“Well, it was nice of you to give that stuff to that guy.”

  Jonny waves a hand. “Don’t make it out to be too altruistic or nothing. Mainly, I didn’t want to carry it around with me.”

  We follow the beach and the boardwalk for several blocks, chatting easily. We’re maybe another five-minute walk away from the hospital when Jonny asks me a question that leaves me reeling.

  “So, Delta. Tell me about Alex.”

  “Um.” I blink, and have to think, because I’m not used to talking about my son with men I’ve slept with. “Well. He’s six. He has my eyes, but in every other way he looks just like his sperm donor. Which, honestly, isn’t a bad thing, since he was a hell of a good-looking guy, but he’s a rich douchebag who doesn’t give a shit about anyone. Alex has Tom’s blond hair, his perfect facial structure, and his charm, but he has my eyes, my chin, and my . . . um . . . feistiness.

  “So Alex is feisty and takes no shit, but he’s charming as hell about it. It’s a problem, honestly. I tell him no, like no, Alex, you can’t have ice cream for breakfast, and I’ll turn around and he’s eating ice cream anyway. I’ll start yelling at him, and he’ll yell back, and I’ll get mad, and then right when my head is about to fucking explode, he comes over and gives me a big hug and a big kiss and snuggles me and bats those stupid thick eyelashes of his and tells me he’s so sorry, he just couldn’t help it, and can I please forgive him. And what am I supposed to do? He’s being so sweet and so genuine; I can’t be angry anymore.”

  Jonny laughs. “Sounds like a little player in the making, if you ask me.”

  I groan. “Seriously, don’t even remind me. He already has all the women in his school wrapped around his little finger, teachers, the principal and lunch ladies included.” I glance at him. “Why do you ask about Alex?”

  He shrugs. “Just curious, I guess. He’s your kid, and he’s an important part of your life, so I figure if I know something about him, I’ll know something about you.”

  “I thought we weren’t doing this.”

  “I’m not doing anything. Just making conversation.”

  “I don’t typically talk about Alex with men. It’s a little weird for me, honestly.”

  “Why?”

  I frown at him as we approach the entrance to the hospital, which is swarming with people coming in and going out. “Why what? Why don’t I talk about him, or why is it weird?”

  Jonny shrugs. “Yes?”

  “I don’t talk about him because most men aren’t interested in hearing about him. They’re only interested in me for as long as it seems likely I’ll put out for them. Once they find out about Alex, poof, they’re gone. And if they do express interest, it’s just to seem like they’re not only interested in me for sex, but it’s all fake—they don’t really give a shit, and I wouldn’t take them around him anyway.

  “I know better than to think any man will actually be interested in me and Alex, as a unit. That’s too much commitment for the men I’ve come across. So I use the men for sex like they use me, and I don’t talk about Alex, ever, and that’s that. I can’t believe I’m saying all this, Jonny, it’s kind of like a magician revealing her secrets, only I’m not a magician, just a trashy almost-forty single mother, a washed-up, has-been, never-was, wannabe singer-songwriter.

  “So talking about Alex is weird, because . . . I don’t know. It’s not like he’s a secret, he’s just a part of my life I try to keep totally separate from my need for sex.”

  “I’m not the type to pretend like I care about something, Delta, so don’t think that’s why I’m asking.”

  I laugh. “Again, like before, that’s what’s confusing me. My instinct is to assume the worst because that’s what I’m used to, only I can’t do that with you because you’re showing me these sensitive, considerate parts of yourself after we fucked. Which obviously makes it not about you trying to get into my pants, since you’ve already done that. We’ve also agreed there’s nothing possible between us besides what we did, so why bother? It doesn’t make any sense.”

  He shrugs. “I have no answers, Delta.”

  I laugh again. “Yeah, well . . . maybe try to be a little more douchey, okay? So I can walk away with at least some of my heart intact, otherwise I’ll always be wondering what could have been between us, if circumstances were different.”

  He shakes his head, chuckling. “Yeah, I’ll work on that.”

  “Thanks. Besides, nobody likes a sensitive guy, don’t you know that? Douchey assholes get all the action.”

