Ripples & Waves E-Book

L.A. Witt

• Herausgeber: GallagherWitt Publishing LLC
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

How far would you go to be with the one you love?

Colin Everroad should be dead, but after his lobster boat founders during a violent storm off the Maine coast, he wakes up on a beach. He’s cold, but unscathed… with strange memories of a face he can’t conjure and a voice he doesn’t recognize.

No one can explain it, but a friend suggests Colin was saved by one of the mer. Except the mer don’t exist. Do they? But… that face. That voice. Someone was in the water with him. Someone saved him. If not a mer, then who? And whoever it was, Colin wants to see his face.

Lir broke protocol by rescuing a land person, but he couldn’t just let the man drown. When he disobediently resurfaces to see his beautiful land man, he knows it’s only a matter of time before he’s forbidden to leave the depths again.

One clandestine visit turns into more. Soon, Colin and Lir are meeting at the shore as often as possible, and the connection between them deepens. The only problem is that neither can live in the other’s world. Or can they?

Then Lir finds a way for them to be together, but only for a little while… and at a cost. As time grows short, they have to choose: does Lir return to the sea and never see Colin again, or stay forever with the man he loves in a world that will never love them?

Ripples & Waves is a modern, queer retelling of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid.
 

Leseprobe

Ripples & Waves

A Queer Retelling of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid

L.A. Witt

Contents

About Ripples & Waves

1. Colin

2. Lir

3. Colin

4. Lir

5. Colin

6. Lir

7. Colin

8. Lir

9. Colin

10. Lir

11. Colin

12. Lir

13. Colin

14. Lir

15. Colin

16. Lir

17. Colin

18. Lir

19. Colin

20. Lir

21. Colin

22. Lir

23. Colin

24. Lir

Epilogue

About the Author

Also by L.A. Witt

Also by L.A. Witt

Copyright Information

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Ripples & Waves: A Queer Retelling of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid

First edition

Copyright © 2019, 2023 L.A. Witt

Cover Art by Lori Witt

Editor: Jules Robin

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, record ing, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher, and where permitted by law. Reviewers may quote brief passages in a review. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact L.A. Witt at [email protected]

ISBN: 978-1-64230-043-7

Print ISBN: 978-1-69259-836-5

Created with Vellum

About Ripples & Waves

Colin Everroad should be dead, but after his lobster boat founders during a violent storm off the Maine coast, he wakes up on a beach. He’s cold, but unscathed… with strange memories of a face he can’t conjure and a voice he doesn’t recognize.

No one can explain it, but a friend suggests Colin was saved by one of the mer. Except the mer don’t exist. Do they? But… that face. That voice. Someone was in the water with him. Someone saved him. If not a mer, then who? And whoever it was, Colin wants to see his face.

Lir broke protocol by rescuing a land person, but he couldn’t just let the man drown. When he disobediently resurfaces to see his beautiful land man, he knows it’s only a matter of time before he’s forbidden to leave the depths again.

One clandestine visit turns into more. Soon, Colin and Lir are meeting at the shore as often as possible, and the connection between them deepens. The only problem is that neither can live in the other’s world. Or can they?

Then Lir finds a way for them to be together, but only for a little while… and at a cost. As time grows short, they have to choose: does Lir return to the sea and never see Colin again, or stay forever with the man he loves in a world that will never love them?

Ripples & Waves is a modern, queer retelling of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid.

Chapter One

Colin

“Sir? Sir?” Something tapped against my cheek. “Can you hear me? Are you all right?” A firm hand shook my shoulder, which made everything hurt from my head to my toes. Well, hurt more. My entire body throbbed like one big bruise and ached like I’d been wading in the freezing cold water. That probably meant I was partly numb too. So once that wore off, I’d hurt even more. Fuuuck.

“He’s breathing, isn’t he?” A woman’s agitated voice this time. “He’s alive?”

“He’s alive. Is that ambulance on its way?”

Ambulance? And…on its way where? Where was here? Where the hell was I?

I forced open my burning eyes but then immediately slammed them shut to avoid the blinding sunlight. Groaning, I covered my face with an aching hand.

“Oh!” The woman sounded closer this time. “He’s waking up!”

“Sir?” The hand shook my shoulder again, which jostled my entire sore body.

