Scroll to the bottom for trigger warnings. No spoilers past book one.

Sailing

I think it was the boat that stopped the fighting.

Eva and I had been having problems for a while. Just little things at first. Eva had a temper. I took her for granted. She hated the way I hogged the blanket. I hated the way she drove her car. For the first few years, it seemed like we did nothing but fight and make up. Lord, the making up was fun.

We fought and made up, fought and made up, fought, made up, and then Marco was born.

We tried not to fight in front of him, but it got harder and harder over the years. Maybe she resented me for expecting her to quit work to be a full-time mom. Maybe I resented her for not taking to it. Maybe neither of us knew when not to push.

I started thinking about divorce. I started thinking about Linda, a leggy blonde scientist from work. I'm not proud of that. Nothing ever happened, physically, but Eva knew. She confronted me about it while Marco was at school. Screamed at me. I screamed back. We both said things we knew we were going to regret. And she stormed out.

That was a Friday. I told Marco she was visiting his grandma for the weekend. I carried on.

By Sunday night, I was hiding in the bathroom, crying into a towel so my son wouldn't hear me. I'd always known I loved Eva, but it took me that long to know I couldn't live without her.

She showed up on Monday morning to take Marco to school. Then she came home to me. I told her I loved her. I promised to transfer to a different project and never see Linda again. I said I didn't care if she went back to work. I told her she could do anything she wanted, as long as she didn't leave me.

She kissed me gently and said, "I want to go sailing." So I took the day off work and we went out together and bought a boat.

After that, the three of us went sailing every weekend as a family. Eva taught me and the boy to handle the boat, and always insisted that we wear our life jackets. Neither of us could swim, but we both learned to sail. She would go out by herself, too, two or three times a week. I think it gave her a sense of peace.

We stopped bickering. Each of us made an effort to accommodate the other. Our shaky relationship got stronger. Sometimes she seemed sad. I even heard her crying a few times in the night. But she would take the boat out the next day, and come back looking contented and refreshed.

The last night we were together, that was the worst. She had nightmares, and I held her in the dark as rain drummed on the roof. I knew she was going to take the boat out. But when I got up in the morning and saw the steely grey sky, I thought she would put it off. Just for a day or so. Just until the weather cleared.

I went to work. She kissed me goodbye. As I walked out the door, I heard my son claim that he was too sick to go to school. I heard my wife tease him about the history test he hadn't studied for. She said she didn't like the look of the weather, and she would drive him to school instead of making him walk to the bus stop.

I left.

Did she know?

She dropped our boy at school and drove down to the marina.

Did she know what was going to happen?

She took the boat out into a storm. The boat that saved our marriage.

Could I have stopped her? Could I have saved her? Could I have made her stay?

Was it an accident, just one of those things that happens that no one can control?

Her body sank beneath the waves, and I had to learn what living without her really meant.

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Potential trigger warning: character death, implied depression/suicide