  He gives me a look that’s equal parts frown of disapproval and smirk of amusement. “Nice guys finish last, huh?”

  I smirk back. “Nice guys don’t usually finish at all, because they’re not getting any to begin with.”

  “Yeah, well, I finished twice, and I like to think I’m at least kind of nice.” He quirks an eyebrow at me.

  I sigh. “You are clearly an exception to the rule. And anyway, what if I only fucked you for your looks?”

  He laughs outright. “I’ve never been accused of being handsome, Delta. Maybe I’m not exactly ugly, but I’m no Antonio Banderas.”

  By now we’re up on Ava’s floor, dodging nurses and doctors and orderlies as they scurry about the hallways. There are patients in beds in the hallways, and as we pass a waiting room, family members are asleep on couches, a doctor’s curled up in a ball on the floor in one corner, and two nurses are leaning against each other, sitting up with their backs to the wall, fast asleep. This hospital is clearly way, way over capacity, and way, way understaffed, but everyone is doing what they can, and then some.

  I bump Jonny with my shoulder. “You’re sexier than you’ll ever know, Jonny.”

  He shakes his head. “You need glasses, babe.”

  “Self-deprecation doesn’t fit you,” I say. “Bring back cocky Jonny.”

  “Oh, I’m plenty cocky, all right,” he says, smirking at me. “It’s all about attitude and presentation. I learned that a long time ago.”

  We reach Ava’s room and notice one of the beds is gone, leaving only three people to the room. Ava is on the far side, against the window, so we have to skirt past the ends of the first two beds to reach hers. She’s sitting up, staring out the window. The devastation is clearly visible from her window: condos and buildings damaged, streets flooded, cars abandoned and overturned, debris everywhere. She sees me enter, and her face brightens.

  “Delta!” She shifts in the bed, extending her arms to me as I draw near, rounding the bed to sit on the window side. “Oh my God, I’m going crazy—you have to get me out of here!”

  “That’s the plan, little sis,” I say.

  Ava sees Jonny, and her smile fades. “Hi, Jonny.”

  He has the box in his hands, and he perches on the edge of the bed, opposite me. “I have something for you.”

  She eyes the box, shaking her head. “No. I don’t want it.”

  He sighs deeply, wincing. “I know, Ava. I’m sorry. But . . . I swore to Chris I’d give it to you, if anything happened.”

  Tears slip down her cheeks, and she shakes her head. “Nothing has happened. He’s out there. He’s okay. I can feel him.”

  Jonny is visibly struggling. “I want to believe that, too. But the search and rescue crews searched several thousand square miles of ocean and found nothing. The only reason I was found was blind luck.” He reaches for her hand, but she jerks it out of his reach. “He was my best friend, Ava. He was like a younger brother to me.”

  Ava blinks fiercely. “Stop saying was, Jonny. He’s alive, okay? He’s out there. I know he is.”

  “If anyone could survive what happened, it’s Chris. He’s smart, he’s tough—he’s a survivor. I feel it too, okay? I do. I swear I do. But if he is alive, he could be anywhere. I was found hundreds of miles away from where we were when the storm hit, and if he is alive, it’s because he was picked up by someone. He could be literally anywhere in the world.”

  Ava shakes her head. “He’ll find me. He’ll come home.”

  I hate having to deliver another piece of bad news. “Ava, sweetheart. There’s nothing left of your condo. The building is . . . it has to be totally demolished.”

  She shakes her head again. “Then I’ll buy a new one. I have to be here when he comes home. I have to.” She stares out the window. “I’m not leaving, Delta. When he comes looking for me, he’ll come here. He’d . . . he’ll know I wouldn’t leave until he came home.”

  “There’s no home left, Ava. The city is . . . it’s going to be months at least before anything is remotely liveable again.” I take her hand, and she lets me. “I’m here for you, Ava. No matter what. I think you have to hope for the best but prepare for the worst, okay? Just be realistic. This whole area of the coast is wiped out. I want you to come to St. Pete’s with me. You don’t have to stay with Mom and Dad, obviously, since you can probably afford your own place. But you’d be around family. Somewhere that’s safe, until you can get back on your feet.”

