"Okay," Skyler said, and dusted her hands off on her jeans. "Can we put out a line? There's still crabs. Mr. Brannigan said there's still crabs till it gets really cold."
So they got a chicken neck from the freezer and a length of string and the long-handled net from the boat shed, and they sat on the end of the dock in their jackets with their legs hanging over the water and waited, the way June used to wait, the way June's father had waited before her. It took a long time. Then the string went taut and began, very slowly, to move.
"Easy," Skyler whispered. "Easy, Dad. Pull it slow. Don't jerk it. If you jerk it, it lets go."
He pulled it slow. A shape came up out of the green water, a blue crab hanging onto the chicken neck with both claws, too stubborn to let go, and Skyler leaned out with the net and scooped it in one clean motion, and it scrabbled and clicked angrily in the mesh, and she laughed out loud, a big surprised laugh that went out across the water and came back off the far bank.
They caught five. He netted one. She did not let him forget it.
That night, at the kitchen island, while the crab soup simmered on the stove from the 2014 notebook, Skyler took out her composition book and opened it to the next clean page and wrote, in her careful rounded hand. He did not mean to read it over her shoulder. But she turned it so he could.
Nov 8. Dad home. 5 crabs off the dock. I netted 4. Mom's soup. Two bowls each. Nobody counted.
Then, underneath, she drew a picture. It was the first one since August. A crab, with its claws up, and beside it, very small, a sailboat.
And under the picture, she wrote three more words, and then she closed the notebook, and went to get the bowls.
What we had: everything.