The Captain's Daughter

by Meg Mitchell Moore

  Rob

  Zoe was just back from science camp—she’d been dropped off by Hannah Coogan’s mother—and was lying on her bed with her eyes closed.

  “Zoe?” said Rob, and waited until she opened her eyes and regarded him. “Zoe, I need to see your phone.”

  “Why?”

  Rob had fallen back on the oldest parenting line in the book, the one he’d sworn, when five-pound Zoe first entered the world, and later, for a terrifying two days, when she had a breathing tube taped inside her nostrils, he would never use: “Because I said so.”

  The family rule was that all electronics were ultimately in control of the adults. Zoe handed over her phone, and he said, “Thank you,” in a manner that was very courtly, almost bowing, and left the room. Rob stood in the hallway and stared at the phone until he realized he didn’t know any of Zoe’s passwords. So he slunk back and held it back out to her and said, “Will you please pull up your Instagram account.”

  She did as she was told and handed the phone back. Zoe had two hundred and ninety-one followers on Instagram. Zoe didn’t post that often, and when she did she posted carefully curated shots: a close-up of a hydrangea, a sunset, a photo of her and Sofia Palmer with their arms around each other, dressed up and filtered into perfection. A gorgeous shot of A Family Affair taken from the launch. One of the lobster boats from her trip to Little Harbor. Wow, thought Rob, Zoe might actually have some talent here. Each shot had about ninety likes and several encouraging comments. There was nothing untoward in any of it.

  Rob took a deep breath and said, “Okay, so what was Deirdre talking about?”

  “Deirdre?”

  “I saw her at the club. Something about a secret account? With secret photos?”

  Zoe smiled, and she looked younger. “Oh. That’s not my Instagram account. That’s my Finsta account.”

  “That’s it,” Rob said. “That’s what she said.”

  “It’s not secret, exactly.”

  “So what is it?”

  “It’s fake.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Finsta. Fake Insta: Finsta.”

  Rob felt an unnamed pressure behind his forehead. He said, “Can you please explain this to me in a language that I understand?” (He hadn’t expected to start saying things like that at age forty. How depressing.)

  “Fake Instagram. Finsta.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Let’s see it. Show me.” He handed the phone back to her and she tapped and swiped at the screen and handed it back to him.

  “Here she is,” she said. She looked a little bit embarrassed. “Finsta Zoe.”

  Rob scrolled through. Finsta Zoe was totally different from Instagram Zoe. Finsta Zoe posted several times a day and had only twenty-two followers.

  Finsta Zoe was carefree and silly. Finsta Zoe took photos of her grilled cheese sandwich, a hot chocolate mug loaded with whipped cream, a friend’s border collie wrestling with a tennis ball. Finsta Zoe didn’t use filters; Finsta Zoe posted selfies. Rob looked more carefully at the selfies. They were all appropriate, more goofy than anything. He stopped on one photo and turned the phone to face Zoe. “You look scared in this picture. You look scared and sort of sweet.”

  She shrugged and ducked her head. “So.”

  “I don’t mean that in a bad way. You look like you looked when you were six. You also look like yourself.”

  “Well, duh. That’s the point of a Finsta.”

  “May I sit down?” He nodded at Zoe’s bed.

  “Sure.”

  He sat and took another deep breath and handed the phone back to Zoe. “Let me just go through this one more time, to make sure I have it straight. Your real account is the fake you, and your fake account is the real you?”

  “Sort of. Yeah. That’s how it is.”

  “I think I get it.” It was weird, but he got it. “Does everyone have one of these? All of your friends?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do grown-ups have these accounts?”

  Zoe chortled pleasantly. “No. Of course not.”

  Rob rubbed at his temples. “I really need your mother to come home,” he whispered.

  “I do too,” said Zoe. “I do too.”

  “Zoe?”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s okay to cry, you know.” Her eyes darted up to meet his. “About Grandpa being sick. It’s okay to be sad, it’s okay to cry.”

  She put the phone down and cracked the knuckles of each hand. Rob tried not to wince. He had trouble with the sound of cracking knuckles. She said, “Hashtag, I know.”

