“And now you fly south with your federal case all plotted out up north. Your father is a Negro. Come to think of it, you might not be Clyde’s. Tightass like you. I wasn’t much older than your daughters when I had you. Three weeks past nineteen when you were born. I was somewhat of a mess as a parent, I know. But, hey, I tried to be a mother for a while there. I really did, Meadows. I never bragged about how it all turned out. Maybe I gave up on you by sending you away so soon. But one thing I’ll say for me in the self-knowledge department: I never chanced motherhood again. Live and learn. Your later little half-siblings all got nipped in the bud pretty early. You were—how can I put it?—an experiment. All we can do is learn from our bigger goof-ups.

“I have no talent at mothering anybody except grown men. And nobody needs it more or pays better rates! But, hey, I’ve kept on keeping in touch. With you. Which ain’t easy after years of your not answering me once. Arguing’s easy—silence is the killer, Christmas to birthday to Christmas. You should know from having kids of your own. And no matter how bad at it a parent is, the kids’re always your particular mistakes, nobody else’s. So, now, let’s us make a little peace, kiddo, umkay? What say?

“There are piles of things I need to answer for, but the race of the late Clyde Delman ain’t one. I will tell you this: I have never seen anybody love anybody the way that man loved you. When he couldn’t sleep? He’d get up, tiptoe in and refold your whole sock drawer! Living around you two, sometimes, I felt so left out.”

“Dolphins!” the youngest deckhand shouted. He knew my girls would come running above deck wearing cocked cute caps. And sure enough. Each still held a fan of playing cards. They’d been playing what? “Go Fish”? And something about their dashing aloft into the freshness of the daylight this far out at sea, something about the beauty of those horizontally striped black-white French sailor shirts, some element of spectacle in the way Deirdre now pointed toward eight heavy leaping silver fish and cried, “Per-fect!”

And our oldest, then her sister threw their playing cards aloft. We all laughed to see paper scatter, hearts, clubs, turning, aces, spades, suddenly meaningless and fluttering, somehow joyful, lost, but beautiful, wasted behind us.