I rubbed my eyes but only succeeded in getting sand in them, not to mention in my mouth. “Damn it,” I muttered and turn my head to spit out the sand as I tried to blink out the grit. The ground beneath me was solid, but not—it gave when I shifted, but not enough to collapse under me.

Sand. I was lying on sand.

Wet, cold sand.

What the hell?

When a few tears had finally flushed the sand out of my eyes, I tried again, squinting against the brutal daylight. A middle aged couple were crouched beside me, their faces full of concern, and the woman clutched a cell phone in her hand. They were dressed like tourists—sandals, sunglasses, shorts, and brightly colored T-shirts that I recognized at a glance with their touristy Maine-themed slogans (Lobstah Time on his, Bah Hahbah on hers).

“Are you okay, son?” The man’s hand was still on my shoulder. “Too much to drink last night?” He was obviously trying to make it sound like a joke, but he couldn’t hide his concern.

“Yeah, I…” I blinked a few more times, then gingerly pushed myself upright. I didn’t really like strangers touching me, but I appreciated his help. My head was throbbing and light, and my muscles felt all rubbery like I’d been swimming in cold water. Wait—had I?

In my mind, there was a flash of memory. Icy water. Strong waves. Sure hands keeping a firmer grasp on me than this concerned stranger did now.

A breeze blew past, and on some level, I knew it was warm, but it made me cold all over, especially when it hit my drenched T-shirt and jeans. Shit, had I been swimming?

The water’s edge was several feet away, the tide lapping lazily at an indentation in the sand beside some drag marks that led to…me. There was sand under my clothes, so had… Had these people dragged me away from the water? And how the fuck had I ended up in the water in the first place? This could’ve been the hottest day in August—I was pretty sure it was still barely June, though—and the Atlantic off Maine’s Downeast coast would still be cold as balls. That was the kind of water kids swam in to prove they were tough. No grown adult in their right mind jumped in that water.

Another flash: not jumping in—falling in. Tumbling against something solid, then weightless, then enveloped in salty, violent cold.

I shivered hard, as if I could still feel that cold on top of the chill from being soaked to the bone and dressed in wet clothes.

“Honey, grab him a towel,” the man said. “And where the hell is that ambulance?”

I wanted to protest that I didn’t need an ambulance, but maybe I did. If I was this disoriented, I might’ve hit my head or something. And from the parched saltiness in my mouth, I had a feeling I’d swallowed a hell of a lot of water. Was it in my lungs? Was this one of those things where they pulled a person out of the water, but then their lungs filled up later and they drowned in their own bed?

Yeah, okay, I could live with an ambulance.

“Why don’t you take off your shirt, sweetheart?” The woman held up a fluffy blue beach towel. “This will warm you up.”

Something warm and dry? Hell yeah.

Hands shaking and arms still rubbery, I started to peel off my shirt but gasped when fiery pain lit up my sides. All the way from my armpits down to just below my ribs, my skin and muscles felt ripped apart.

“What’s wrong?” the man asked.

“I…” Couldn’t he see? Wasn’t there blood dripping down my sides and staining my shirt?

I looked down.

Oh.

No blood.

My faded yellow T-shirt was wet and dirty, and something had torn it, but there was no blood. Or, well, not much. There was a smear that looked like blood, but for all I knew, that was a barbecue sauce stain from when I’d been eating on—

On the boat.

I’d picked up an order of chicken tenders from a place I liked near the Bar Harbor waterfront, and I’d gotten on the boat, and I’d eaten while I’d driven the boat out to empty lobster traps. At some point I’d muttered, “Damn it,” because some barbecue sauce had dripped onto my shirt.

Eh, I’d thought in the moment. I’ll put some stain remover on it when I get home. No biggie.

Why did that feel like days ago? And why couldn’t I get a solid grasp on anything that had happened between then and now? Between there and here? And seriously, where was here? And when was now? What the hell had happened to me?

“Son?” The man jostled my shoulder gently. “You okay?”

Oh, God, I was the farthest from okay I could remember being, and my memory was too cloudy to be sure if that meant I’d never been this shitty or I just couldn’t remember, and realizing that didn’t help at all.

I swallowed hard, suddenly sure I was about to puke. “Uh…”

“Let’s get that shirt off. You’ll be a lot warmer in the towel.”

Warmer. Towel.