  “You do?”

  She nodded. “Of course I know.” She blinked at him, but her eyes were clear and dry. “I just don’t want to.”

  “Okay, then,” he said.

  “Okay.”

  The conversation could have ended there, but Rob wasn’t ready to leave the room yet. It felt precious and fleeting, this time with his oldest daughter, just the two of them, alone. His eyes scanned Zoe’s room and fell on a metallic envelope on her nightstand. He pointed at it and said, “What’s that?”

  “Oh. Blood-testing kit. For science camp.” She brightened. “Want me to test you? I have one that’s not used yet. I tested Evie.”

  “You tested Evie?”

  “Yeah, she’s O negative. I’m B negative. I tested Mom in Little Harbor too. She’s also B negative. So you’d have to be…” She picked up her phone and tapped on it a little bit and then said, “You could be A or B or O. You have a lot of options.”

  “Wow,” said Rob. He was impressed. “How’d you know that?”

  She shrugged again. “It’s just formulas. If your mom is one type and your dad is one type there’s only certain types you can be. That’s just how it works. Go wash your hands, and dry them with a clean towel, and then come back.”

  Rob repaired to the girls’ bathroom, then returned to Zoe’s bedroom. He wasn’t about to mess with Zoe’s instructions: he followed them to the letter, even taking a clean towel from the linen closet to be sure.

  “Now rub your hands together. Make sure they’re warm.”

  Rob rubbed his hands together and made sure they were warm. Zoe said, “Hang on,” and whipped her hair back into a ponytail. She looked like a miniature doctor. She opened the metallic envelope and set a card with four labeled circles on her nightstand. “This is an EldonCard,” she said. She held up a small green cylinder. “This is a lancet,” she said. “It’s just going to be a little prick.”

  Zoe pressed the lancet into his middle finger and pulled it away, then squeezed his finger until a large drop of blood appeared. Rob looked away.

  “You did this to Evie?”

  “She didn’t mind. It was in the name of science.” Zoe glanced at him. Her lips were set in a thin straight line and her expression said, I’m all business. She said, “You okay?”

  “Fine,” said Rob. “Just don’t love blood, that’s all.”

  “Yours, or anyone’s?”

  “Either. Both.” When Eliza had come home after beginning her cadaver dissection in med school he’d thrown up just hearing about it. He turned his face to the ceiling and closed his eyes.

  “But blood is so interesting,” said Zoe. “It tells us so much. It’s, like, the secret to everything.” She held up a thin white stick and said, “This is an EldonStick. I’m squeezing a drop of blood onto each of the sticks and mixing them into the water drops on the card. See?”

  Rob opened one eye and looked at the smears of blood in the circles on the card. He felt a little bit nauseous, but he also felt awestruck by his own daughter. He used to carry her on his shoulders! He used to feed her mashed carrots and bananas with a tiny spoon! He used to push her in a baby swing! And now she could figure out his blood type like it was no big deal. The world was a wonderful, wacky, confounding place.

  Zoe tipped the card one way and then tipped it the other way. She moved her lips, counting, and finally she said, “Okay. Here you go. It should be dry.” She sq
uinted down the card and then looked back at the directions. “You’re O negative,” she said. “Just like Evie.”

  “Good to know,” said Rob. “That’s very good to know.” Then he said, “You know something, Zoe?”

  “What?” She collected the debris the blood-testing kit had amassed and swept it into the wastebasket.

  “You’re going to make a very good doctor someday. If that’s what you decide to do.”

  “Thanks, Dad,” she said. She smiled. “I hope so.”

  “Just so we’re clear,” he said. “I’m going to request to follow this…this Finsta account. Your mother is too. And if you don’t accept us, or if you do and we don’t like what we see, it’s gone. The account, the real Instagram…”

  “Rinsta,” said Zoe.

  Rob sighed. “Are you serious? Is it really called that?”

  Zoe nodded.

  “Okay, your Finsta, your Rinsta, your Zinsta, your phone, all of it. It’s gone. Am I clear?”

