Camille unfolded the documents in front of eighty silent guests. At the top of the federal certificate of documentation was a single owner’s name, and it was not Preston’s, and it was not my father’s. It was mine. Delia Barrett. Sole owner of the sixty-two-foot vessel everyone had just been cruising on under a banner that called it a family legacy. Camille’s eyes moved slowly down the page, past the ownership line, to the agreement clipped behind it, the one Preston had initialed on every single page. She read the restrictions aloud, her voice steady and cold. He could not sell it. He could not transfer it. He could not present himself as its owner. He had agreed to all of it, in writing, months before he ever told her it was his.<\/p>\n
Preston lunged for the papers again, and again security stepped between them. My father, who had spent the whole evening playing patriarch of the Barrett legacy, suddenly found the deck very interesting. Camille turned to him, then to Preston, holding the compass Dad had been photographed with, the one that had belonged to my mother. “You told my parents this was your family’s yacht,” she said to Preston. “You told them your father owned it. You let me post it online.” Then she asked the question that neither of them could answer without unraveling everything. “Where is your sister right now?” The silence that followed was its own answer. I was outside the gate. In my car. Uninvited, from my own boat.<\/p>\n
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