  She stares hard at me. “We both left home for a reason, Delta. I’m not going back to St. Pete’s.”

  “Then come to Chicago with me. Chris knows I live in Chicago, and it’s not like there’s that many Delta Martins in the phone book. I’m not hard to find.”

  “No!” Ava shifts, trying to get away from me, but in the process catches up against Jonny. “You shouldn’t have come. You’re overwhelming me.”

  “You have to figure this out, Ava,” I say. “You can’t stay here much longer. They need the bed, and you’re going crazy, you said so yourself. You’re healthy now, and you have to figure out what you’re going to do. I know you . . . I know you miss Chris, and I hope he’s alive, too. But you can’t . . . you can’t pretend nothing happened.”

  Her eyes water, and tears trickle freely. “I know something happened, Delta. Fucking everything happened. We lost baby Henry, and then Chris left me, and . . . and . . . and then the storm, and I know he’s out there somewhere and he needs me, and I need him and I—I can’t leave, I can’t, Delta. I just can’t.”

  “There’s nothing here, Ava,” I say. “I’ve been out there and so has Jonny. It’s a mess, a total disaster. There’s nowhere to go. If you don’t want to go to St. Pete’s, and you don’t want to go to Chicago, the maybe we can . . . I don’t know . . . get a place together in Miami or something. I think they missed the worst of it. I just . . . I don’t want you to be alone.”

  “I won’t be alone,” Ava snaps. “Christian will find me.”

  “And I’ll be with you until then.”

  She obviously doesn’t want to be alone, since she hesitates, considering what I’m saying. “I can’t ask you to move Alex.”

  “He’s a resilient kid. He’ll be fine. He loves you, and living with Auntie Ava would be fun for him. He sounds like he’s having the time of his life with Mom and Dad, too. They’re probably spoiling him rotten.”

  “That’d be a first,” Ava mutters.

  “I know. But it seems to be good for Alex, so whatever.” I sigh. “Maybe they’ll be better grandparents than they were parents.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” Ava says, not sounding convinced.

  “I wasn’t crazy about leaving him with them at first, but when I heard about the hurricane, I obviously couldn’t bring him with me, so I didn’t have many options.” I pause, glance at Jonny, then back at Ava. “I think you should hear what Jonny has to say, Ava.”

  She shakes her head. “I don’t want to,” she whispers. “It’ll be admitting he’s gone.”

  “No, Ava,” Jonny says. “This box just contains letters and stuff. I don’t know for sure since I haven’t opened it. I only know it was important to him. He made me promise to bring it to you.”

  She takes the box. “Fine. Thank you for bringing it.”

  Jonny reaches inside his shirt and pulls out the thin gold chain he never takes off. He unclasps it, unstrings a small brass key from the chain, re-clasps the chain and crucifix around his neck, and hands the key to Ava. “You’ll need this to open it.”

  Ava takes the key, holds the box on her lap, and stares at the key. “How did you make it out of the storm, Jonny? What—what happened?”

  Jonny is silent a long while, staring out the window, and I think he’s seeing the storm rather than Ft. Lauderdale. “It blew up out of nowhere and hit us like a goddamn Mack truck.” He glances at Ava, gazes at her with an intense expression on his face. “We’d rounded the Horn and were getting ready to head into the Indian Ocean. I think Chris was planning on stopping at Madagascar for a while, maybe. I dunno. We were in Port Elizabeth. We’d taken on supplies, spent some time after rounding the Horn, kicking it on the mainland. This was . . . March? There was some stuff that happened around Valentine’s Day, and it ended up being just Chris and me again.”

  Ava frowns. “The French girl. Marty or something.”

  Jonny nods. “Yeah. Marta. Great sailor, good woman. Messed up in the head, like both Chris and me, so it worked out pretty well for a while.”

  “A good woman, huh?” She sounds . . . skeptical. “What happened on Valentine’s Day, Jonny?”

  Jonny shrugs. “Not my story to tell. Marta left a couple weeks after that, though.”

  “Did Christian tell you what happened?”

  “Jesus Cristo,” Jonny mutters. “Sort of, but not really. In a vague sort of way . . . but, like I said, it’s not my story to tell. It’s Chris’s, and Marta’s, for that matter.”

