But I want to put her through her paces. Just in case Lacey is right and Daisy is used to coasting by, I figure it can’t hurt to put her to work.
While she’s getting ready, I stop by the kitchen, fill up a thermos of coffee and grab some insulated mugs, then head up top. Lacey and Richard are no doubt fast asleep below in their cabin.
I get behind the wheel and put my head back, taking in the night sky.
Being on a boat at night is a view that will never fail to take your breath away. A velvet black sky so dense that you swear you can see just how deep the universe goes. The stars are embedded like white diamonds, some of them fully formed prisms, others just speckles and stardust, like someone threw a bunch of sparkling sugar up into the night sky and it stuck, swirling around in multicolored galaxies.
“Holy bejesus,” Daisy says as she appears on deck, looking extra small in her hoodie. She’s staring open-mouthed at the sky above. “Is this for real?”
I nod. “This is dark sky territory,” I tell her. “No night pollution from anywhere. You’ll never find as many stars anywhere as you do right here.”
“Wow,” she says, breathlessly. There’s something about her wonder I find so refreshing, like she’s looking at the stars for the first time.
“Guess you have a lot of fog in San Francisco,” I comment.
“Yeah, but even on my parent’s farm, the sky never looked anything like this.”
I hold out the cup of coffee for her. “Here. This will help wake you up.”
“I’m already wide awake,” she says and then fixes her big blue eyes at me. Even in the dark they seem to glow. “But thank you.”
She reaches for the mug and our fingers brush against each other.
It shouldn’t mean anything. And it doesn’t.
But it shouldn’t be something that stands out either.
And it does.
The feel of her finger as it brushes against mine shouldn’t take me back to being a child and holding hands with a crush for the first time. But it’s more than that. There’s a buzz, an electricity between our contact that can’t be imaginary.
Get a grip, I tell myself. Eyes on the horizon.
“So this is the night watch,” she says as she sits down to the left of the wheel, cradling the mug between her hands.
“Generally unexciting.”
She gives me a look. “I should hope so. Dare I ask what an exciting episode would be like?”
“I guess it’s something only I’d find interesting. If the winds were in our favor, we could really be skipping along here. Have you ever been on a boat like this, when you’re going downwind, constant breeze, doing five knots at ease so you can just sit back and let it go?”
“Obviously not,” she says, placing her mug between her knees and tucking her hair beneath the back of her hoodie. “But it sounds nice. This is nice.”
“This is a challenge,” I tell her. “The winds keep pushing us in the wrong direction. But in time, it should work out. Maybe add a day to our journey.”
She stiffens at that.
“Don’t worry,” I tell her. “Not all days will be like today.”
I’m kind of lying because it’ll probably just get worse.
“I’m hoping for the best and expecting the worst,” she says wryly, then sighs. “Which is kind of sad, because once upon a time I hoped for the best and expected the best.”
I watch her carefully, the way she is worrying her lip between her teeth. “You know, I think that’s how we all want to operate. You’re lucky to have done so for so long.”
She tilts her head back to look at the stars. “I’ve heard that all my life. That I was lucky. Now I’m not so sure I was.”
“What makes you say that?”
She shrugs. “I don’t know. It’s not that things haven’t been easy for me…I’ve worked hard, contrary to anything Lacey might say.”
“Lacey can say all she wants, but she wasn’t there and has never been in your shoes.”
Her eyes focus on mine and an impish smile plays across her lips. “Are you sticking up for me?”
“I wouldn’t go that far.”
“So diplomatic,” she muses. Then her expression darkens as she stares into her coffee. “Lacey thinks everything has been handed to me because she got the shit end of the stick when it came to my parents.”
“What do you mean?”
“She’s only three years older, but it feels more like ten years when you look at how my parents raised her versus how they raised me. They’re religious, right? Not in a bad, cult-ish way. They’ve always been very supportive of us. But…with Lacey, they were very strict. I guess my mother struggled a bit before she finally got pregnant, and they were so fearful of losing her that they never let Lacey out of their sight. They didn’t let her have many friends, never bought her new clothes, never let her eat junk food, never let her go to sleepovers. In high school they monitored what music she listened to, she wasn’t allowed to date. They knew she had no interest in the family farm, so they pushed her into studies.”
“I have a hard time believing Lacey would be pushed into that.”
“You’re right. But they put a lot of pressure on her to be the best and maybe that made Lacey worse, I don’t know. Because she puts a lot of pressure on herself in order to please my parents and she’s still acting that way, to this day.”
“And what about you?”
“Me? I was given nothing but freedom. I got away with murder. I had boyfriends galore, I stayed out late, I drank and smoked weed, I did whatever I wanted. I’m lucky that I loved school because I don’t think they would have even pushed me to do well.”
“So Lacey resents you because you got all the freedom and she didn’t.”
“Yeah, resent is the right word. But…the thing is, I’m no better off than she is. Because she’s the one who got all the attention. My parents cared enough about her to be that strict. They didn’t care about me. They let me do whatever because I was barely a thought in their minds.”
“That’s not true,” I tell her. “I spent a lot of time with your parents, they’re very proud of you.”
“Maybe…maybe now we’re closer. But it wasn’t like that before. So while Lacey resents me for my freedom, I resent Lacey for the love and attention she got.”
The words seem to hang in the air between us until they’re blown away by the wind and I get the feeling that Daisy has never said those words out loud, has never articulated that to someone else.
Why that makes me feel special, I don’t know.
“So…” she goes on, her voice lower. “It’s complicated.” She glances at me. “You’re lucky you don’t have any siblings.”
I freeze and I can feel my skin pale.
Because she doesn’t know.
And it’s not a secret at all, it’s something I should be able to talk about.
But I can’t. Not here, on the water. Not when there is so much at stake.
It’s not healthy, that voice speaks up, the voice that roars the loudest on the sea. You named the boat after her and thought that was enough, you thought that was how you dealt with her death. But you haven’t dealt with it at all. None of you have.