You’d think this would be a great adventure, leaving the safety and comfort of everything I know to board a fishing boat and sailing across the open Sea in search of my husband.

But for the most part, it’s boring.

I cook, and I clean, and I write in my journal, and that’s pretty much it.

I avoid the deck, and the men. I avoid their mundane conversations, their vulgar jokes, their nose picking and farting and spitting. It’s an all-male crew, so such things are to be expected, and I avoid it.

My life is more insular than it has ever been.

Which…is really saying something, I’m realizing.

My life has always been insular, but I seem to have reached a new plane in this respect.

My head and my heart are screaming at me to avoid going down this path of thought; it’s like a sore tooth, aching, painful, but you can’t quite seem to stop probing it with your tongue.

If I’m going to throw my entire life into a sequence of change, throwing literally everything I know out the window, then I might as well try and do some serious introspection, right?

Right.

So, despite the pain, which will accompany an examination of my flaws, failures, and faux pas, I’m not going to shy away from this.

I have lived a sheltered, privileged life—fact number one.

I grew up in St. Pete, in a solidly middle-class home, the daughter of two parents who loved each other and who have been married for many, many years. They were not wonderful parents, but they got the job done. They provided for Delta and me, they didn’t hit us or abuse us, they got us to school and made sure we kept up our grades, got us presents for birthdays and Christmas. They checked off all the parenting boxes. Really, when you compare the way some people grew up, the things some have endured in childhood, I had an easy life. I went to school. Came home. Acted in a few plays here and there throughout middle school and high school, had a decent circle of friends with me from elementary school through high school, and a couple of friends who stayed with me through college, but no one I remained in contact with after we graduated and started marrying off. I was never bullied. Everyone gets picked on or made fun of once in a while, but I experienced nothing that really stuck with me, or affected me long term.

I lived in the same home from birth through college, and only ventured as far away as Miami for college, which was four hours from home. Close enough to head home for laundry and a home-cooked meal on the weekends. But, as I got older and more independent, Mom and Dad eased into retirement and started vacationing more and more. They stayed in touch, mostly, but once I graduated high school, it seemed like they just figured they’d done their duty as parents, got us to college, and were done parenting Delta and me.

I was never close to them. They were Mom and Dad, and I loved them, I suppose, and they me, but they always just seemed to be just so…wrapped up in each other, I guess. More concerned with their own lives than Delta’s or mine. As soon as Delta was old enough, they’d leave me with her and go do…whatever. Party? I don’t know. By the time Delta left home I was old enough—in their eyes, at least—to be on my own, so Mom and Dad were gone even more.

It wasn’t as if I had bad parents, I just wasn’t close to them.

I’ve gotten off topic, I think.

My point is less about my parents than it is about my insular life. I lived in Florida my whole life. Lived in a middle-class neighborhood, never struggled for money, never experienced significant trauma. Never wanted for anything.

I got partial scholarships to UM—one for academics, and several grants for various essays. I paid for the rest of my college tuition with loans, which included my living expenses. I was never a broke college student. I had a decent car, a dorm room to live in, a roommate I liked, a circle of friends, enough money to eat, and some savings from working at a diner during high school and throughout college so that I could go out with my friends.

When I met Christian, and gradually began spending more and more time with him, he just naturally began taking care of me. He often treated me to meals, tickets to movies, and the like. And then, over the summer between my junior and senior year, we moved in together. We lived on his boat, at first. And then, when I decided I didn’t really enjoy the cramped quarters of his sailboat’s cabin, I convinced him to get an apartment with me. He was already writing by this time, had sold a collection of short stories and his first novel, which had brought in enough income that Christian had put the deposit on the apartment himself and paid for the utilities, and I made sure we had groceries; we had a system that worked, a system in which Christian took care of me.

I kept waiting tables at the diner through my senior year, but then Christian’s father died, which required us to take an extended leave of absence in Illinois, where Christian grew up, and rather than asking them to hold my spot on the roster, I just quit my part-time job. After that, I never went back to any kind of full-time work; I didn’t have to.

The death of Christian’s father had been traumatic for him, and had been emotionally devastating for him. Not because he was close to his father, but rather more the opposite. It was relief, perhaps, which in turn made him feel guilty, I think. I don’t know for sure. I just know that instead of going to counseling or something, Christian locked himself in his study when we finally returned home, and had written a full novel in three weeks, pouring out his emotions into a book. The book sold hundreds of thousands of copies and ended up getting him a film deal, which officially cemented our financial position in life as “doing really well.”