I glanced at his wife. She was still holding the fluffy blue towel, and hell, the pain in my sides made me want to either cry, get sick, or both, but the cold fabric sticking to my skin was suddenly gritty and clammy. With some cursing and some nauseating pain, I managed to peel off the T-shirt and drop it onto the sand with a soggy splat. Then the woman wrapped the towel around my shoulders, and I had to fight back a delirious groan. I remembered that I’d always loved the feeling of wrapping myself in a sun-warmed towel after I’d been swimming, but I knew for a fact—scrambled memory be damned—that it had never felt this good. When was the last time my skin had touched anything dry, soft, or warm? Too long ago.

I closed my eyes and let my head fall forward as I pulled the towel tighter around me. I was still cold, my teeth still trying to chatter and my muscles still aching like I’d been in the water too long, but there was warmth now. And this reassuring feeling that while this wasn’t over, it probably wasn’t going to get worse.

That…feeling was oddly familiar.

Except last time, there hadn’t been a towel around my shoulders. I hadn’t been on dry land.

“My name is Lir.”

I jumped as the whisper echoed in my mind. Where the hell had that come from? It was a voice I couldn’t place, spoken by a man whose face I couldn’t conjure. There’d been chaos and fear and confusion and then…reassurance. Safety. Protection? And…

“My name is Lir.”

I brought a hand up, paused to dust the sand and grit off my fingers, and rubbed my tired, burning eyes. Okay, whatever had happened between the chicken tenders and my carcass landing on this beach, I must have been out cold and wound up dreaming. Or hallucinating. Was there even a difference?

I tried to grab hold of the images flashing through my mind, but they were quick and slippery. Focusing on one was about as effective as grabbing a minnow with my hand—no matter how quick I was, the best I could get was a handful of nothing.

“Oh, there they are!” the woman exclaimed. “It’s about time!”

I lifted my head and blinked against the daylight again. That was when I heard the distinctive rumble of a diesel engine.

“Over here!” Her voice was getting farther away, as if she were jogging to meet the paramedics who’d apparently arrived. “He’s awake!”

Maybe “awake” was being generous, but at least I wasn’t unconscious. I was pretty sure I had been for… for a while. Except it couldn’t have been that long if these people had found me lying in the surf. I was no expert on hypothermia, but I was pretty sure that if I’d been passed out in the water for as long as it felt like I had, I should’ve been a hell of a lot more hypothermic than this.

What on earth happened? And when did it happen?

Footsteps came up behind me. The woman was talking quickly to someone, but I didn’t catch everything she said. Then someone walked around me and squatted in front of me.

He was a round-faced white guy, and he took a breath like he was about to speak.

But then he froze.

And so did I.

That was the thing about small tourist towns like this. The streets may have been teeming with unfamiliar visitors this time of year, but the people who lived here? We all knew each other on sight. If you’d lived here for more than a year or two, you couldn’t go to dinner or goddamned Walmart without running into half a dozen people you knew.

So I guess it wasn’t really a surprise that I recognized the paramedic staring back at me. He was Brad Howard. We’d gone to high school together. We’d sat together in Geometry one semester.

And even if I hadn’t recognized him, he probably would’ve recognized me. That was the thing about coming from one of those families with too much money and power— everyone in goddamned Downeast Maine knew who I was.

“Oh my God.” Brad laughed and shook his head as he clapped my shoulder. “Jesus Christ. There are a lot of people who are going to be thrilled when they hear about this.” Then he looked past me. “Hey, Jessica? Put in a call.” His eyes flicked back to me, wide with wonder. “We just found Colin Everroad.”

Chapter Two

Lir

From a safe distance away and masked by a little magic for good measure, I watched the land people helping the man to his feet. He was unsteady, leaning hard on the others, but he was awake and upright. None of them seemed panicked over his condition, either.

Good. He’d be all right. I’d worried no one would find him there before the cold got to him, but then the man and woman had stumbled across him, and they’d stayed by his side until the other people arrived.

Satisfied he was safe, I slipped beneath the surface and dove. With a few hard flips of my tail, I was far below the surface and began following the familiar rocks and trenches toward home.

With every dip and turn, I dreaded my arrival. My parents and brothers already disapproved of me going to the surface as often as I did. This time, I’d been gone much longer than usual, and no one would be happy with the reason.

