me of Ben. Ever moving. Never waiting for trees to spring up and block the view of the forest. I feel a catch in my chest, but I breathe through it, not wanting to cry in front of Keane again. Or at all. Instead I think about what lies ahead. Nassau was never part of the original plan. It’s not on the map. But since the moment he stepped onto the boat, Keane has been keeping a running list of things I failed to bring—jack lines, radar reflector, a lock for the dinghy. We need to stop for supplies.

“Have you been to Nassau?”

“Once,” Keane says. “It’s a busier place than Bimini with the cruise ships coming and going. A bit less rustic. A lot more tourists. But we should be able to get everything we need.”

“I don’t want to stay long.”

“Understood,” he says. Then: “Do you come from a large family, Anna?”

“I have a mother, an older sister, and a niece who is two.” I explain how I haven’t seen my father since he left, that he has a whole new family. “What about you?”

“Oh, my family is one large Irish Catholic stereotype,” he says. “My parents are married near on fifty years and I’m the last of seven. My mom calls me the tiebreaker, since I have three sisters”—he pronounces it tree instead of three—“and three brothers. Which meant someone was always threatening to belt me if I didn’t take their side.”

“It sounds fun, though.”

His smile is luminous. “Oh aye, it is.”

“Do you see them often?”

“Usually at Christmas,” Keane says. “My da owns a pub, so all the family comes from far afield—brothers, sisters, and I think we’re up to about a dozen nieces and nephews—and we gather at the pub to celebrate. It’s my favorite time of year.”

“I bet you’re the cool uncle, huh?”

He laughs and spreads his arms wide, as if the answer should be obvious. “The older ones have convinced the littles that I’m a superhero. Keeps them from being bashful about the leg.”

“That’s sweet.”

The wind freshens and waves start breaking across the bow, spraying us with a fine mist that thickens my hair and salts my lips. We pull on our foul-weather jackets.

“I reckon we ought to reef the main,” Keane says. “Do you know how?”

“No.”

“Take the tiller. As soon as I’m on deck, head to wind.”

He scrambles on top of the cabin as the boat pounds through the waves, and I don’t know if I should be worried. He’s wearing sailing sneakers with good traction and bracing himself against the mast, but I can’t help wondering how his balance is affected. Yet as he lowers the mainsail a couple of feet, creating a smaller surface area, Keane is as off balance as anyone would be in a sloppy sea, and the same kind of careful coming back down into the cockpit.

“You needn’t worry about me.”

“Actually, I was still trying to decide if it would be worth the effort,” I say, eliciting a small laugh from him. Keane laughs often. Not that Ben didn’t, but there were days when he wouldn’t get out of bed. He would hardly speak, let alone laugh. Those were hard days because I wanted to crawl into bed and hold him until he felt better, but I also wanted to get away from him. Like his darkness might be contagious. I should have spent more days in bed with him. I should have tried harder to help him stay alive.

“I already know how the body responds to certain situations on a sailboat,” Keane says, pulling me back to real life. He takes over the helm and I sit beside him on the high side of the boat. Nassau is still too far in the distance to see, which makes it feel as if we’re sailing to nowhere. “I’ve learned to adapt. I have to be more mindful than I was before, but I’m disabled, not incapable.”