And I understand, with the clarity of diving into cold water, how little I’m actually needed. Until a couple of days ago Dad hadn’t even told me about this woman, and now he’s planning to leave our house to be with her. Which is fine, because truth is, I’ve wanted to leave from the moment the floodwaters started rising. When everyone abandoned our neighborhood and Dad wouldn’t evacuate, I climbed onto the roof and spelled out SOS with my clothes. I waved my arms, watching those helicopters disappear, while Dad stood out on the porch yelling for me to come down. “It’s okay,” he kept saying. “We don’t need help.”

I tiptoe back into my room where Fiona’s sleeping, and I lie in my bed, looking out my window, trying to imprint what this house felt like to live in. The clouds look like schools of jellyfish through the window, drifting across the dark night, and behind them, somewhere, the moon. When I hear my father’s snores, I crawl out of bed and open my closet. I get out my duffel bag and put my clothes in it, along with my rain jacket, my Swiss Army knife, and the architecture book.

The high tide is soft against the side of the barn, and when I pull the doors open through the water, the sailboat is as still as a sleeping horse. I haul the tanks on, throw my duffel bag on deck, then climb aboard and untie the knots from the walls. The ship pulls toward the open sea, as though it also wants to leave, and once I raise the sail, it glides quietly through the water of our backyard. I know to navigate west, where eventually I’ll hit land, and I know my father’s happy now that he’s with that woman. Maybe someday I’ll sail home again, tell him everything I wrote in the note I left on my bed. How he doesn’t need to worry about me. I’ve learned all the lessons he’s tried to teach. I know how to dive and to hold my breath when the tanks run out, I know how to catch and gut fish, and I’ll be okay without his help. Which is what I tell myself as the ship leaves our house behind. That it’s okay for me to go; my life was never meant to be only with my father. I was always leaving anyhow, on my way toward some other world, full of strangers, one of them my mother, and a future, which like a deep-sea fish is out there waiting to be caught.

Also by Alexander Weinstein

ALSO BY ALEXANDER WEINSTEIN

Children of the New World

About the Author

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ALEXANDER WEINSTEIN

UNIVERSAL LOVE