What could I have done, though? The man had been stranded when the storm came in. Something had been wrong with his boat, and he hadn’t been able to return to shore before the wind and waves had begun tossing him around. If I’d left him the way merfolk were meant to leave land people who were foolish enough to enter the water, he’d have been dead for sure. Dashed on the rocks by wind. Drowned beneath crashing waves. Even if he could have survived the violence of the storm, the water was too cold for land people.

It wasn’t our custom to save them. There was too much danger to us, and the land people knew they were gambling with death when they left dry land.

But I’d never seen one in danger like that, and I couldn’t just let the storm kill him. I’d never imagined I could let anyone, land or mer, die if I could save them, and when the moment had come, I’d been right.

And was that the only reason you saved him?

Truth was…no.

I’d have saved anyone I’d found in danger, but him? I’d been intrigued by him before the clouds had even begun to gather. Intrigued in ways I still didn’t quite understand.

There were those among the mer who thought the land people were ugly creatures with their strange legs and absence of fins and gills. Some thought they were beautiful in their own way, much like we thought sharks and storms were beautiful—something to admire from a distance, but never touch. Certainly not…touch.

From time to time, though, someone said the taboo words aloud—that given the chance, they’d couple with an extraordinarily beautiful land person. There were even a few who claimed they had, though Neptune knew exactly how someone would go about that. Where would you even put the… Anyway. I had no idea. I’d never thought about a land person like that.

Not until I saw him.

I shivered as I swam on, my mind full of his face and what I’d been able to see of his body. He was one of the lighter skinned people, touched faintly brown the way some of them were if they spent a lot of time in the sun. For the first time in my life, I wished I could see more of a land person. His kind were woefully ill-equipped against the elements, not to mention modest, and like hermit crabs, never ventured out into the light without first wrapping themselves in colorful things.

His face had been easy to see, though. Faintly shadowed with the golden beginnings of the face hair some of his kind wore, with dark eyes I could have stared into for days. I’d swum alongside his craft for a while, watching him from under cover of magic as he sang to himself and emptied lobsters from traps. Even while he’d glanced at the horizon and the dark clouds in the distance, he’d seemed happy and content, smiling when some seabirds flew by, and even offering some food to a gull that had landed on his boat. His smile had mesmerized me.

And then the other boat had arrived, coming up perilously close to his, so I’d gone below to keep from getting caught between them. When it was just his boat again, I’d surfaced, and his smile had been gone just like the other boat. He’d seemed worried. Frantic, even. His boat had gone quiet, and in between throwing progressively more panicked looks toward the blackening horizon, he’d tried—I thought—to fix it.

He’d spoken into something at one point. Calling for help.

“The props are fouled,” he’d said into the little box. “They… They got tangled in a lobster line, and—yeah, the props were spinning, and now they’re gummed up really bad. And the storm’s coming in. I’m… Shit, I think I need the Coast Guard.”

The Coast Guard. I knew those words. My father had shown me one of their boats once. Red and white with angular symbols along the hulls. The people manning those boats were land people who existed to rescue others who’d foundered in the water. Good. This man would be safe as long as the Coast Guard came.

Except the Coast Guard never came.

No one did.

I’d done what I could to keep the water around him calm, but what magic I possessed was no match for a storm on the sea. There’d been nothing more I could do but watch as the clouds blotted out the sun and left his boat bobbing in darkness as the waves had begun to roll and crash. And then—

“Where have you been?” Caspian’s voice startled me out of my memories, and I veered so hard I nearly crashed into a rock.

I turned, and my brother swam up from below me as I growled, “Is it necessary to sneak up on me like that?”

He rolled his eyes and floated to a stop. “You went to the surface to watch a storm, and after the storm passed, you didn’t return.” He glared at me and repeated, “Where have you been? Is it true you saved one of them?” He pointed sharply behind us, as if to indicate the land.

I gave an irritated flip of my tailfins and started swimming again. As he fell in beside me, I said, “Someone needed help. I helped him.”

Caspian tsked. “I knew it. You’re going to get yourself killed one day, you know.”

“He would have drowned,” I snapped, swimming harder just to make him struggle to keep up with me. Caspian may have been bigger and stronger, but I would always be faster. Through my teeth, I added, “I made sure he was in a place where his own kind would find him, and then I left.”

