Margo felt the weight of her father’s ashes in her backpack—a small wooden box he’d carved himself, back when his hands still worked. She was supposed to scatter them from the ferry’s top deck, just as the fort came into view. He’d visited once in 1984 and never stopped talking about the nurse sharks in the moat.
Margo almost dropped the wooden box.
“Please,” she said, voice cracking. “It’s not a vacation. It’s a… a dispersal.” dry tortugas ferry reservations
Margo’s stomach turned to conch chowder. “That’s impossible. I have the receipt.” She thrust her phone at him. Margo felt the weight of her father’s ashes
“Name?” asked the deckhand, a sun-bleached man named Cruz. Margo almost dropped the wooden box
“Margo Vasquez. Party of one.”
The Yankee Freedom III ferry sat docked at the end of Margaret Street, its twin hulls gleaming white in the pre-dawn heat. Margo clutched her confirmation email like a winning lottery ticket. She’d woken up at 3 a.m. to book it exactly two months in advance, the moment the reservation window opened. The website had crashed twice. Her credit card had been declined because the bank thought it was fraud. But she’d persevered.