Ben laughed. “I don’t shock that easily,” he replied. “Besides, I think Caddie’s doing a bit of that herself at the moment. Like you said, it doesn’t help to pretend it isn’t happening.”

“She’s a little young for that, isn’t she?” said Hudson.

“I think so,” Ben said. “But I’m her father, so I’m hardly objective.”

“What about that scientific remove you were talking about?” Hudson teased.

Ben crumpled his bag and tossed it into the nearby garbage can. “I’m finding it a little difficult to maintain that when it comes to Caddie,” he said.

“You sound surprised,” said Hudson.

“Frankly, I am,” Ben admitted. “I thought—hoped—I’d be able to approach this whole situation with at least a reasonable hope of understanding how it’s supposed to work. I’m afraid to say that I seem to be failing miserably.”

“She’s a girl,” said Hudson. “A person.”

“I’m finding that out,” Ben said. “It was easier when she was just my daughter, especially when she was her mother’s problem. Then she was more or less an abstraction. Now she’s ...” His voice faded away as he searched for the right words.

“Reality,” Hudson suggested.

Ben nodded. “It’s like the difference between theoretical physics and engineering,” he said. “Those theoretical guys can sit around for days talking about how ants building a colony in Africa can result in floods in New Orleans, but try to get them to make a levee out of sandbags and they don’t have a clue what to do.”

Hudson, like Ben minutes before, threw some bread to the birds. He watched as one, a small junco, grabbed a piece that barely fit in its mouth and stood, puffed up and menacing, as larger birds attempted to take its prize. If it dropped the bread in order to break it into smaller pieces, it risked losing it altogether. But unless it did, it wouldn’t get to eat, as the piece was too large to swallow whole.

“Good luck, fellah,” Hudson said sympathetically.

Ben grunted, and Hudson looked up. “Not you,” he said. “Mr. Bird here.”

Ben looked under the table, where the junco was hopping away from three determined chickadees. “Looks like he’s outnumbered,” he commented.

“Caddie seemed okay at dinner the other night,” Hudson said, getting back to the topic at hand.

“That’s because she had an audience,” said Ben. “Every night since then we’ve had the usual one-word-answer conversations.”

“Give her some time,” Hudson said. “She’ll come around.”

Ben didn’t say anything. He was looking over Hudson’s shoulder at something behind them. Hudson turned and saw two divers slowly walking up the ramp from the ocean. They were talking and laughing with one another.

“Anything down there, boys?” Ben called out.