Chapter 2

He stood there for a long moment, then let out a short, impatient laugh.

"What's gotten into you today? Since when are you so damn petty?"

"I took Lily out to sea a few times and now you want a divorce?"

"Fine. Next deployment I'll bring you. Happy?"

He gave the collar of his uniform another tug, as if coaxing an unreasonable child.

Without waiting for my reply, he turned and headed for the bedroom.

A few steps in, he looked back.

"Lily's several years younger than you and she's twice as mature. Take a page out of her book, would you?"

Something tight rose in my chest and then, just as quickly, sank away.

Once, words like these would have panicked me.

They would have sent me scrambling to explain myself.

They would have made me wonder if I just wasn't good enough.

But now, all that was left inside me was a flat, level calm.

Five years. All I'd done was wait.

Waited for every return to port.

Sick with no one to lean on, sending texts into a black hole.

And him, using the pretext of looking after Lily, leaving me over and over at the exact moments I needed him most.

I looked him in the eye and nodded.

"All right. I won't make a scene anymore."

I turned without another word and walked into the guest bedroom.

Over the following days, I packed up my things without saying a word.

James spent every day at Lily's place.

So he never noticed the things quietly disappearing from the house.

The little fishbowl on the coffee table went to Zoe.

The old armchair from the living room—the one I always sat in—I dragged out to the curb.

Every trace of me was fading from this house, one piece at a time.

"This afternoon I'm teaching Lily to read charts. Come along."

James sat at the breakfast table, taking a long pull of black coffee.

"You're always complaining you can't read a chart—that you never know where I am."

I used to beg him to teach me.

He said, "Stuff at sea, you wouldn't get it. No point learning."

Now he was volunteering—but only as a tag-along to Lily's lesson.

The doorbell rang.

Lily stood on the doorstep in a white cotton dress, a beige canvas bag over one shoulder.

She flashed a bright smile.

"Hi, Emma."

I said nothing.

The air went stiff for a moment.

Her eyes reddened instantly. Her fingers twisted in her skirt.

"Emma, do you—do you not want me here?"

"If it bothers you, I won't come again."

She turned to leave, all wounded. James's brow snapped together and he stepped past me in one stride, catching her by the wrist.

"Where are you going?"

He turned to me, exasperated.

"Emma, I told you. Lily is Ryan's sister. That makes her my sister too."

"If you can't stand her being around me, then forget it—I won't bring you along next deployment either."

Disappointment crept up like cold seawater, chilling me from head to foot.

Ryan. That name was the shield he lifted every single time.

As if all he had to do was say Ryan died saving my life and every grievance of mine had to be pressed back down, silent, without so much as a whimper.

James didn't look at me again. He led Lily to the door of the study, pushed it open, and went in.

Under the lamp above the chart table.

He spread out the massive Pacific chart, bent over it, ran his finger from one port to the next.

"This is the Strait of Hormuz. This is Gibraltar."

"Last year going through Hormuz, the swells were monstrous. The destroyer rolled like she was going to capsize."

He tilted his head toward Lily, voice gentle.

"You were hiding in your rack, terrified. Remember how many texts you sent me?"

Lily laughed behind her hand, tears still glittering at the corner of her eye.

"Thirty-seven. You said it was fine, and just like that, I wasn't scared anymore."

They stood shoulder to shoulder at the chart table. The floor lamp threw their shadows against the wall, pressed close together.

I stood in the doorway of the study like a spectator.

I remembered that day.

CNN had been running Persian Gulf coverage all day long, gray warships and heaving swells filling every frame.

I paced the house, sick with worry.

I sent text after text until the screen was full of them.

The next day he finally replied: OK.

Everything they'd been through together—I'd known nothing about any of it.

My chest ached, faintly.

I turned and went back to my room to keep packing.

If I'd known nothing, then James's future was something else I no longer wished to be part of.