“Mom wants to know if she should call the lawyer,” I said.

“I suppose.”

“The same one from last time? She wasn't sure.”

“Yeah, he's all right,” my father said.

His clothes were rumpled and he looked tired, but he said the food was decent and the police were treating him fine.

“Dad, what if you just said you're sorry and offered to pay for what you did?”

“But I'm not sorry for what I did, Noah. The only thing I'm sorry about is that you've got to see me locked up like an ax murderer.”

The other times my dad had gotten in trouble, they wouldn't let me come to the jail because I was too young.

“I'm not a common criminal.” Dad reached across and put a hand on my arm. “I know right from wrong. Good from bad. Sometimes I just get carried away.”

“Nobody thinks you're a criminal.”

“Dusty Muleman sure does.”

“That's because you sunk his boat,” I pointed out. “If you just paid to get it fixed, maybe then-”

“That's a seventy-three-footer,” my dad cut in. “You've got to know what you're doing to sink one of those pigs. You ought to go have a look.”

“Maybe later,” I said.

The deputy standing by the door made a grunting noise and held up five chubby fingers, which was the number of minutes left before he took my father back to the cell.

“Is your mom still ticked off at me?” Dad asked.

“What do you think?”

“I tried to explain it to her, but she wouldn't listen.”

“Then maybe you can explain it to me,” I said. “I'm old enough to understand.”

Dad smiled. “I believe you are, Noah.”

My father was born and raised here in Florida, so he grew up on the water. His dad-my Grandpa Bobby-ran a charter boat out of Haulover Marina on Miami Beach. Grandpa Bobby passed away when I was little, so I honestly didn't remember him. We'd heard different stories about what happened-one was that his appendix burst; another was that he got hurt real bad in a bar fight. All we knew for sure is that he took his fishing boat down to South America on some sort of job, and he never came back.