'Now listen to me, Maury, stop thinking with your dick and go arrange us a motel room. Just nod if you agree.'
He nodded enthusiastically. His eyes had begun to water and Katherine couldn't help but smile. 'There's a good boy,' she said, and patted the front of his trousers.
Freeman sat staring at the horizon, only half aware of Mersiha's slight corrections to the wheel as she kept the red telltales horizontal and flat against the sail.
'What are you thinking about, Dad?' Mersiha's voice jolted him out of his reverie.
'Sorry, what?' he replied, though he'd heard the question.
He was playing for time, thinking of an answer so that he wouldn't have to tell her what was really on his mind.
'You looked really sad,' Mersiha said.
Freeman could see himself reflected in the lenses of her sunglasses. He was about to say that he was thinking about work, but he held himself back. If he ever hoped to get Mersiha to open up to him, he had to be equally honest with her. Lies, even white ones, would only dilute their relationship. 'I was thinking about Luke,' he said quietly.
Mersiha swallowed and looked up at the mainsail, avoiding his gaze.
'I miss him,' Freeman said.
'I'm sorry,' she said.
'No, there's nothing for you to be sorry about. I think about him a lot. I was just thinking how great it would be if he was here, enjoying this.'
'Did you ever take him sailing?' Mersiha said.
Freeman shook his head. 'No, we didn't have a boat then.'
'He was seven when he died, wasn't he?'
He nodded. It was the first time Mersiha had asked questions about Luke's death, and Freeman wondered if in the past he'd been giving off signals that it wasn't a subject to be broached.
'Three weeks after his birthday.'
The wind changed suddenly and Mersiha made quick, expert corrections to the wheel. The boat's speed remained constant.
Freeman nodded his approval at her skill. 'What happened, Dad?' she asked. 'I know it was an accident, but I never…' Her voice tailed off as if she were worried about going any further.
'I was driving my car. Not the Lumina. The car we used to have. Luke used to love riding in the car. That's why I was thinking about how much he'd enjoy the boat.' A forty-foot twin-masted ketch passed them on their port side and Freeman waved at the helmsman, an elderly man in a bright blue windcheater. 'What he really liked to do was to sit on my lap while I drove.' He licked his lips. His mouth had gone suddenly dry. 'Katherine always told me it was stupid, and she'd never let me do it when she was in the car. I'd taken him with me to the mall, to pick up something. Food. Bread, I think, and some other things that Katherine wanted. Luke kept asking me if he could drive. I said no, but he wouldn't stop. He didn't cry, he knew that if he cried he'd never get his way, he just kept on asking politely.
Eventually, when we were only half a mile away from home, I let him have his way. He took his seat belt off and sat on my lap, playing with the wheel, hitting the horn.'
Mersiha had stopped looking up at the sail and its red telltales.
Freeman's reflection appeared to fill the lenses of her glasses. 'I didn't see the truck. Not then. When I think back now I can see it, I can remember everything. The small teddy bear tied to the front bumper, the garland of flowers hanging from the driver's rear-view mirror, the look on his face. His mouth was wide open.
I think he was screaming. Or maybe he had the radio on and was singing along with it. That's all in my memory, but I know that at the time I wasn't aware of seeing it. The police told me later that he'd taken the corner too wide. He was only a few feet over , the middle, but it was enough.Was the driver drunk?'
'No. In a way it might have been better if he had been, then at least I could have blamed him. The road was narrow, the bend just a bit tighter than he'd expected. He wasn't speeding, he just drifted over the middle. We slammed into him.' Freeman took a deep breath, filling his lungs with salty air. 'It took less than a second. One moment Luke was sitting on my lap, giggling and holding the wheel. Then the car started to spin and Luke was thrown forward. The windshield shattered at the same time I don't know if it was the crash or Luke hitting it. I tried to grab him. I caught hold of his left leg but he was moving too fast. Inertia, you know? He was only seven years old but the acceleration was just too much. It was like trying to hold on to a racehorse. If I hadn't been wearing my seat belt, I would have been thrown out too. Sometimes I wish I had been.'
'No,' Mersiha said firmly. 'You mustn't say that.'
'AH I had left was his sneaker. He went under the rear wheel of the truck as the car spun away. The car went off the road and hit a tree. When I came round I was still holding the sneaker.
They had to cut me out of the car, but other than a few cuts and bruises I was fine. I didn't even have to stay in the hospital. I was fine and Luke was dead.' Freeman was glad that he was wearing sunglasses because he didn't want Mersiha to see the tears in his eyes. He blinked behind the dark lenses.
'It wasn't your fault, Dad,' she said. She was gripping the wheel so tightly that her knuckles had whitened.
'Oh yes it was, pumpkin. There's no one else I can blame.
The guy driving the truck was just doing his job. The car's safety system protected me just like it was supposed to. If Luke had been wearing his seat belt he wouldn't have died. That's all there is to it.'
'You think about it a lot, don't you?'
Freeman nodded. 'Every day.'
'I dream about Stjepan all the time,' Mersiha said. 'I miss him.'
'I guess when someone dies you miss them for ever. It doesn't hurt so much after a while, but you always miss them.'
Mersiha smiled. 'Yeah. I guess.' She concentrated on the telltales for a while, keeping the boat slicing through the waves with deft touches to the wheel. 'It isn't your fault, Dad,' she said eventually. 'Sometimes bad things happen. You just wanted to make Luke happy. It's not your fault the truck was there.'
Freeman sighed. Deep down inside he knew that Mersiha was right, but he'd blamed himself for so long it would take more than sympathetic words to take the hurt away. Katherine had blamed him too, initially with razor-sharp words that had cut deeper than any knife and later with ice-cold looks and turned cheeks that had wounded more than the words. They'd eventually reached an uneasy truce, continuing to talk about Luke without Katherine apportioning blame, but to Freeman it seemed that the reproach was always there, lurking in the background.
He stood up and lumbered along the deck to stand behind Mersiha. He put his arms around her slight body and hugged her tight as he rested his chin on the top of her head.
Ahead of them was a smaller yacht, and Mersiha steered away from it, giving it plenty of room. The mainsail started to flap and Freeman released his daughter to pull on the main sheet until the sail was properly trimmed. 'Dad?' she said.
'What's up?'
'Nothing.' She stared at the yacht as it passed on their port side but didn't acknowledge the young couple who were sailing it. Freeman gave them a half-hearted wave. He could tell from her silence that it wasn't nothing.
'Come on, pumpkin. What is it?'
She seemed to struggle with herself for a few seconds before answering. 'Well,' she said hesitantly, 'I was wondering…'
'Yes?'
'Well, was I a replacement for Luke?'
Freeman frowned. 'A replacement?'
'You know what I mean. Luke died, so you wanted another child.'
He took off his sunglasses and shook his head. 'Oh no, don't think that,' he said. 'I wanted you to live with us because of who you were, not because I wanted to replace Luke. I'll always love Luke, and I'll always miss him, but Katherine and I weren't looking for another child.'
'Katherine can't have more kids, right?'