Float Plan(41)

“A hot friend who wants to kiss you.”

I laugh. “Shut up.”

“Keep running, Anna,” Carla says. “Kiss the man if you want to kiss him. Or don’t. Just remember that what Ben would want doesn’t count anymore.”

After we hang up, I sit in the sunshine for a while, watching a man fish. His reel zings out as cars whoosh across the bridges around us, but the pier is still a strangely peaceful spot. When I’m ready—or at least as ready as I’ll ever be—I dial Barbara Braithwaite. “It’s Anna Beck.”

“Hello, Anna.” Ben’s mother has a way of sounding cool and warm at the same time. At first it left me wondering how she felt about me, but dozens of voicemails demanding that I return the boat before she has me arrested make it much less ambiguous. “Where are you?”

I ignore the question. “I’m not giving you the boat. You can waste your money contesting Ben’s will and trying to chase me down, but he left it to me. This boat is mine.”

This is the first time I’ve ever raised my voice to Ben’s mother and the first time I’ve called this boat my own. But the Alberg is filled with my things, arranged to meet my needs. It belongs to me.

“Regardless of what you think of me, I loved Ben more than you’ll ever know,” I say. “Call off the dogs. For once please respect his decision.”

“How dare you—”

I end the call with shaking fingers, not giving her the chance to finish. It doesn’t feel good to deny Barbara something she wants, but it doesn’t feel bad, either. She can’t have everything.

As we walk back to the marina, Queenie stops to poke her nose into the fisherman’s empty bucket. I notice some of the larger fishing boats are gone for the day, and when I get back to the sailboat—my boat—there is a note tucked into the shackle of the lock.

Gone to mass at the cathedral.



“Of course, you have,” I say aloud, and while Keane and Eamon are gone, I clean up the cabin. The boat feels even smaller with Eamon’s things aboard. With the boat in order, I cook up a big batch of banana pancakes, keeping them warm in the oven, and feeding bits of banana to Queenie while we wait for the Sullivans to return.

“You can be my little pancake hound,” I tell her, and she gives me a dog smile like she understands. I’m glad she’s here with me instead of wandering a lonely beach in Providenciales.

“Drop all your plans for the day, Anna,” Keane announces when he and Eamon step aboard the boat. They’re dressed in church clothes and I pretend not to notice how good they look. Especially Keane. “We’ve got a surprise for you.”

“But I was going to scrub the bilge today,” I say, and Eamon chuckles as he peeks in the oven at the pancakes. “Whatever you’ve got planned better be pretty damn exciting.”

Keane hands me a trio of tickets to see the Tiburones de Aguadilla play the Cangrejeros de Santurce. Sharks versus Crabbers.

“Baseball?”

“One of the locals told us after mass that the games are like parties,” he says.

“And,” Eamon adds, “they sell pi?a coladas at the stadium.”



* * *



Our seats are in the four-dollar bleacher section of the stadium, behind left field, where we’re trapped in the glare of the afternoon sun. But what the church local said about Puerto Rican baseball is absolutely true. The game hasn’t even begun, and fans are tooting vuvuzelas and rattling thundersticks. People are singing and dancing at their seats, as if they’re at the World Series or the Super Bowl.

Cangrejeros are the home team—and their little crab logo is cute—so I buy one of their baseball caps to keep the sun out of my face. The commentators announce the starting lineups in both English and Spanish, and I blink back tears while singing the national anthem with the people sitting around me. I’ve sailed more than a thousand miles, but this one song on this faraway island makes me feel homesick.

“I must confess.” Eamon hands me a pi?a colada that he bought from the roving stadium vendor. “I have no fucking clue what’s going on.”

“I don’t know a lot about baseball either, but I figure if we cheer when everyone else does, we’ll be okay.”

There is nothing magical about the game. Except that after four straight days of water, this is exactly what I needed. At the bottom of the ninth inning, when the Crabbers have a healthy lead and I have a healthy buzz, I lean into Keane. “How do you always know?”

“Know what?”

“Everything,” I say. “What I need. What I don’t.”

He shrugs. “I … I just do.”

I wonder what he was really going to say, but before I can ask, a home run ball rockets toward our corner of the ballpark, and the question is forgotten in a flurry of excitement as the crowd around us scrambles to catch it.

In the cab on the way back to the marina, the three of us are still a little high on tropical drinks when Keane raises the question of Christmas. “Would you like to stay here? Or we could sail to Jost Van Dyke in the BVIs.”

“What’s happening on Jost Van Dyke?”

“There’s a bar that hosts a Christmas party for sailors who are away from home.”

“Oh God. I’m keeping you from your family.”