Chapter 17

As they were being rescued, I found Eric’s camera on the deck and picked it up before it got trampled or kicked overboard. It had kept running and caught everything. He’d have a winner somewhere with that video, for sure, but the important thing to me was, other than the rescue itself, the fact that once again life proves to you just how much there is to a person if you look below the surface.

The child was all right, if a bit subdued. The mother was taken to the infirmary and sedated. The father, who was supposed to be watching the child, sustained a black eye from his wife. I found him crying on the afterdeck, rocking back and forth.

I just held his shoulder for a while and remarked, as if I’d raised a dozen myself, “You can’t predict just when the whim will hit them to do something stupid and dangerous. No one is psychic, and it’s probably a miracle anyone lives to grow up.”

The only thing Eric said later was, “I had to. Wouldn’t you?”