The laker came up the canal at six-forty-five, enormous, a wall of rust-streaked red steel sliding by so close you felt you could touch it, and the bridge went up with its long groaning horn, and the ship answered, long-short-long-short, the master's salute, and Elsie put her hands over her ears and grinned up at me with her whole face. A deckhand on the bow waved down at the crowd and the kids on the pier waved back, jumping. Elsie waved too. She waved until the stern had passed and the bridge was coming back down.
"Dad," she said, while the bells were ringing. "In my story. The dad on the ship waves at the lighthouse, but he can't see the girl."
"I know."
"That's okay," she said. "It's not his fault. It's really far up."
I put the bakery box on the wall beside me and I picked her up, all fifty-one pounds of her, which she was much too big for, and held her on my lap with her head under my chin, the way I used to when she was two and fit there, and she let me, and the bridge came down, and the cars started across it again. I sat there with my daughter, who had decided it wasn't my fault, and I knew then that I wasn't going back on that boat. Not in eleven days. Not in sixty. I didn't know yet what I was going to do instead. I knew what I wasn't going to do.
When we got home Finn was in the bath and Carly was sitting on the closed toilet lid watching him, the way she always did, and Elsie went in with the bakery box and held it out to him, and he shrieked and grabbed for it with wet hands, and Carly caught it before it went in the water. She looked at the box. She looked at Elsie.
"I picked it," Elsie said. "It's chocolate. He likes chocolate."
Carly opened her mouth and nothing came out. She put the box down on the edge of the sink very carefully, as if it might break. "That was really nice, Elsie," she said finally. Her voice was strange. "That was really nice of you."