Don, I Left as You Wished novel · Chapter 25 of 32

Chapter 25: The Yacht

My phone went into the water with a small flat slap.

The screen glowed for a second under the green water, my kids in their goggles, and then it was gone.

"Oops," Dino said.

He held out his hand to help me aboard.

I took it. I had to.

His palm was warm and dry. It always had been.

There was nobody else on the boat. No captain, no cook, no music.

He untied us himself and took the wheel on the upper deck, and the marina slid away behind us.

We went out past the bungalows and the fishing piers into open water.

The sun was going down behind us. Ahead the Verrazzano had its lights on, a long string of pearls between Brooklyn and Staten Island.

On our right Coney Island went by.

I saw the Wonder Wheel and the boardwalk.

I saw the empty stretch of beach where Lane Four's rope had been that morning.

I didn't let myself look for the fishing boat.

"Remember the first meet?" Dino said. "I had the roses behind my back the whole two hundred."

"I remember."

"You looked up out of the water and saw me before you saw the clock."

"I saw the clock."

He laughed.

He'd always liked it when I was sharp with him, because it made him look patient.

"I cooked," he said. "Your mother's lasagna. I called her for the recipe in May. She sent it with little hearts."

He'd brought two plates up to the deck, with candles in glass and napkins folded into swans.

Six years of this.

I'd thought it was love. It was rehearsal.

He poured champagne. I held my glass and didn't drink it.

When he went down for the bread, I poured it over the rail into the dark.

By the time the bridge was over us, he'd finished most of the bottle.

He cut the engine under the middle of the span.

The Narrows.

The current pulled at the boat, out toward the ocean. The water underneath was black and very deep.

Far off, on the Staten Island side, the lights of the shore ran along the old fort and the beach.

Somewhere out there was a fishing boat with no lights and four men with night glasses.

Then a horn blew, so low I felt it in my stomach.

A container ship was coming in from the sea.

It slid between us and the Brooklyn side, a wall of steel boxes stacked high.

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