  “You’re clear.” Zoe held up the card and said, “Look! It’s all dry.” She placed a thin piece of plastic over the card and handed it to Rob. “You can keep it,” she said. “As a souvenir.”

  44

  LITTLE HARBOR, MAINE

  Mary

  “Um,” said Mary, on the phone. “I’d like to cancel my appointment?”

  At first it came out too much like a whisper, or a question, so she said it again, louder, more firmly: “I’d like to cancel my appointment.”

  The woman took Mary’s name and her number and then she said, “Okay, then, you’re all set.” It was that easy.

  All set. Just like that. Don’t you see? Mary wanted to say. Don’t you understand what this means, this changes everything, everything about my life is going to change now. But the woman wouldn’t see, and why should she? She was just a voice on the other end of the line. She got calls like this every day, every hour. This was her job.

  Mary lay on the bed for a while and tried to think about how she felt. She’d taken the day off from work, and now she didn’t need it. She needed the money more. She could call Daphne and Andi, see if she could come in anyway. Maybe one of them wanted the afternoon off. Maybe they both did, maybe they wanted to go out for the evening, maybe she could close. She shuddered, thinking of the last time.

  Mary swung her legs over the side of her bed. She opened the closet door. There was a knock on her bedroom door, and she jumped nearly out of her skin and slammed the closet door closed.

  “Knock knock!” sang Vivienne, opening the door. She was wearing a birthday hat, striped, with a ridiculous purple pom pom on the tip. She was holding one for Mary too, and, in her other hand, a cake, supermarket bought, with two candles in it, a one and an eight. Luckily the candles weren’t lit, because Vivienne’s hair was dangling over them, almost in the frosting.

  “Happy birthday, baby,” she said, looking at Mary expectantly. “Happy, happy birthday.”

  45

  BARTON, MASSACHUSETTS

  Rob

  “You sure you want to go out today?” asked the Marshall twin. “There’s supposed to be some weather coming.”

  Eliza was going to drive home for Evie’s play; Evie was at rehearsal and Zoe was at science camp, and he had the morning. Without Cabot Lodge, and without the houses of Mrs. Cabot’s friends on the horizon, exactly the thing Eliza had predicted was going to happen. He was going to have to sell the Hinckley. Soon, before he lost his nerve. He was going to have to do it on the sly, without telling his mother. By the time she found out, the thing would be done.

  He had to say goodbye.

  “There’s always weather,” Rob told the Marshall twin. “And, yeah, I’m sure.”

  The launch pulled up alongside the Hinckley, and the Marshall twin let out one of his world-famous low whistles. “Sorry,” he said. “I just can’t get over this boat.”

  “I know,” said Rob. “Me either.” He felt part of his soul shrivel up and die. This was what he got, for loving a material thing too much. This was what he got. He deserved to have to sell it.

  “You going out alone, for real?”

  Rob had promised Eliza that he’d never try to sail the Hinckley alone.

  “For real,” he said.

  Rob unlocked the hatch. Down below, he turned on the battery switches. He let the diesel engine warm up, took the cover off the boom. He untied the mooring line and tossed it overboard. These were actions he’d performed hundreds of time—thousands, even, on different boats, throughout his life—but it seemed to him that he had never been so focused on each little task and the sensations surrounding them. There was the feel of the mooring line in his hand, and the sound of the engine coming to life. A lone gull overhead, unleashing on Rob and the ocean a large, ominous, bossy cry. There was the slapping of Rob’s shoes as he ran to the helm to put the boat in gear and head it into the wind.

  Rob put the boat on autopilot, set the throttle, studied the sky. He would put the mainsail up first. He attached the main halyard to the head of the sail, then headed back to the cockpit to raise the main. Two or three cranks of the winch and the main began to rise. No problem.

  Okay, this part was a little more difficult on his own, he could admit that. He’d like to be in the cockpit, it would be helpful to have somebody else guiding the main. But. It was nothing he couldn’t handle. He’d guide the main himself.

  Now the main was up, and it was a glorious sight. It never failed to take his breath away. There was enough wind now, so he could turn the engine off. He trimmed the main.

