Chapter 14 - A Letter to My Father
Two years into my marriage to Adrian, on the anniversary of my father's death, I sat alone on the Wanderlust's deck at sunset and wrote him a letter I never intended to send anywhere except into the quiet water that had raised me.
Dad,
I don't know if you can somehow know any of what happened after you left us, but I've spent the last five years occasionally imagining what you'd say about all of it, and I think writing this down finally, even though you'll never read it, might help me understand my own feelings more clearly.
Marcus tried to take the boat. I know you'd be furious about that, though probably more furious about the money than the boat itself, since you always said things could be replaced but trust couldn't. He forged my name, diverted almost everything you left me, and nearly succeeded in giving away the one place that ever taught me how to survive genuine grief.
But Dad, here's the part I think you'd actually be proud of: I caught it. Not immediately, not as quickly as I probably should have, given how thoroughly I'd let myself stop paying careful attention during the exhausting months after you died. But I caught it eventually, and once I did, I never stopped pulling that thread until I understood the full truth of what had actually happened.
You spent my whole childhood teaching me to read water accurately instead of hopefully, and it turned out that lesson mattered considerably more in a marina office and a divorce attorney's conference room than it ever did on open water. I think you knew, somehow, that I'd need that specific skill someday for something much harder than nautical navigation.
I found someone else, eventually. His name is Adrian, and he's nothing like Marcus — steady in the quiet, unglamorous ways that actually matter, rather than charming in the performative ways that turned out to be entirely hollow. I think you'd genuinely like him. He asks good questions and actually listens to the answers, which turns out to be rarer than I ever understood it should be.
The scholarship finally happened, funded exactly as you intended, supporting exactly the kind of research you always cared about. I think about you every time I read an application, imagining what you'd say about each candidate's proposal, wondering which projects would have genuinely excited you most.
I still take the Wanderlust out regularly. She's held up beautifully, better than I have some days, though I think I've held up considerably better than I expected to, given everything. Your compass still points true, Dad. I check it every single time I take her out, and every single time, I think of your hands showing me how to read it, all those years ago, patiently teaching me exactly the skill I'd eventually need most.
I love you. I miss you every single day, in ways that have changed shape over the years but never diminished in intensity. Thank you for teaching me to read the water accurately. It saved my life, in ways I don't think either of us could have predicted when you first put my small hands on that wheel.
May you like
Your daughter, Diane
I folded the letter carefully and placed it in the small waterproof compartment beside the compass, where I kept a handful of other mementos too precious to risk losing to weather or accident — my father's old sailing gloves, a photograph from my ninth birthday spent entirely on this boat, the original deed transferring the Wanderlust into my name after his death, now permanently corrected and secured against any future attempt to alter it.
