Chapter 4: The Weight of Her
She was so light.
That's what I remember most.
Thirty-one pounds. She'd been weighed at the endocrinologist the week before. Thirty-one pounds, and when her hand came off that rail and her whole body swung free in my grip, she weighed more than anything I had ever held in my life.
She screamed.
The phone pouch whipped around on its lanyard and smacked me in the face.
The boat hit a swell.
The whole hull jumped, and my body slammed against the fiberglass. I felt my father's grip on my belt jerk. Felt him slide. Heard him grunt in pain behind me.
"DAD!"
"I'VE GOT YOU!" he bellowed. "PULL HER UP! PULL!"
I bent my elbow. Brought her up. Six inches. A foot.
Her left hand was still gripping the rail. I shouted for her to let go, to give me her other hand, and she didn't want to, because letting go of the one thing that had kept her alive was the most terrifying thing in the world.
"Zuri. Look at Daddy. Give me your hand. I promise. I promise."
She looked at me with those huge brown eyes.
And she let go.
She trusted me.
I hauled her up against my chest, wrapped both arms around her, and she clamped onto my neck so hard her fingernails cut into my skin.
Now I had no hands free.
I was hanging over the side of a speeding yacht, upside-down from the waist, holding my daughter with both arms, and the only thing in the world keeping us out of the ocean was one old man's grip on my belt.
"Dad," I said. "I can't hold on to anything."
"I know."
"Dad—"
"I KNOW, Ryan."
Then I felt him pull.
I have no idea how he did it.
I'm six-foot-one and a hundred eighty-five pounds. Zuri was thirty-one. My father was seventy years old and had had a stent put in his heart three years earlier.
He pulled us up.
Inch by inch.
I heard him make a sound I had never heard from him before. A low, animal groan from somewhere deep in his chest.
My hips scraped over the lip of the hull. My stomach. My chest.
Then another pair of hands grabbed my shirt. A young man in a navy crew polo, brown skin, dark hair, eyes wide with fear. One of the deckhands. Mateo, I'd learn later.
Together they dragged us over the top of the railing and we fell onto the deck in a heap.
I landed on my back with my daughter on my chest.
She was screaming.
It was the most beautiful sound I had ever heard.
Then, finally, far too late, the engines cut out.
The silence was enormous.
The yacht settled into the water, rocking gently. The wind died. The roar of the wake faded to a soft slap of waves against the hull.
I lay there in the blazing sun with my daughter shaking on top of me, and I couldn't stop saying it.
"I've got you. I've got you. I've got you."
She was sobbing into my neck.
"Daddy, I was holding on. I was holding on so long."
"I know, baby. You held on. You were so brave."
"I called you."
"You did. You called me. You did everything right."
"Like Mommy's song."
Something broke inside me.
"Like Mommy's song," I whispered.
I turned my head.
My father was sitting on the deck against the railing post, his face gray, one hand pressed against the left side of his chest. His palm was torn open where the steel had cut into it. Blood ran down his wrist onto his white linen trousers.
He was looking at Zuri.
Not at me. At her.
And there were tears running down his face.
I had never seen my father cry. Not at my mother's funeral. Not when his company nearly went bankrupt in 2009. Never.
"Dad," I said. "Dad, are you okay?"
He didn't answer.
May you like
He just kept staring at my daughter, his mouth working, like he was trying to say something and couldn't find the words.
Then his eyes rolled back, and he slid sideways onto the deck.