  “Easy day,” he said aloud, though of course there was nobody there to hear him. Even the lone gull had taken off. Four knots.

  Would this be his last time on the boat, before he put it up for sale? It might be. But even here, on the water, the peace Rob sought was elusive. It was his phone, his phone was teasing him; his phone wanted him to check his emails, check his texts.

  Rob turned the phone off and tossed it down the companionway and into the cabin, where it bounced off the navy-blue cushions and landed on the floor.

  He wanted the jib up too. He unfurled it, loaded the winch. Trimmed the jib. Up from four knots to six, and now the sight was even more magnificent, the two sails up, the wind out of the southeast. Cruising now. Rob had sailed lots of boats in his life but really there was nothing like this kind of sailing, like sailing a Hinckley, every part of the rigging placed exactly where you wanted it to be. Magic. Bliss.

  An errant thought still nibbled at him, something he’d forgotten to do.

  Now he had to undo the jib sheet, so he was shifting from port to starboard trying to get it done. This was maybe a little bit easier with someone else on board. Slightly easier.

  It was while he was undoing the jib sheet that he remembered what it was he had forgotten: the VHF for the marine forecast—the very same radio, of course, that the fishermen in Little Harbor used for the same reason. Because no matter who you were or what kind of boat you had you were just as vulnerable to the whims of nature as the next guy. The ocean was the Great Equalizer. You could be aboard the Titanic or a lobster boat and disaster could find you either way.

  He switched on the VHF.

  Now he scanned the horizon, and he could see the storm clouds gathering at the edge. He should have seen these sooner, he should have been scanning the horizon the whole time, but instead he’d been looking down, thinking about Eliza, about Charlie, about Mrs. Cabot, his faltering business, the money.

  Something made Rob think of John F. Kennedy Jr. and his ill-fated flight from New Jersey to Martha’s Vineyard. This was big news for a lot of people, of course, but in particular for other pilots and for sailors, and the big question all of them had was not why (as it was with the general public) but how. An experienced pilot, a short and familiar trip: How?

  These clouds were far enough away that Rob figured he could outrun them, could sail back to the harbor, back to his mooring.

  Of course, he had the option to
take down the sails, furl the main, motor back. On another day, in another summer, perhaps he would have done exactly that. That was the more cautious of the choices, and Rob was a smart and experienced enough sailor to know when caution was called for. But on this day, in this summer, the one day he’d had the boat out in weeks, he didn’t choose caution.

  He’d been four when his father started taking him out on his boat. His father’s departure for Thailand, his leap from Judith’s arms into Malai’s, and the shambolic aftermath of that leap, was still four years in the future. Rob had been too young, too unsullied and innocent and naive, to realize that his father might eventually leave them. He hadn’t known fathers could leave. Who’d ever consider such a thing? Fathers were real and solid and present; they were teachers, they were gods. Like Charlie was to Eliza.

  Eliza! He’d promised her he wouldn’t go out on the boat alone. But he’d also promised Mrs. Cabot he’d get her in before Thanksgiving. He’d promised himself he wouldn’t need his mother’s money. When he and Eliza had stood up in front of two hundred and fifty people in Trinity Church in the Back Bay he’d promised God and everyone he’d never kiss another woman, and then he’d allowed himself to be kissed by Deirdre Palmer.

  Fuck cautious. He’d keep the sails up.

  He remembered sitting at his father’s knee and learning about the way the wind filled the sails. He remembered their first overnight sailing trip, to Rockport, Maine, just the two of them. He remembered waking in the bunk to smell breakfast cooking: the most delicious bacon and eggs Rob had ever eaten in his life.

  Rob pulled his life jacket from the cockpit locker and put it on. As he zipped it, his mind went again to JFK Jr. and the question: Not why, but how?

  The answer was, of course, in the backstory. All answers were in the backstory. The sister-in-law delayed at work, the flight pushed back, and back again, so that they were flying in darkness instead of daylight. It became impossible to tell the sky from the water.

  The wind picked up; the storm clouds were moving fast. They were directly above, and Rob could see his error. He should have doused the mainsail when he had a chance, when all was still calm. He should pull it down now.