“Everything,” I replied, sitting forward as well and feeling a friendly connection.
With a nostalgic, faraway look in her eyes, she told me that Susie’s real father was the handsomest man she’d ever seen in her life.
“He had thick, wavy, sun-bleached hair,” she told me. “Blue bedroom eyes and broad shoulders, and he was captain of an old wooden sailboat. It was like something out of a dream. I couldn’t take my eyes off him, and it was my friends who pushed me to flirt with him.”
I listened to all of this with an unsettling mixture of understanding and jealous rage, because this was Dean she was talking about. My Dean. I tried to tell myself that, in actuality, the man she spoke of was a stranger to me, because the Dean I once loved was an imposter. My Dean didn’t truly exist. It shouldn’t matter that he had slept with the woman across the table from me. He had probably slept with many unsuspecting women over the past two decades.
“Go on,” I said, regarding her steadily as I sipped my wine.
Patricia described a night of drinking and dancing, and that’s when I stopped her. “Are you sure? The Dean I married never drank. Not a drop.”
She sat back and shrugged. “Well, he certainly liked his whiskey that night.”
A wave of skepticism washed over me. What if it wasn’t the same man? “Keep going,” I said.
There wasn’t much to tell. Patricia revealed that she had dragged him back to her hotel room, where they’d made love, which she remembered fondly, but when she’d woken up the next morning, he was gone.
“That’s it?” I asked. “He didn’t say goodbye or leave a number?”
“He left a very sweet note on the hotel stationery,” she replied. “He drew a little heart at the bottom. I wasn’t offended. We both knew it was a one-night thing, and I was touched by the note. It was the first time I had let myself flirt with anyone since my divorce. I just needed to let loose, and John was . . .” She paused. “He was lovely.”
“Lovely?”
“Yes. He was a gentleman. When we were in my room, he kept stopping and asking if I was okay and if I was sure. For a few days afterward, I was completely infatuated with him, and I wanted to go back and see him again, but I resisted the urge.”
“Why?”
“Because I knew he wasn’t for me. I’m a city girl with a corporate career,” she explained, “and he was a beach bum. You know the type. Flip-flops and shorts every day of the year. No television. No commitments.” She sipped her wine. “I shouldn’t stereotype him, though. There was something sad in his eyes. And it wasn’t easy to get him to dance with me.” She rolled her eyes at the memory. “I think he probably felt sorry for me. He didn’t want to reject me and hurt my feelings.”
I was gripped by every word of Patricia’s story but dizzy from drinking the wine too quickly. By the end of it, I was convinced that her John and my Dean were in fact the same person. Whether he was a gentleman or not was up for debate, because my Dean had traveled across the world to hide a violent crime he had committed.
Now here I was, two decades later, standing on a hotel balcony overlooking the Great Barrier Reef, admiring the beautiful daughter we had created together. The child he had never met.
Was he really here? Alive?
Susie and Patricia had called dozens of snorkeling outfits in the area and had finally located a sailboat captain named John who fit the description. He had been running snorkeling tours for more than twenty years. I was grateful for their detective work and eager to walk to the marina where this man’s sailboat was docked.
Rose had agreed that it would be best for me to go alone. I was the only person who could say for sure whether John, the beach bum, and Dean, the pilot, were one and the same.
She also understood that I had some personal ground to cover on my own.
Later that afternoon, I sat on a bench in the sunshine, watching from the boardwalk as a shiny new forty-five-foot cruiser motored into the marina with sails lowered. According to the tour company’s website, the luxury yacht was named Jade and was available for private charters. There were no pictures of the owner on the website, and the contact information provided no physical location for the business, merely an email address and phone number.
As I sat waiting and watching, part of me wanted to believe that a total stranger might step off the boat in the next few minutes, not Dean, because Dean was dead. His plane had crashed off the coast of Puerto Rico in 1990, and I was chasing a ghost.
I promised myself that if Captain John was not my late husband, I would accept that as closure, once and for all, and fly home to New York.
The boat bumped up against the dock, and a young man in black shorts and a blue T-shirt hopped off to secure the lines. The boardwalk was crowded with tourists who obstructed my view, so I leaned this way and that to keep an eye on who was getting off the boat. I pulled my sunglasses down the bridge of my nose and squinted into the distance as passengers slowly disembarked. Two by two, they walked past me on the bench, and I tried to be discreet as I studied their faces and listened to their conversations.
Soon, they were all gone, and the young crew on the boat was tidying up. I continued to wait until they stepped off and said goodbye to the last man on board. I couldn’t get a good look at him from where I sat on the bench, so I gathered up my bag and stood.
My stomach churned hotly with waves of apprehension, and my heart pounded hard and fast. Gabriel rushed into my mind at that moment. He was at home, taking care of the house and life we had built together, and the thought of him, like an anchor, gave me courage. I took a few slow, deep breaths before I put one foot in front of the other and started off down the length of the dock.
Seagulls called out to one another, and a bell clanged somewhere on the far side of the marina. The sun was hot on my bare shoulders, and I began to perspire as I walked. I was halfway down the length of the dock when a man finally stepped off the boat.
I stopped and stared. He was slim and fit with windblown golden hair. He wore faded gray shorts, a navy T-shirt, and aviator sunglasses. For some reason, he paused briefly, dropped his duffel bag, and bent forward to rummage around inside it. I stood motionless, studying the curve of his muscular back and the way his hands moved as he dug through the bag.
Then he straightened and rested his hands on his hips. His head turned, and he looked at me. The whole world seemed to disappear for a moment. All I felt was the mad rush of scorching blood through my body.
It was Dean. There could be no doubt.
I don’t know how long we stood there, just staring at each other like that. Me in my ankle-length sundress, flip-flops, and sunglasses, completely immobile on the dock. Him with his hands on his hips, the sunlight glinting off his honey-colored hair.
There was a buzzing sensation in my ears.
Then his hands fell to his sides.
I slowly began to walk toward him, and he started walking too. He left his duffel bag behind him, splayed open on the dock.
We came together at last, a few feet apart, and stopped.
Years ago, in my many heart-wrenching daydreams, I had imagined that if by some miracle Dean and I were ever reunited, we would run toward each other and collide in a passionate, euphoric embrace. There would be tears and laughter and kisses. But I did not feel like laughing or hugging. I was built of cold stone in that moment with no desire to melt into his arms.