Dad and I searched for her for months, but there were no other boats on the ocean, just the roofs of evacuated houses and the tops of tall trees, which I navigated around. Eventually Dad gave up. We sailed back to the dock and loaded the boat onto his trailer, and he abandoned it in the barn. Dad said if we weren’t going to escape with it, there was no good use for that ship. It was too large to navigate around the rooftops easily, and it reminded him too much of Mom. One night the tide lifted it off the ground and it bucked on the waves like a wild horse, kicking the barn with its bow and stern, rearing angrily against the walls. Dad waded in amid the thrashing, climbed aboard, and secured the sailboat with ropes to keep it from smashing itself to pieces. And I knew then that though the boat didn’t bring him any joy, he didn’t want to lose it, which is how I think he feels about me.

By the time the textbook is dry, the pages are wrinkled and hard to read, and I don’t know why Dad wasted good diving time on it. I already know how to add, divide, subtract, and multiply; the book’s useless unless he’s thinking about using it for fire. All the same, he takes the book and the winter jacket and puts it in one of our good garbage bags. Then he wraps the turntable in another bag along with the records and takes them out to the truck, and I wonder if we’re going to go see George who lives along the cape in a tiny waterlogged shack where he survives on seaweed, clams, and a woodshed full of bourbon he salvaged during the looting. But Dad doesn’t drive in that direction. Instead he turns down South Road, which goes on for the longest stretch, curving around bends until it finally descends toward the sea. In summer, starfish cling to the windows of the houses down by the water’s edge. We harvest them, and Dad fries them up, and we crack open their shells in the sunroom and chew out the spongy meat.