Free Accidental Happiness by Jean Reynolds Page

with a decent response. Finally, I managed, “Derek, I can’t say where my head is right now.”
    “It’s okay,” he said. “We’ll have a beer. Hang out for a while. I don’t expect . . .” He stopped. “You know.” The color in his tanned cheeks took on a deeper color.
    “I know,” I said, feeling my own face grow warm.
    He offered a gentle push to get the boat off the dock, then turned and went inside the marina offices. Still, I could almost feel him watching me as I pulled away.
    Around the bend, at the mouth of the channel, I saw a dolphin arching off the starboard bow, a baby following just behind. They were going toward an old shrimp boat just up the way, long wrecked and nearly submerged. A gathering of small fish lived among the algae growing on the ruins of the old boat. Benjamin told me about that. We anchored once near the wreck, split a bottle of wine, and watched the dolphins and the otters come and go.
    I slowed the motor to watch them. The mother and baby were moving just under the surface.
    “There you are,” I said out loud. At best, I was getting eccentric; at worst, crazy.
    “Georgie, look.” I lifted up the dog to see if she would notice the dolphins. She didn’t. Instead, she squirmed to get down and resume sunning herself on the cockpit floor. It was the only home she’d known with me.
    I thought about the house I’d sold, the rooms that Ben and I took for granted as we lived our normal life. If I’d stayed, could I have reinvented them and made them my own? I wondered if I’d done the right thing, moving. I’d made the decision a month after the funeral. The place was too sad, so full of Ben’s stuff. Only after he was gone did I realize how few things actually belonged to me.
Us
was mostly
him,
it seemed.
    Even after the move, I hadn’t let go. Far from it. I’d kept everything in storage. On a good week, I went to the storage place once or twice, just to sit there for a few minutes and feel Ben’s presence. On a bad week I went every day. Lately, I’d had more good weeks. But whether I went there or not, knowing his things were in reach, that they existed somewhere, served as an emergency kit. I kept it there, safe and locked, but ready for that moment when I just had to smell him again, feel him somehow. His suits, pullovers, weekend sweaters. Jackets that carried his scent, maybe even a stray hair on the collar.
    It’s funny that I needed to move out of the house where there were constant reminders, but I also needed his things to be waiting for me. Maybe the difference was the control I felt with the storage unit. It allowed me to choose when to have those feelings. Nothing to take me by surprise.
    After
River Rose
cleared the inlet, I let out the head sail to make a show of sailing, but all I really wanted was fresh air and some space. The luffing as it unfurled into the wind sounded large, menacing. Georgie took a stance in the cockpit, barked loudly against the noise. I felt a surge, fell off the wind, and let the sail fill. The clean rush took the boat forward, and for a second my mind cleared of everything, felt momentarily at rest.
    I turned off the motor and took in the silence. Torn clouds moving fast with the air offered occasional sun, both fierce and fleeting—and glorious. The world opened and I realized how confining the marina had become. And it would soon get worse. In a couple of hours I would pick up Reese and Angel. After that, what happened was anybody’s guess. But for an hour, maybe more if I pushed it, I could forget about Reese and Angel. I could even forget about myself.
    I looked at my GPS, then checked the tides to make sure I stayed clear of the shoals. Benjamin knew the river by heart, and it occurred to me that maybe I avoided sailing because on the water, like in our home, he was so clearly absent. We’d met on a boat, crewing at a local regatta.
    My worst fears lay in unanticipated memory—like the ice-cream shop in Charleston just a