“Uh-huh.”

I threw Caspian a glare. “What?”

He didn’t answer. We swam in silence, but I knew this conversation wasn’t over. He was likely waiting until we were home and he’d have our parents and sisters to help outnumber me. They’d all have an opinion about me spending time at the surface, even though I’d never had the same fascination with the land people that other mer had. I just loved storms.

But last night, there’d been a land person stranded in the storm. One who’d had me enthralled with nothing more than his face and his voice and his smile. And I’d saved him from the storm, and now I wanted to see him again, and I’d be forbidden from going near the surface at all if anyone suspected a thing.

Caspian and I were nearly home when he suddenly surged past me and cut me off so abruptly we nearly collided.

“What are—”

“Lir, I need you to listen to me.” He grabbed my shoulders and looked in my eyes. “Are you listening?”

I didn’t want to be, but he wouldn’t let it go until I did, so I glared at him. “All right. What?”

“You can’t save all the land people.” His voice was firm but not as sharp as it usually was whenever I’d returned from the surface. “You can’t save any of them, Lir. Any of them. Sometimes they fall into the water, and they drown.”

I set my jaw. “But if I can save one, then why shouldn’t I?”

“Do you think they ever save us?” He arched a brow. “Have you ever known a mer who was saved by a land person?”

I avoided his gaze. “No.”

“That’s because they don’t exist.” He tightened his grip on my shoulders, an unspoken bid for me to look at him again. I didn’t, but he kept talking. “When they find us, they take us to their buildings and study us. In pieces. Or they put our dried-out carcasses up for others to look at.”

“So, what?” I returned my narrow-eyed gaze to his. “I should let them drown when they fall into our world?”

“You shouldn’t endanger yourself to save them.” He pointed upward. “And just being near the surface is putting—”

“Yes, yes, I know,” I said with a groan. “Being near the surface puts me in danger of being seen.” I shimmied out of his grasp and swam in a circle just to stay out of his reach. “You think I go anywhere near the top without covering myself in enough magic to stay unseen?”

“I think you take for granted that that’s enough.”

“Are you suggesting the humans have come up with a machine to make it past our magic?” I laughed and started swimming toward home again. “They’re not that smart.”

“Lir.” He growled something, then caught up with me. “Just be cautious, will you? Don’t make me be the one to tell Mother your dried-out carcass is pinned up for them to gawk at.”

“You worry too much.”

“You don’t worry enough!”

Maybe he was right, but my magic and speed had kept me safe enough. They’d also kept the land person safe when his boat had failed during the storm. I’d been careful then—careful to protect myself and the fragile man from the brutal storm. I would never apologize for that.

And I would never tell any of them that, in a moment of foolish hope that he might remember, I’d whispered my name in his ear before I’d left him to be found.

Please remember my name…

Chapter Three

Colin

I was pretty sure admitting me for “observation” was overkill and a half. I didn’t have a concussion. I hadn’t been all that hypothermic. A few bottles of water had helped with the dehydration. There wasn’t much wrong with me at this point except being sore all over and wanting to get some sleep, ideally in my own bed.

A somewhat bitchy and not overly charitable part of me thought the insistence on admitting me was because my parents were loaded and it was a chance to bill the crap out of them. After all, I had been whisked from the ER to the VIP suite instead of a perfectly acceptable basic room.

The more realistic and seriously embarrassed side of me was pretty sure this came from the hospital’s perfectly justified fear that if I so much as sneezed after I left the premises, they’d be looking down the barrel of one of the Everroad family’s famous lawsuits.

Whatever the case, I wasn’t staying because I needed to. I was staying because I was an Everroad. And that probably also had something to do with all the news vans I saw parked outside when I peeked out my window. God, please tell me there wouldn’t be a press conference. Did it have to be big news that I’d washed up on the beach looking like a drowned rat?

At least my dad or his PR guy would handle all the media crap. Dad didn’t like me in front of cameras anymore. He hadn’t actually said it, but ever since I’d come out, he’d always seemed nervous that I might suddenly blurt to the world that his son was gay. He was still struggling to stomach it himself. God forbid people started talking.