Meaning, I never had to do a damn thing after that. Christian was perfectly happy for me to stay home and write. I had a novel I was working on, and a growing audience for my blog. It was a life of leisure. We spent a lot of time together. Went out for long lunches, dinners and movies, long weekend trips and extended vacation, and I lived a life wherein I did…

Essentially nothing.

God, now that I put my life in perspective, I’m coming to a horrible realization: I’ve accomplished absolutely nothing in my life.

My book did okay, but the idea for a follow-up never panned out, and then I got pregnant and had Henry, and became a mom, and that was my life. That was the only thing I’ve ever done which had any real meaning. And then he died of a brain tumor when he was just shy of eighteen months old.

My meaning, my purpose in life, my son, was taken from me. And look where that led…

God, I don’t know if I can go there, just yet.

Let’s just take this brutal self-examination one step at a time, shall we?

I’ve never been alone.

I’ve never taken care of myself.

I’ve never done anything crazy or daring.

Never, never, never.

My life had gone from being taken care of by my parents, to a brief period of quasi-independence at college before I met Christian, and then I was taken care of by him.

And now? What is my life, now?

Apart from my sister and these guys on the trawler I am completely alone.

My home is gone.

My life as I knew it is gone.

My Henry is gone.

My Christian is gone.

I am gone. I am nowhere. I am no one.

In searching for Christian, am I searching for myself? For a semblance of a life that once was?

In an attempt to make sense of it all, I sit on my cot in my cabin, and I write:

[From Ava’s handwritten journal; November 11, 2016]

I had a dream last night.

I woke sobbing.

I was at home in the condo in Ft. Lauderdale. I had Henry in my arms. Alive. Warm and wiggling. Cooing. A baby, not quite newborn, but still a baby. He had on his little blue hat, and he was all burritoed up in his SleepSack. That was it. That was the dream. I was just…holding him. Staring down at him. His eyes, still the innocent pale blue of a baby, were gazing up at me. His mouth was open, working, gurgling. He’d gotten one little hand free of the swaddling, and he was reaching for me. That clean baby scent was in my nostrils, and his weight was tiny and yet so significant. The sun was shining in through the open sliding door, so the sound of the ocean could be heard as it crashed constantly. The sound was in soothing, shushing, mesmerizing.

The sound of the sea has always been a constant in my life. In St. Pete, in Miami, in Ft. Lauderdale. Always, always the sea, always near.

Henry in my arms…god…it didn’t get any better than this.

I woke, and my arms were empty, and my heart was empty. I sat up in my bunk and cradled the emptiness in my arms, and sobbed Henry’s name quietly, because the last thing I needed was to answer questions from the crew about why I was sobbing so hard.

It was the silent, breathless sob, the kind where you can’t catch your breath because the grief is just so fucking razor sharp. And when you do catch a breath, it’s a shuddering, a quavering wail hidden in a pillow, and then more breathlessness, shaking, shoulders heaving.

Thinking about Henry is too painful—I’ve been avoiding thinking about him as much as possible. Unhealthy, perhaps, I know: how am I to heal from his death if I can’t even think his name? But I just can’t. It’s too hard. It hurts too bad—almost as much even now as it did the day he died.

Finally, I fell back into a fitful, restless sleep.

Which became another dream.

This one was about Christian.

I think it was informed by the movie I watched last night, before falling asleep: The English Patient, one of a small number of DVDs on this boat.

In my dream, Christian was sitting in a wheelchair, an old one with a wicker back and wide tarnished wheels and wooden handles. The footrests were too short to properly support his long legs. He was wearing loose blue scrub pants, and a dirty white T-shirt. He was unshaven, an unkempt, untrimmed beard obscuring his handsome jaw. There were palm trees waving in a constant breeze, and it seemed hot in the dream. I don’t know how to put it—there was just a feeling of heat, an awareness of it, rather than actually feeling it myself. His hair was too long, and his eyes were…vacant. He was staring into nothingness, but seeing something. His lips were moving—just his bottom lip, lifting, curling in, tucking into his upper teeth, and relaxing. Whispering something?

My name—

Ava…

Ava…

There was a flash, in the dream—a jump from one image to another. Suddenly Christian was above me, staring down at me. His eyes were full of love and he was whispering my name. Not just whispering it, though. It was…a benediction. A prayer. I was his goddess, and he was worshipping me.

Another flash-jump and the dream went back to Christian in the wheelchair. He was hurt—injured, but healing. Casts on his left leg and left arm, covering the entirety of both limbs, and a smaller cast on his right arm from elbow to wrist, the casts dirty, aged, smudged.

He had a notebook balanced on his right thigh, secured in place with his left hand. In his right hand he held a pen, a blue ballpoint. He stared into nothingness, whispering my name—I heard nothing, there was no sound, just a vision of him. In an old, rickety wheelchair, somewhere hot, with palm trees all around.

