Page 16 of Ebbing Tides

Felicity nodded, taking my words in. “Okay. Well, is it that you don'twantit to be a date?”

I lifted my hands in a shrug. “I don't really know. I think I feel conflicted about the whole thing.”

“Because of your wife?”

I swallowed. “I don't know. Maybe.” My palm went back to my hair, scraping over its short length. “I can’t make sense of it. I feel …off.”

Felicity hummed thoughtfully. “Then maybe stop trying to make sense of it.”

My eyes flitted toward hers. “What do you mean?”

She shrugged nonchalantly. “If your friend is saying it isn't a date, then go with that. It isn't a date. Would you think it wasa date if he was asking you to hang out with a man for a few hours?”

My brow crumpled. “No …”

“There you go. Problem solved.” She wiped her hands together and stood up. “Think you can sleep now?”

I huffed a low chuckle. “Doubt it. But thanks anyway.”

“Well”—she sucked in a deep breath and began walking back toward the kitchen—“good thing you don't pay me to listen.”

The faucet turned on a moment later, and I lay back down, my hand against Lido's head. I considered what Felicity had said, considered that I was overthinking this entire ordeal too much, and somehow, I managed to fall asleep.

***

Dad wasn't awake to eat dinner the way he normally was, and he was still sleeping when Lucy came by. She looked at me with worried eyes as I hurried around his room, making sure he was situated for me to leave for the night.

“Should we be concerned?” she asked, her voice trembling and her eyes flooding.

I met her gaze before returning my attention to the cup of pills I left out for him, day after day, night after night.

“He's dying, Lucy,” I reminded her bluntly but gently. “His body is tired, so he's going to sleep a lot.”

“He's been dying formonths,” she pointed out with a croak.

“Yeah, well, some people go down quickly,” I said, thinking about every soldier I'd seen fall on the battlefield. Thinking about the lives I'd taken. Thinking about my wife. “Others are more stubborn.”

A harsh chuckle rumbled from the bed beside me, and I turned to see my father's withered lips curl in a wicked smile. “Like father, like son,” he whispered, his voice fragile and weak. Like it might snap beneath the strain of speaking.

A handful of quips tugged at the end of my tongue, demanding to be spoken, but as badly as I wanted to say them, I forced them back down.

Lucy rushed to his side, taking his hand in hers. “Hi, Daddy. I'm here.”

His smile was sweeter somehow. An immediate shift at the sound of her voice in his ear. “Grace,” he whispered.

“No, it's Lucy, Daddy.”

He nodded, eyes still closed. “I'll get you two sorted out one day.”

She laughed, her face showing every bit of the grief she felt. “You'd think forty-four years would've been long enough to tell us apart.”

The truth was, Dad could tell them apart. But now, in the state that he was in—a sort of limbo between death and being alive—he confused them often.

“Your mother could never tell you apart,” he said, then coughed.

I grabbed a tissue and stuffed it into his other hand, but he scrunched his nose with disapproval and tossed the tissue away.

“Your mother was never right,” he managed to say. “Sick. Always sick. Could never get her head on straight.”