As she cuts, she wonders if Claudia is watching, her little ghost daughter. Wonders if she thinks that Katriina is a coward, letting the life drain out of her too slowly, year after year, drop of blood by drop of blood, ache by bright and shiny ache, instead of having the guts to just get it over with.

SIXTEEN

After the morning coffee cruise, Walter ties up the Miss Penelope at the marina and sits on the upper deck, watching the kids at the splash pad, their harried parents trying to avoid getting wet. He knows he should go back to Victor Street, but he can’t bring himself to leave just yet. He hadn’t realized how difficult it would be with Kate not there, how empty the house would seem even when it was full of people. When Kate isn’t there, the family isn’t a family – it’s just a group of people who happen to be related. Kate is the one who holds everything together. She is the one who makes everyone else make sense.

He still has one more load of dishes to wash, but that can wait, too. It has been taking more out of him doing everything himself lately. When she was younger, London would occasionally join him, but the novelty wore off for her around the same age it had worn off for Finn and Nicki. And Walter knows better than to suggest using the coffee cruise as punishment, the way he did with them. He had thought, back then, that it would be one of those things that they appreciated when they were older, but remembering the expression on Finn’s face when he had gone into the sunroom to wake her up, he realizes that it is still a burden, the way spending time with him is still a burden. And while he knows he was a fool for expecting something more, he is surprised to discover how much it hurts. Walter would never admit it to anyone, but it broke his heart that neither of his girls showed any interest in being out on the lake. He knows that children need to forge their own path in the world, and he would never want to impede them in that. He had just hoped that one of them would have wanted to follow in his footsteps. That was all.

—

“Let me guess, she’s not going,” Nicki had said when he ran into her in the kitchen on his way out. She was already dressed for work, her hair and makeup done, standing waiting by the toaster. He wondered, not for the first time, if his manic daughter ever slept.

“She had a long day yesterday,” Walter said, pulling a carton of orange juice from the fridge and pouring himself a glass. “She deserves some rest.”