  “Can you at least tell me if he slept with her?” Ava asks.

  “He did not sleep with Marta.”

  Ava breathes out a sigh of relief and glances at Jonny again. “The storm.”

  “Well, after we left Port Elizabeth it was just him and me again. Marta left us there—I think she was planning on going back to France. Anyway, things weren’t . . . they weren’t good for Chris. He was really struggling with everything. He loved you, you know? He—he loves you. Still does. But everything that happened just . . . it fucked him up, you know? He was tryin’ hard to sort his shit out. It wasn’t easy, but he was trying.

  “When he couldn’t get hold of you I think he freaked out. Made him panic, a little. I know he was wondering what happened to you, realizing that whatever may have happened, he loved you and wanted to be with you. He had to see you.” Jonny pauses a minute, thinking.

  “I remember the conversation. I had just gotten back from a bender, and he springs all this on me, how he misses you and your email and phone and that all of those things are shut off. He told me he needs to figure things out with you. So he was like, ‘I gotta go back, Jonny.’

  “I never have anywhere I have to go, or anywhere I have to be, so I said: ‘Chris, amigo, wherever you go, I’ll go.’ So we went back around the Horn and started heading west, this way. Then the storm blew up outta nowhere, smacked the shit out of us.”

  Jonny pauses, remembering what happened next.

  “Started out like not much more than a nasty storm, but it kept getting worse. By the time we realized how bad it was going to be, there wasn’t shit we could do. Never was anything to do, really. We were out on the open ocean, crossing the middle of the Atlantic. Once a storm blows up on you out in the open like that, there ain’t shit to do but try to ride it out. So we rode it out. We hoisted the storm sail, reefed the sail, and did everything there was to do. The waves . . . Ava, you don’t even know, amiga. They were huge. I been sailing my whole life, and I don’t know if I’ve ever seen waves like that. It was bad, so bad. You go up and up and up and up, and then for a second the whole ocean is beneath you, but it’s all fifty-foot waves everywhere you look, in every direction, just the black sky and the waves. They’re like mountains, man, so huge you can’t picture it unless you’ve seen it. Makes you feel tiny and powerless. You just . . . you realize you ain’t shit, when you see waves like that. All you can do is hold on and fuckin’ hope.”

  He pauses again, and he’s starting to struggle with the telling. “Chris was at the wheel. Taking us up to the crests and then back down the troughs, like a fuckin’ rollercoaster. We went up this one wave, had to be . . . mierda, I don’t know—sixty, maybe seventy feet high. It picked us up, lifted us into to the sky like we were a little toy. Tossed us and we were fuckin’ airborne. We hit the bottom hard. I heard something snap or crunch, and that was the beginning of the end.

  That wave just . . . We hit the bottom, and Chris was ready for it, holding on and braced for the impact, but he was . . . thrown clear. He must have flown a good hundred feet before he hit the water. I tried to get to the wheel and turn the ship around so I could grab him. I tried to throw a ring to him, but he was under the water and then he popped up a few hundred feet away, riding a different wave, just trying to keep his head above water. He was out of sight before I could—before I could do a damn thing. I tried, Ava, I swear I tried. But he just disappeared. And the boat started listing and taking on water, and it capsized. Staying alive myself was all I could do, and I—I remember thinking I probably wasn’t gonna make it out. When I woke up on Dominic’s boat, I was honestly surprised to be alive.”

  “And this box?” Ava asks, toying with the key.

  Jonny shrugs. “Last thing Chris and I talked about, like a serious talk, not just shootin’ the shit, was you. He made me promise if anything happened I’d bring you the box and give it to you. It was for safekeeping, a backup plan, just in case, you know? So when the storm hit, I made sure it was locked down and stowed away safe. And when I realized she was going down, I got the box out and held on to it for dear life. The Hemingway began to sink, and I ended up riding the underside of the hull for a while, but I never let go of that damn box, because Chris is my brother, and I keep my damn promises.”

  Ava blinks hard, keeping tears at bay. “You held on to that box while the ship went down under you? So you could bring it to me?”