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time. I thought somehow if I kept on listening to it, maybe I’d hear something in his voice that indicated it was all some kind of a cruel joke.
    It was skin cancer from all those years with the sun shining down on his fair freckled skin that had finally taken my dad. During the years that I was lifeguarding and taking a few classes at the local community college, when I’d moved out into my own apartment, leaving Red alone in the big house, the doctors kept cutting off big chunks of him. When I’d call him every few weeks, just to see how he was doing, I didn’t want to hear about his most recent trip to the doctors. Red and I never talked about the important things, not about Mother’s death, not about what his illness might mean. Toward the end, I moved back home, quit school, cut back on my hours lifeguarding. I did what I could, tried to make him comfortable, even though I didn’t want to remember him like that, but rather like the big barrel-chested man with the red suspenders, blazing beard, and mischievous grin I’d looked up to as a little girl.
    Red’s will had left everything to the three of us equally. I was surprised he even had a will; as sick as he was at the end, he never let on that he considered his own death a possibility. The doctors’ bills and taxes ate up most of what we got out of the house. After Red’s funeral, my brothers and I sat down and tried to figure out what to do with the Gorda . Maddy already had his own boat business going, running a charter sportfisherman out of Haulover down in Miami. He’d developed a reputation as a fishing guide—he even gave the morning fishing report on a local AM sports radio station—and he wasn’t about to give up his charter business to go into towing and salvage work.
    Pitcairn was the nomad in the family. Maddy and I couldn’t figure out how he supported himself, but he had fallen in love, first with surfing and then, when he grew taller, with windsurfing. We received his postcards from Maui, Costa Rica, the Columbia River Gorge, and when he came to Red’s funeral, it was the first time either of us had seen him in over three years. He said he didn’t care about the money, he’d leave any decisions to us. He just didn’t want to give up his life on the pro windsurfing circuit to settle in Lauderdale.
    They both laughed when I said I’d like to take over Red’s business. Maddy said most of the yacht captains wouldn’t want to hire a woman, that I’d never make enough to pay the maintenance on the boat, much less support myself. But I was twenty-seven years old, and although I was still in good shape, I didn’t want to be a lifeguard in my thirties. I didn’t want to have to sit out there in a tank suit when the flesh started to sag and my reactions started to slow. I was ready for a career change.
    Besides, most of the old-timers knew me, I’d argued. I practically grew up aboard Gorda , and I had worked for Red off and on ever since I was a kid. He was a great teacher, and he loved showing off how well his little girl could handle a boat. I’d spent so much more time on the boat than Maddy had. I knew I was the most experienced of the three of us, and probably the only one who could qualify for the commercial towing captain’s license. My brother Pit was all for me from the start, and finally Maddy relented. Although I ran the boat, we were still three-way partners in Sullivan Towing and Salvage.
    I made mistakes at first, but eventually I got back most of Red’s river and waterway business. I hoped to be able to buy my brothers out in a few years’ time. I had a little nest egg—it wasn’t much, just a couple of thousand dollars, but it was my emergency money. I’d vowed not to touch it unless it was a serious emergency— something like a blown engine. It was my security fund, and I knew that once I started to dip into it to pay the bills, those thousands would become hundreds in a flash. Neither of my brothers had seemed to