Ugh. I rubbed my eyes and sighed into the stillness of my cool, sterile room. I was tired, I was sore, and I wanted to go home. I was not in the mood to deal with my dad, his reputation, or his fear that I would tarnish the same. In fact, I’d probably stained the family name by washing up this morning in the first place. Substance abuse was kind of a thing in the soap opera that was my privilege-saturated family, and it didn’t take much to imagine the rumors already circulating. Or my father breathing into a paper bag imagining that whatever had happened to me somehow traced back to one of the drug-fueled orgies he was convinced all gay dudes had. Not that he would tell me where those things supposedly happened, so I’d never gotten to—

“Oh my God, Colin! You’re okay!” My mother’s voice startled me, and I looked up just as she rushed to my bed and threw her arms around me. I was stunned for a second but then returned her embrace. Well, I guess that was a silver lining to this whole thing—my mom actually hugged me for once. She was the epitome of a helicopter parent in the sense that she hovered constantly in my life and tried to micromanage me into being a proper Everroad, but she was hands-off when it came to affection.

“I’m fine, Mom.” I patted her back awkwardly. “I’m good. I was just a bit cold and dehydrated. That’s all.”

She pulled back and stared at me with wide eyes. “But we all thought you were dead. They’d given up searching except—” She grimaced and added in a harsh whisper, “They were searching for your body, Colin.”

I shuddered. I hadn’t been dead, and I knew I wasn’t dead, but it was creepy as hell to think how easily I could’ve been and how many people thought I was.

Mom squeezed my arm. “What happened? Where have you been?”

“Dear.” Dad appeared beside her and gently tugged her shoulder. “Give the boy a chance to rest. He’s probably been through a lot.” He studied me, a mix of relief, suspicion, and confusion in his eyes. Like he was glad I was alive, but he had…questions.

“I don’t remember much.” I ignored his flinch and resisted the urge to inform him that I had definitely not been six poppers deep in a twelve-man orgy before getting beached. At least, I didn’t think so. Christ, was it too much to ask to remember the good parts? I mean, not that I was into the drugs and stuff, but if I was going to get naked with a bunch of guys the way my dad had apparently convinced himself I would—

I shook myself and cleared my throat. “The last thing I remember is being out on the boat.”

Mom nodded. “Joan and Haley got a call from you before the storm started, and they sent the Coast Guard looking for you, but…” Lips tight, Mom gripped my arm so hard it hurt. “When they found Joan and Haley’s boat, but not you, and especially after so much time had gone by…”

I swallowed. “How much time has gone by?”

My dad glanced at his watch. “The storm ended a good twelve hours ago. And it lasted for almost as long.”

Twenty-four hours, then. I’d gone out to sea with my chicken tenders, and then I’d been knocked around, half-drowned, and tossed up on a beach, and now I was here. All in the space of twenty-four hours. Why did it feel like so much longer? And why couldn’t I remember anything?

Or, well, I did remember a few things. Everything leading up to the first fat raindrops landing on the deck and the first howling gust of wind—that was all crystal clear. Some of it clearer than I would’ve liked. After that, though? There were just flickers. Flashes of things that didn’t make any sense. Hands. Vague impressions of a face. A voice I’d never heard before or since.

“My name is Lir.”

“What happened to the boat, anyway?” My dad pulled me out of my thoughts. “The Coast Guard said the motor was badly damaged in the storm, but they didn’t give a lot of details.”

I avoided his gaze. “It’s… Everything’s kind of fuzzy for some reason, but I remember props getting tangled in a lobster line.” That version was oversimplified by a long shot, but I didn’t want to tell the whole story to my parents, or the Coast Guard, or Joan and Haley, or anyone else. I didn’t want to talk about it. Swallowing past a sour taste in the back of my throat, I said, “Is the boat salvageable?”

My dad nodded. “It took a beating in the storm, and it’ll need some work to be serviceable again.” He paused. “I’m sure we can help the ladies out if they need it.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

Okay, that was surprising. Dad didn’t usually have a lot of kind words for Joan or Haley. Joan was a “stale hippie who reeked of stale weed,” Haley was “the missing idiot some village was looking for,” and as a pair, they were “a damn good argument for why marriage should stay between a man and a woman.” So to say the least, I was surprised he was willing to fix their boat.

“You’d help them?” I cocked my head. “Why?”

A normal person would probably say something to the effect of “it’s the right thing to do” and “they’re screwed without their boat.” Dad wasn’t quite that charitable even under the best of circumstances.