It felt…real.

So real.

TOO real.

It felt like I was seeing him, as he was, in that moment.

I don’t believe in mystical, fairy tale, fantasy novel bullshit like clairvoyance or anything like that. It’s fun fodder for stories, but in reality? No. You can’t hear thoughts; you can’t see in your mind someone thousands of miles away. It’s fiction, stuff for stories.

But in that dream? It was real. That was Christian. Evidence of him, alive. There was not a thought in my mind, no question in my heart, no doubt in my soul. That was him. My husband, my Christian. Alive. Real. Whispering my name, as he so often did when making love to me.

Upon waking, I lost the surety.

Could it be real? Could I truly have seen him in my dream as he was right now?

I’ve never wanted to believe anything so desperately in my life; I did not want to doubt that it was real, that it was possible. But doubt, like rot seeping into wood, slow, subtle, almost unnoticeable, tainted the beauty of the dream.

It had been a lovely dream—I remember very clearly the sense of love emanating from him as he whispered my name. I remember very clearly the relief I felt when I saw him in the dream: it was him! He was real, he was alive!

Then I awoke and the love and the relief disappeared.

A million thoughts coruscated through me as I woke, and pondered the dream.

Where is he? Even injured, could he not come to me, could he not find me? Contact me in some way?

But how? Our Ft. Lauderdale home is gone, and we never had a landline, and he hasn’t tried my cell phone, hasn’t tried my email. Delta, breaking out as a country music star, is away on a national tour and is unable to respond to communication frequently. How could he possibly find me?

He could, if he wanted. He’s Christian: he has been all over the world, knows people everywhere, knows all the ports of call where ships with passengers are most likely to go. He knows how to find people.

And then I doubt the dream. I chide myself for being ridiculous, to think a dream could bear any resemblance to reality. It was just a dream. It was my longing for my husband making itself known in my dreams. It was just a dream, and nothing but a dream.

BUT…

WHAT IF…

The idea that Chris could still be alive plagues me.

---

[From Ava’s handwritten journal; November 12, 2016]

I miss Darcy and Bennet, the puppy and kitten Christian gave me before he left on his sea journey. They went missing during the storm. I remember hearing Darcy yowling and barking, and Bennet meowing, and then the roof fell in on me as I took cover in the bathtub.

When the storm started intensifying and I realized I had to take shelter, I tried to get them to get in the tub with me, and managed to get Bennet in with me for a few minutes, but he jumped out, and Darcy flat out refused to get in with me. After the roof caved in, I heard a bark, Darcy’s sweet voice, but it was distant. And I may have hallucinated it, or imagined it, but I thought I heard little paws ticking and scrabbling across the chunk of drywall imprisoning me in the tub.

I like to imagine that Darcy and Bennet are still out there, somewhere in Ft. Lauderdale, safe and happy. Maybe they stuck together and found a family who adopted them. Like in…what’s that movie with the pug and the cat? Milo and Otis.

I have an entire story made up in my head.

They found each other in the storm and took shelter together under an overpass. Wet, shivering, and missing me, they huddled there until the storm blew out, and then they went out looking for me. But the way back to the condo was blocked, and by the time they found a way there, the building was mostly rubble. And in the process of looking for me, a kindly older man found them, and brought them home to feed them, and wash them, and he gave Bennet a saucer of warm milk—even though cats are lactose intolerant and shouldn’t have all that much, except as a rare treat—and he gave Darcy a rawhide bone. The old man, whose name would be Roger, and his wife, Tabitha, used to have a cat and a dog, but they both passed away from age, and now the couple have Darcy and Bennet to love and take care of, and though my kitty and pup miss me, they’re glad to have someone to cuddle with. And maybe Roger and Tabitha have grandchildren who come over and play with them, little ones to lick and snuggle.

That’s what I like to imagine, anyway: my kitty and pup, alive and well and safe. Home, and loved.

Everything I’m not. Well, I’m alive, I suppose.

Sort of.

Am I, though? Technically, I am alive. I draw breath, my heart beats. But life—LIFE—isn’t that something more than breathing, something different?

I don’t know.

Have I ever known what Life truly is? Is it just having a home and a husband? Is it accomplishments? Is it being a mother? Is it…I don’t know. Is it something I haven’t considered, something I don’t understand?

Right now, life feels futile. Empty. Pointless.

But the dream of Christian, fucking haunts me.

HE haunts me.

I wake up thinking I’ve heard his voice, and that he’s whispering my name.

I’m coming, Chris. I’m coming. I’m looking for you. I’ll find you. I swear, I’ll find you.

Where or when, I don’t know. But I’ll find you. I promise.