John tossed the rope onto the dock and pulled his boat in place before tying it securely. He adjusted his coveralls before walking up the wood toward the house. Even from this distance he could hear singing drifting toward him.

It was not a particularly lovely tune, though he was not singer himself, but it struck a chord in him. It was something far more emotional, resounding, and resonant than what he usually heard. It trapped him a moment, holding him in sway before he could raise his fist to finally rap his knuckles on the door.

The singing stopped and the flutter of footsteps on the boards of the floor allowed John to track Anna's movement to the front door. He cleared his throat, "It's me. You can open the door. I'm alone."

With a slide the bolt pulled back and John glimpsed a tiny sliver of Anna through the door before she opened it completely. He smiled at her but she only managed a weak twitch before her face returned to stone. John coughed, pointing back toward his boat.

"If you don't want to stay cooped up in this house all day I thought you might want to come out with me."

"Won't people see me?"

"Not where we're going." John shrugged, "The bay's a big place and we all tend to keep to ourselves out there."

"Do you?"

"Yeah." John gestured to her, "And it'd give me some time to get you some new clothes."

"How does taking me on your boat help that?"

"Well, it'd tell me your size."

"I could tell you that."

"You could…" John faltered, "Look, if you want to come I'd like the company and maybe you would too. If not then I'll be back around lunch and bring you something then."

Anna folded her arms over her chest before nodding, "Alright."

"You'll come?"

"I'll come." She shut the door and John heard her moving around inside before emerging again, holding the blanket she used the night before. "Thought I should return it to your boat."

"If you insist."

She raised an eyebrow at him. "Don't you need it?"

"I've always got a stack of them there so it's not necessary."

John noted the way her mouth twitched toward a grin, "Do you use them to comfort all the women you're pulling from the water?"

"Only the ones I really like." John stepped back to allow her past him. "But I don't tend to pull anything up in my nets lately anyway so I doubt my blankets see anything better than me or my daughter."

"You take your daughter out for night fishing?"

"And star gazing." John helped Anna into the boat and she held onto the side while he untied the rope. "Ondine loves the stars. Says they're the essence of all our hopes and dreams."

"Not in my experience." Anna gave him a hand as he got into the boat and joined him in the cabin. "Stars are just distant suns making themselves seen millions of years after they already died. If that's the representation of our hopes and dreams then they're already dead."

"What a ray of sunshine." John tried to half laugh, steering the boat out of the inlet and aiming for the open water as Anna ducked under the cabin window to remain unseen.

"Experience is the best teacher."

"The most expensive and painful one teacher. My divorce attests to that."

Anna bit at her lip, using the blanket in her hands to wrap around herself again when she shivered slightly. "What drove you to marry?"

"Not what drove me to divorce?"

"That was going to be the next question."

"Well," John set the motor, aiming the boat to a stretch of unoccupied sea, before waling back over the deck to attach his net to the trawling rig. "To answer the first question, we were very passionate when we were younger and foolish."

"Everyone's foolish when they're young." Anna shrugged, ducking down almost to the floor when another boat passed within a hundred feet of them.

"We were foolish enough to think you can have unprotected sex and not get pregnant."

"Was that your daughter?"

"No," John shook his head, cranking the machinery to drop the net into the water. "Technically he would've been her older brother but Vera miscarried."

"I'm sorry."

"I was too." John came back to the cabin, dragging the net in the water behind them. "But I should've expected it when I found Vera hadn't given up drinking for the baby."

'She killed him?"

John shook his head, "We killed him. We were too young, too passionate, too passionate, and far too stupid to ever be ready for children."

"But you stayed together?"

"Grief united us for awhile. We turned to each other in a toxic way that wasn't healthy of either of us."

"Then came Ondine?"

"When we found out Vera was pregnant again I threw all the alcohol out of the house and insisted we keep clean together until she delivered." John steered the ship carefully before pulling it to a stop. "Ondine came at seven months and spent the first month of her life in the NICU as they tried to stabilize her."

"And now?"

"Her kidneys are failing because of a genetic disease that my mother also died from."

"Your mother who's house I'm staying in now?"

John nodded, cranking the net up. "Ondine wouldn't have faced that kind of failure until she was a lot older if her body had been stronger but we made it difficult for her and she's been fighting an uphill battle ever since."

"Is that what drove you to divorce?"

"In a way." John grabbed the net, tugging it over the side of the ship and dropping it. "One night I'd been out drinking with friends and I came back to find Ondine passed out on the floor. That was when we found out she needed dialysis to clean her blood. While I waited for her at hospital, Vera sobered up because she'd left Ondine on her own to go out on the piss with her friend Audrey."

"How long ago was that?"

"Ondine was… eight, no, seven. We celebrated her eighth birthday in hospital that year." John dumped the contents of his net and sighed, chucking the few flopping fish down a chute to a cooler. "I have a friend who's got a son-in-law who's a lawyer and he drew up the papers that day. I had them served to her by the end of the week and I was sleeping on my mother's sofa that same night."

"Do you regret it?"

