Float Plan(48)

From Agda I receive the striped hammock from her balcony. “Sullivan said you’d like one, and we’re going back to Belize after the holidays, so we can buy another.”

She unwraps the camera and I don’t tell her it belonged to Ben. I smile as she clicks a picture of Keane and me sitting on the golden couch, his arm stretched out along the back behind my shoulders. Agda gifts him a vintage Guinness T-shirt with a toucan on the front that she found in a charity shop in Belize, and Felix is inundated with bottles of Irish whiskey, German wine, and Puerto Rican rum.

Soon all that’s left is Captain America. Keane unwraps the mug and a wrinkle of confusion forms between his eyebrows.

“It was Ben’s favorite,” I say. “But you use it so much that I don’t really see it as his anymore. So I figured … Well, maybe someday when you’re off on some remote island, you’ll fill it with coffee and think of me.”

He turns the mug over in his hands. “Are you sure?”

“I want you to have it.”

“This is grand, Anna, thank you.” Keane leans over and kisses my temple. “I, uh—I wish I had something for you, but I—”

“Saving my life is enough.”

The rest of Christmas Day unfolds lazily: a breakfast of Swedish pancakes topped with lingonberry sauce, naps, and lots of sprawling in various places around the house. When I go to the bathroom, there is a small stain in my underwear, a reminder that I’ve been away from home for a month. And another thing I never thought about having to manage while living on a sailboat.

On Boxing Day, Felix drives us around the island, jostling along roads that—in some places—are little more than dirt tracks. We stop at the bubbly pool, a natural tidal basin where waves thunder between the gaps in the rocks, churning the pool into a natural saltwater Jacuzzi. The five of us sit in the shallows, drinking beer while the water fizzes against our skin.

The holiday officially ends the next day, and I walk Queenie down the hill to the grocery store to buy yellow cake mix and chocolate frosting for Keane’s birthday––his favorite flavor, according to Eamon. We sit for a few minutes on a bench outside the market, where a pair of little girls play checkers on a nearby table. They scramble from their seats when they see Queenie, and she rolls over so they can pet her belly.

“What’s your dog’s name?” asks the girl with yellow barrettes.

“Queenie.”

They look at each other and crack up, laughing for reasons only little girls know, and the other girl, with blue baubles at the ends of her braids, says, “Is she really a queen?”

“Yes, she’s the queen of the Turks and Caicos.”

“If she’s a queen, where’s her crown?”

I drop my voice to a whisper. “She’s in disguise.”

Their giggles are like music.

“I like Queenie,” the first girl says.

“She likes you too.”

We sit like this for so long, their small brown hands tickling my dog’s belly, that I can feel the strands of happiness spinning themselves, layer after layer, around Ben’s memory. Creating a buffer that makes it hurt less to think about him. Someday, maybe, it won’t hurt at all.

The spell is broken when the girls’ mother calls them away. Queenie and I trek back up the hill to the house, where I hide my purchases in my room.

On Monday, the other sailors begin planning the passage to St. Barths. None of the particulars matter to me and I wander to my room. Begin packing for leaving. I am not ready. I’ll miss my sprawling bed and the soothing nighttime peep of the coqui frogs. I’ll miss the outside shower and sitting on the balcony until after the stars appear. Each island I’ve visited has been better than the one before, but I’m worried about St. Barths. Worried about Keane.

We leave the next evening, following our last dinner at the patchwork house, and Eamon jumps ship to sail with Agda and Felix aboard their forty-eight-foot catamaran, Papillon, seduced by the prospect of his own stateroom and a well-stocked bar. Keane and I have the smallest boat, so we leave first from the harbor and set sail between Jost Van Dyke and Tortola. Through the Narrows. Through Flanagan Passage. Into open water. The other boats come behind, staggering their departures so we can all reach St. Barths at about the same time. The catamaran passes us in the night. Luke and Amanda’s Fizgig, a forty-four-foot sloop, goes by while Keane is on watch. Karoline and Jefferson are with us longer on Peneireiro, but eventually we end up alone.

I arrange our watch rotation so Keane is doing the first four hours on his birthday. While he is on deck, I mix the batter and slip the cake into the oven. It’s still warm when I carry it up into the cockpit.

“I’d sing, but it’s best for everyone involved if I don’t,” I say. “Happy Birthday.”

Keane’s eyes go wide. “You baked this for me.”

“I’d use the term pretty loosely considering it baked unevenly.”

“Is something wrong with the gimbal?”

“Gimbal?”

Keane laughs. “It’s the mechanism that keeps the oven level under sail.”

“Well,” I say, handing him the cake, “that would have been a great thing to know about thirty minutes ago.”

He kisses the top of my head. “You are a star, Anna. Thank you.”