Float Plan(39)

“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 it’s not Christmas yet, I’ve also brought something for Anna.”

Eamon reaches back into his duffel like a sailboat Santa and pulls out a device that resembles an oversized TV remote.

“Is that … an autopilot?”

“It is,” he says.

“You bought an autopilot for a stranger?”

“Not exactly. I know a guy.”

“Keane said the same thing when he showed up in Nassau with an outboard motor. Am I sailing the Caribbean with stolen goods?”

“Oh no,” Eamon says. “Nothing so nefarious as all that. There was a man at the sailing club who was selling it and I had something he wanted, so we made a trade.”

“Does it work?”

Keane snorts a laugh and we share a smile.

“Aye, it does.” Eamon hands me the device. “But my brother thought since you still have many a mile between here and Trinidad, it might come in useful.”

I sit, not knowing what to say, until finally: “Are all of you Sullivans this nice? I thought Keane was some sort of weird anomaly, but this—God. I can’t accept this.”

“Of course you can.”

“Take it,” Keane says. “Otherwise you’ll never hear the end of it. Truly. He’ll be a terrier on the leg of your trousers about it.” He glances at the dog. “No offense, Queenie.”

“Okay, then,” I say. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Now, I’ve spent too many hours sitting on planes,” Eamon says. “I’m ready for some fun.”

I wear my sequined skirt with a white T-shirt and a pair of ankle boots because tonight feels festive. A night for making new memories. Some of the more permanent boats in the marina have colored lights strung through the rigging and Christmas trees lit on deck.

Keane holds Queenie’s leash as we walk down the narrow cobbled Calle San Francisco, where the buildings look like colorful layer cakes—red beside yellow beside lime green beside purple—and the balconies are bedecked with red ribbons and swags of pine garland. Music spills from the doorway of every shop. The plazas—de Armas at the west end of the street and de Colón at the east—are decorated with huge Christmas trees. The gazebo in the Plaza de Armas serves as a manger for almost life-size Nativity figures, and the statue of Christopher Columbus in the Plaza de Colón is surrounded by lights in the shape of poinsettias and bells and stars. Old San Juan is covered in lights.