Her sarcasm can’t mask it—how tired she is, how alone she feels. It makes me miss my grandfather, who would know exactly how to make Bailey feel better. He’d know how to give her the thing she needs, whatever that thing might be, to know she’s loved in a moment like this. To know she can trust. The same way he did for me. How many months after my mother left did he find me upstairs in my room, trying to write a letter to her? Asking her how she could desert me?

I was crying and angry and scared. And I’ll never forget what he did next. He was wearing his overalls and these thick work gloves—purple, and ridged. The gloves were a recent purchase. He got them made special in purple because that was my favorite color. He took the gloves off and he sat down on the floor next to me and helped me finish the letter, exactly as I wanted to write it. No judgment. He helped me spell out any words I was having trouble with. He waited while I figured out exactly how I wanted the letter to end. Then he read the entire letter out loud so I could hear it for myself, pausing when he got to the sentence in which I asked my mother how she could have left me behind. Maybe that’s not the only question we should be asking, my grandfather said. Maybe we should also think about whether we’d really want it to be different. We could think about whether she actually did us a favor in her own way… I looked at him, starting to understand where he was gently leading me. After all, what your mother did… it gave me you.

The most generous thing to say. The most comforting and generous thing. What would he say to Bailey now? When am I going to figure out how to say it too?

“Look, I’m trying here, Bailey,” I say. “I’m sorry. I know I keep saying the wrong things to you.”

“Well,” she says as she closes the bathroom door behind herself, “at least you know.”

Help Is on the Way

When we decided I was moving to Sausalito, Owen and I talked about how to make the transition as easy as possible for Bailey. I felt strongly, probably more strongly than Owen even did, that we shouldn’t move Bailey out of the only home she’d ever known—the home she’d been living in for as long as she could remember. I wanted her to have continuity. Her floating home—complete with its wooden beams and bay windows, its storybook views on Issaquah Dock—was her continuity. Her safe haven.

But I wonder if it didn’t just make it more apparent: Someone moved into her most cherished space and there was nothing she could do about it.

Still, I did everything I could to not disturb the balance. Her balance. Even in the way that I moved into the house, I tried to keep the peace. I put my stamp on Owen’s and my bedroom, but the only other room I redecorated wasn’t a room at all. It was our porch, lovingly hugging the front of the house. Before I arrived, the porch was empty. But I lined it with potted plants, rustic tea tables. And I built a bench to put by the front door.

It is a great rocking bench—shingled in white oak, striped pillows for comfort.

Owen and I have made it our weekend ritual to sit on the bench together, drinking our morning coffee. It’s our time to catch up on the week as the sun rises slowly over the San Francisco Bay, catching the bench in its warmth. Owen is more animated in those conversations than during the work week—a load lifted as the day stretches out before him, empty and relaxed.

That’s partially why the bench makes me so happy, why I take comfort even passing by it. And why I nearly jump out of my skin when I walk outside to take out the trash and there is someone sitting on it.

“Garbage day?” he says.

I turn around to see a man I don’t recognize leaning against the bench’s arm, like he belongs there. He wears a backward baseball cap and a windbreaker, holds tight to a cup of coffee.

“Can I help you?” I say.

“I’m hoping so.” He motions toward my wrists. “But you may want to put those down first.”

I look down to see that I’m still holding the trash, the two weighty garbage bags in my hands. I drop the bags into the trash cans. Then I look back up and take him in. He is young—maybe in his early thirties. And he is good-looking in a way that’s disarming, complete with a strong jaw, dark eyes. He is almost too good-looking. But the way he smiles gives him away. He knows it better than anyone.

“Hannah, I take it?” he says. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“Who the hell are you?” I say.

“I’m Grady,” he says.

He bites the edge of the coffee cup, holding it between his lips as he points at me to give him a second. Then he reaches in his pocket and pulls out something that looks like a badge. He holds it out for me to take.

“Grady Bradford,” he says. “You can call me Grady. Or Deputy Bradford if you prefer, though that seems awfully formal for our purposes.”

“And what are those?”

