It had felt like he’d hit the jackpot. It was every kid’s dream to spend their summer days like that—running through the sand, diving into the surf, eating hot dogs off the grill and ice cream from the Juice Bar.
When his dad died, it wasn’t only that he lost his father—he lost everything. They lost everything. The cottage. The beach. The dream.
Everything changed that day. Because of him. Because Cody had been foolish and impulsive.
He ran toward the spot—the place where they’d pulled his father’s lifeless body from the water. Cody could hear his own screams echoing in the air overhead, mixing with the sound of his footfalls on the pavement. He stepped off the road and into the sand. His calf muscles tightened at the extra resistance.
Off to the side, something glistened, right near the spot where his father had drowned. He slowed his pace, aware of his struggle to get a deep breath, but he wasn’t sure if it was because he’d pushed his pace or because his heart simply couldn’t function properly in that space, looking at that ocean, that spot, with those memories infiltrating his brain.
Still, he pressed on, moving toward whatever it was that glimmered in the sun. A cross. An expensive-looking stone cross with flecks that reflected the light had been planted in the ground like a gravestone. When he reached it, he discovered that at the base of it was a small brass marker with the words In Loving Memory of Daniel Boggs. Husband. Father. Friend.
His vision blurred the longer he stared, confusion rippling through him like a wave on its way to shore.
His father was buried back in their Chicago suburb, and his mother had only wanted to forget they’d ever been on Nantucket, so she certainly had nothing to do with this marker. Daniel had been well-liked—loved, even. He was that kind of guy. The kind of guy Cody could never be. One who enjoyed people, enjoyed talking, always eager to help. Cody hadn’t inherited those qualities. He found people difficult to connect with, though sometimes he wondered if that was a result of his circumstances.
Who had he been before his father died? Was that the man he was supposed to have become?
This was all too much. Too much introspection for one day. The run was supposed to help him forget this kind of emotional garbage, but it wasn’t working.
He knelt down and ran a hand over the cross. It was sturdy. How long had it been there? His hand brushed against something on the back of it. He leaned around and saw something affixed there, a small piece of paper. There were no flowers, no other markings to indicate anyone had been there recently—but whatever this was said otherwise.
He removed it from the cross, not caring if he was invading someone’s privacy—this was meant to memorialize his father. Didn’t he have a right to know what it was?
It was a small card, about the size of a business card. One side was blank, and the other had been written on with black marker.
It read: Miss you, Danny. IOU.
Cody frowned.
The white card appeared to be new, like it hadn’t weathered a single rainstorm. Like it had been put there recently.
But it had been nearly twelve years since his dad died. Who on the island still remembered enough to come down to this mysterious memorial and leave a note? And where had this cross come from in the first place?
His stomach twisted. Did he want to know?
He reread the words. Miss you, Danny.
His mind rushed back years. He and Louisa were lying on giant beach towels and their parents were all lined up underneath one of those beach tents meant to keep out the sun.
Cody had never understood the point of those tents. The reason you went to the beach was to be in the sun, wasn’t it? He and Louisa were tired and quiet, and they could overhear their parents’ conversation, reminiscing about a summer years before when they’d all first met.
It wasn’t uncommon for them to retell this story. They told it to Cody and Lou. They told it to each other. They loved to think about—and romanticize—the way they’d become “the Fab Four.”
“You all have me to thank,” Louisa’s mom said, her Southern drawl so lazy he thought it might put him to sleep. “If I hadn’t dumped Danny, none of us would be here.”
Cody’s dad let out a hearty laugh. “That’s not how I remember it, Joey.”
Louisa squinted at him. “Why does she call him Danny?”
“Why does he call her Joey?”
They both rolled their eyes then at the silliness of their parents, who were all good-natured about the way their friendship had begun.
Daniel and JoEllen met in a business class at Boston University. They were assigned to work together on a group project and hit it off right away.
“He was smitten with me,” JoEllen said.
Cody didn’t say so, but he thought it was rude of her to talk like that in front of his mom.
Louisa groaned. “She’s so full of herself.”
“Not too smitten, or he wouldn’t have set you up with me.” Warren laughed.
JoEllen swatted her husband on the shoulder, and Cody noticed his mom stayed quiet. She didn’t like thinking or talking about Daniel and other women. His father must’ve sensed it because he wound his arm around his wife and squeezed.
“Everything worked out just as it was supposed to,” he said, placing a tender kiss on Marissa’s temple.
JoEllen smiled at Marissa. “I knew you two would be perfect together.”
Daniel and JoEllen had apparently realized they were better off as friends, and they stayed that way for months. And then they set each other up with their now spouses, Warren and Marissa.
Marissa had been a roommate of JoEllen’s, though she confided in Cody once that they were great roommates because they had so little in common. Warren and Daniel were fraternity brothers. The rest was, as they say, history.
They weren’t the normal kind of family friends, however. They were so much closer. Cody was positive that Daniel would’ve jumped in the ocean to save every single one of them if they were being overpowered by the waves.
Why couldn’t it have been someone else he’d been saving that night? Why did it have to be Cody?
He shook aside the memories, the sound of his father’s laughter dancing on the waves, and turned his attention back to the cross in front of him, the note in his hand.
Lots of people loved his father, but only one person that he could think of called him Danny. JoEllen Chambers.
What if . . . ?
He shouldn’t have come here. He didn’t need anything messing with his memory of his father. In his mind, his father was the real hero. His father was the one who jumped in to save him in the middle of the choppiest waters they’d seen that summer. His father was the one who gave no thought to the fact that he’d warned Cody not to swim, no thought to the fact that Cody had disobeyed. He was the one who braved the waves and the rip currents and the darkness to save his son’s life.
He was the one who died.
Cody stood, tucked the card in his pocket, and gave the cross one last, lingering look as if staring at it could provide answers. Whoever had been here had known his father enough to want to keep his memory alive. They missed him enough, even all these years later.
He turned toward the road and started running again, unsuccessfully willing the questions to stop. So much for clearing his mind. All this run had done was create more confusion.