"I want to take him to the bay," Thomas said. "Not to drown him. To finish the story properly. He let everyone think the water took him. I'd like the water to receive him honestly this time — with his name, and with someone who loved him standing there."
Monique nodded. "I'll go with you. If you want company."
"I want company," Thomas said.
---
They went on a clear Saturday in January, cold enough that the Chesapeake wore a skin of pale light. Ava stayed with Monique's sister in Richmond; this part of the story was not yet hers to carry in person. Thomas and Monique drove south and east until the land frayed into marsh and the smell of salt replaced the smell of suburb. Thomas had rented a small boat — not a Whaler; he could not have borne a Whaler — and they motored out to a place near the mouth of the Rappahannock that the charts said was close to where the empty boat had been found in 2001.
The wind was sharp. Monique's scarf snapped like a flag. Thomas opened the urn with fingers that did not quite feel like his own and spoke aloud, not because he believed Andrew could hear him, but because some words need air.
"You were my brother," he said. "You were a fool and a runaway and a man who wrote a better letter than he lived a life. I am still angry. I am still grateful. I release you from the bay that didn't take you, and I give you back to it with your real name. Andrew Michael Grant. Not David Merrick. You. The one who stole the coffee. The one who wrote the bird-wing T. The one who watched Dad's funeral from across the street and the one who asked forgiveness from a plastic chair in Beckley. All of you. Go."
He tipped the urn. The ashes caught the wind and spread across the winter water in a pale banner that thinned and vanished. Monique did not speak. She stood beside him in the rocking boat and witnessed, which was all he needed and more than he had expected to receive from the world.