“Friendly,” he says. Then he smiles. “Friendly purposes.”

I study the badge. It has a star with a circular ring wrapped around it. I want to run my finger around that circle, through the star, as if that will help me determine whether the badge is genuine.

“You’re a police officer?”

“A U.S. marshal actually,” he says.

“You don’t look like a U.S. marshal,” I say.

“And what does a U.S. marshal look like?” he says.

“Tommy Lee Jones in The Fugitive,” I say.

He laughs. “It’s true, I’m younger than some of my colleagues, but my grandfather was with the service, so I got an early start,” he says. “I assure you it’s been a legitimate one.”

“What do you do for the Marshals’ office?”

He takes his badge back and stands up, the bench rocking back and forth as it loses the weight of him.

“Well, primarily, I apprehend people who are defrauding the U.S. government,” he says.

“You think my husband’s done that?”

“I think The Shop has done that. But no, I’m not convinced your husband has. Though I’d need to speak to him before I could properly assess his involvement,” he says. “Seems like he doesn’t want to have that conversation though.”

That sticks to me for some reason. It sticks to me as not the entire truth, at least not Grady’s entire truth as to what he’s doing on my dock.

“Can I see your badge again?” I say.

“512-555-5393,” he says.

“Is that your badge number?”

“That’s the phone number for my branch office,” he says. “Give a call there, if you like. They’ll confirm for you who I am. And that I just need a few minutes of your time.”

“Do I have a choice?”

He gives me a smile. “You always have a choice,” he says. “But I’d certainly appreciate if you talked to me.”

It doesn’t feel like I have a choice, at least not a good one. And I don’t know if I like him, this Grady Bradford, with his practiced drawl. But how much would I like anyone who is about to ask me a bunch of questions about Owen?

“What do you say?” he says. “I was thinking we could take a walk.”

“Why would I take a walk with you?”

“It’s a nice day,” he says. “And I got you this.”

He reaches under my rocking bench and pulls out another cup of coffee, piping hot, fresh from Fred’s. EXTRA SUGAR and SHOT OF CINNAMON are written on the side of the cup in large black letters. He hasn’t just brought me a cup of coffee. He’s brought me a cup of coffee just the way I take it.

I breathe the coffee in, take my first sip. It’s the first bit of pleasure since this whole mess started.

“How do you know how I take my coffee?” I say.

“A waiter named Benj helped me out. He said you and Owen get coffees from him on the weekend. Yours with cinnamon, Owen’s black.”

“This is bribery.”

“Only if it doesn’t work,” he says. “Otherwise it’s a cup of coffee.”

I look at him and take another sip.

“Sunny side of the street?” he says.

* * *

We leave the docks and walk toward the Path, heading toward downtown—Waldo Point Harbor peeking out at us in the distance.

“So I take it no word from Owen?” he says.

I think about our kiss goodbye by his car yesterday, slow and lingering. Owen wasn’t anxious at all, a smile on his face.

“No. I haven’t seen him since he left for work yesterday,” I say.

“And he hasn’t called?” he says.

I shake my head.

“Does he usually call from work?”

“Usually,” I say.

“But not yesterday?”

“He may have tried me, I don’t know. I went to the Ferry Building in San Francisco, and there are a bunch of dead zones between here and there, so…”

He nods, completely unsurprised, almost like he knows this already. Like he is playing way past it.

“What happened when you got back?” he says. “From the Ferry Building?”

I take a deep breath and think about it for a minute. I think about telling him the truth. But I don’t know what he will make of the information about the twelve-year-old girl and the note she gave to me, about the note Owen left for Bailey at the school. About the duffel bag of money. Until I figure it out for myself, I’m not including someone I just met.

“I’m not sure what you mean,” I say. “I made Bailey dinner, which she hated, and she went to play practice. I heard about The Shop on NPR while I was waiting for her in the school parking lot. We came home. Owen didn’t. No one slept.”

He tilts his head, takes me in, like he doesn’t believe me, entirely. I don’t judge him for that. He shouldn’t. But he seems to be willing to let it go.

“So… no call this morning, correct?” he says. “No email either?”