My Dad's Best Friend Said No Daddy Jokes, So I Made Him Say Yes novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: The Skiff

Saturday at dawn he took me out in the skiff.

It was his idea, and it was the first one he'd had without being asked.

"Come on," he'd said, at my door at five, with two thermoses.

"I thought you only had ideas on the boat."

"This is a boat."

"It's an aluminum bathtub," I said.

"It's the best place on this island for an honest conversation."

I climbed in.

He ran it up the bayou with the engine low, past the shrimp docks and the shut-up bait shop, until the buildings gave out and the marsh began.

The sun came up gold over the reeds.

Egrets stood in the shallows.

He cut the engine in a little cove walled in by tall cord grass, where the water lay flat and brown, and let the skiff drift until it nudged the mud.

It was perfectly quiet.

"Well?" I said. "Honest conversation."

"I'm thinking."

"You've been thinking since Thursday."

He took his hat off and turned it in his hands.

"I can't stop looking at you," he said. "I want to say that out loud once, in daylight, to see what it sounds like."

I put my coffee down on the thwart.

"And?"

"It sounds like a man who's lost his mind."

"Good," I said. "Take your shirt off."

He looked around.

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