"That depends." John readjusted the mechanism and went back to the cabin to steer to another location. "If I regret marrying Vera then that means Ondine wouldn't exist and our son wouldn't have existed."

"You'd avoid pain that way."

"Try but there's so much joy with Ondine." John smiled, more to himself than to Anna as he remembered every great moment with Ondine in a moment. "She's a spitfire, quick, and the best thing that ever happened to me. If I never married Vera I'd never have her."

"I wish my bad memories came with that kind of positive ending." Anna adjusted herself on her narrow seat. "Then you don't regret it?"

"I regret not having divorced Vera before she could use my alcoholism against me."

"Didn't the courts here side with you when it was your wife who left your daughter that night?"

"We both did. The fact that Vera agreed to stay in until I got back and didn't had nothing to do with it in the end. Besides, this is Ireland. A man with a job like mine, a history like mine… you don't get custody of your daughter after that."

"And now?"

"Nothing's changed." John eased through a choppy stretch to drop his net again and start dragging it again. "I'm the captain of a hundred-foot convertible trawler-clipper that brings in barely enough to pay for my flat, for Ondine's needs, and the barest of my own. Even if I wanted to contest the previous ruling I won't have the means to do it. Vera wiped me out in the divorce and everything since has kept me on my back."

"I'm sorry."

John shrugged, "It is what it is but thank you." He worked himself back into the cabin and squinted through the window. "If you want, given the distance we have out here you could stretch yourself out on deck a bit if you like."

Anna peeked up to check out the windows herself before shrugging. "Might as well I guess."

She took a place on deck as John started the motor, running a bit through the waves to fill his net. He blinked, hearing something over the sound of his motor, and cranked his speed down to lower the noise of the engine. Turning over his shoulder he heard the same sorrowful, contemplative song he heard from the house.

John listened a moment before gunning the engine again, taking the boat further out of the bay. Glancing at his watch he brought his boat to a halt, stilling the motor to go and crank the net up again.

This time, when he dumped it into the hold, he could barely keep all the fish from leaping out with as he tried to get them all down to the cooler. He turned to Anna, sitting nearby, and pointed at the fish. "Was this you?"

"What?"

"Just now, I heard you singing and then I raise the net and this is what I get."

"Maybe you just found a good place."

"I'm never that lucky." John directed the rest of the fish into the cooler, shaking the net for the last few, before letting it hang over the water. "Maybe we try it again yeah?"

"Another haul?"

"I've got some lobster crates to check but yeah, we'll give it another go." John rested back on his haunches a moment, "Where'd you learn to sing like that?"

"I didn't learn it. I just do it." Anna rested back on the side of the boat behind her. "It's a skill one just has."

"Not one I have. When I was little I tried singing in the church choir and the priest told me I should stop because bleating goats didn't belong with angels." Anna snorted, covering her mouth but John just smiled with her, waving a hand. "You can laugh all you want. I promise I won't mind."

"I just can't say that I've ever heard a bleating goat before."

"I don't want to make your ears bleed." John checked his watch again. "We've got time for one more run, then we check the lobster cages before going back."

"Already done for the day?"

"I've got to get Ondine from school." John dropped net again, climbing over the deck to the cabin again. "She got a new chair this morning and I don't want her wearing the motor out if she decides she's going to miss the paratranist bus again."

"She do that often?"

"She doesn't like riding it because the kids make fun of her when she rides it." John hung his head, hands gripping the wheel. "They call her a cripple. Or a retard. Or a number of other names no child should ever have to hear when they're as young as she is."

"I'm sorry."

John wiped at his eyes, "Focus on the fishing. That's what my mother always used to say. Focus on the fishing and everything else falls into place."

He steered them to another spot, Anna's almost mournful singing bringing in another load to fish and filling the lobster crates. He left a few in the crates, for a rainy day, and steered back to the house to drop Anna at the dock.

Waffling a moment John handed over a small crate with fish in it. "I don't want to assume, or impose, in any way but do you know how to cook?"

"Not well but I can."

"Can you fry fish?" She shook her head and John shrugged. "Just stick these in the cooler and I'll take care of them when I get back tonight."

"How late?"

"I've got to run these into town, get paid for them, and then get Ondine. I hope no later than six."

"But you could be later than that?"

"It's possible." John put out a hand as Anna stared at the dock. "I'll be as on time as I can. I'll even bring some clothes for you so you don't have to keep wearing those."

"That's not necessary."

"You need to wear something."

"I've got these."

"Until they dissolve off you."

Anna snorted, "I doubt that'll happen in a few days."

"Is that how long you're staying, a few days?"

She opened her mouth, as if to speak, and then closed it again. She tried again, "I don't know."

"The least I can do, as your host, is get you some clothes."

"That's very generous of you."

"Well," John made a face, squinting a bit, "I guess it's no less than any man should do when a selkie comes to visit."

"Who said I'm a selkie?"

"You haven't said differently." John waved at her, "I'll be back later. I promise."

"I'll be waiting John." She carried the crate with fish back up the dock, toward the house, and John got back in the cabin to turn his boat back to the harbor.