Free The Lobster Kings by Alexi Zentner

he was wrong, because I knew the truth: my father didn’t make mistakes.
    I walked to the cabin and sank into a chair, trying to dry my face with my sleeve as I turned to watch him. He stood alone and solid on the deck of the
Queen Jane
. The lights of the boat washed around him and made him seem like an absence against the snowthat fell over the boat and the waters. He raised his arm and pointed it down and out over the water, like an accusatory finger.
    And then, a lick of fire.
    The shot came sharp and stark against the night. The only sounds were the lapping of the water and the hum of the motor in idle. The crack of the gunshot snapped against me like I’d been shot myself. There was barely a pause between the first and second shots, and then again between the second and third shots, one, two, three, and then there was silence, but in the space of that silence, it felt like the sound of the bullets echoed from every wave around, bouncing in and around the cabin and filling the boat. I tried to keep my crying to myself, but I couldn’t stop myself from letting out a gasp and then a few sobs.
    I saw Daddy’s head drop, his whole body seeming to sag against the effort, like the snow that had started collecting on his shoulders was weighing him down. And then he began to howl and rage against the night, screaming like it would stop the snow and the waves. The snow streaked down and over him, breaking out of the darkness and framing him in the white. He lifted his arm and fired the gun out into the distance of the ocean and the dark that lay behind the curtain of reflected snow from the ship’s lights, the last three bullets in the gun flaming into nothingness. His voice died in the night, leaving us again with only the hum of the motor and the constancy of the ocean, his screaming and the sound of the gunshots already fading to memory. He grasped the rail of the boat with one hand, and then, with the other, almost casually, he spun the gun out into the air and over the water. The metal soaked up the lights of the boat and the darkness of the sky, turning around and around, lost to my sight before it hit the water. By the time I heard the heavy splash, Daddy had already turned back toward the cabin, his hands empty, the gun sinking into the deeps.
    We didn’t speak on the way home, and I looked through the windshield out into the night. I was crying hard enough that things kept coming in and out of focus. Daddy tied us up to themooring buoy and then we reversed our trip across the bay, a thin coating of snow sticking to all of the surfaces of Loosewood Island. When we got to the dock, I stepped out of the skiff and tied us up, but Daddy didn’t move. He sat hunched over in his seat, his hands still on the handles of the oars. I let him stay there shaking for a few minutes, and then he wiped at his face and got out of the skiff, the two of us making our way through the snow and up to the house.
    In the vestibule, he cupped his hand around the back of my neck. I didn’t know what to do and wasn’t sure what to expect. I think that I thought Daddy was going to say something, either to justify his killing Second, or something to comfort me about Scotty, or Second, or even just about his love for me. I wanted him—needed him—to say that he understood that he wasn’t left with nothing, that despite the death of my brother, he knew that he had me, had my sisters, but he didn’t say anything. He leaned over and kissed me on the top of my head, his breath warm through my hair, and he held me like that for an uncomfortable amount of time.
    When he released me, he turned and walked into the living room, and it wasn’t until the click of the lamp sent the shadows leaning away from the doorway and I heard the compression of the sofa, the thin crisp of paper in his book, that I snuck back upstairs to my room. I stayed in my bed, in and out of sleep until I heard the stirrings of Momma and my sisters. I didn’t say anything