“I’m going to sleep,” he said from beneath his hat. She looked at the dark sea, first left, then right. “But shouldn’t we do... something?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Sail somewhere. Do something other than just sit here.”
“I’m not doing anything until morning.”
“There’s a map in the tin box. I saw it.” She reached around Lydia and Theodore, who were playing with Annabelle, and pulled out the map, shaking it open with a crackling snap. She shook the creases from it a few times.
He tilted back his hat and scowled at the map, then her. After a moment he said, “We’ll have to wait till sunrise.”
“I realize it’s still dark and the print is small. But with the lamplight...” She raised the map close to her nose. “I can read it if I hold it very close, like this.”
“You can read the map,” he repeated as if it were a joke.
“Yes.” She lowered the map slightly and peered at him over the top.
He almost smiled.
“Yes, I have the capacity to read a map.” She raised her chin a notch. “I have a brain.” She snapped the map. “And right here, on this map, it shows east, west, north, and south. And here”—she poked her finger at the map a couple of times—“is the Pacific Ocean.”
“Well, Smitty—”
She cringed at that name.
“—there is one small problem.”
“What?”
“Show me where east is.”
“Here.” She stabbed a finger on the map.
He shook his head. “No, sweetheart. Not on the map. From our perspective. Where is east?”
She stared blankly at the ocean around them. There was no moon, no stars, just a dark and cloudy night sky.
“The compass is gone. Thanks to the goat.” He shot a look down at the goat that should have scared it. But the animal just continued to lie innocently beneath Theodore’s small feet. “That’s why I didn’t open the sail.” Hank looked back at her. Very slowly, very distinctly, as if he were talking to a simpleton, he said, “You cannot use a map if you don’t know where the hell you are.”
A reference point. She sat there for a full minute, frozen, feeling more than a little stupid, then she folded up the map in neat creases. Of course he was right. She turned and tucked it back in the box, then looked everywhere but at him. It wasn’t a comfortable feeling, being wrong, especially in front of this man.
“I’m going to sleep.”
She looked up then.
He had pulled his hat back over his face and again crossed his arms on his chest.
She sat there feeling uncomfortable and too helpless, things she wasn’t used to feeling.
“Hey, Smitty!” he said after a few minutes. She looked at the hat again. “What?”
“You might want to rest that brain of yours.” He laughed obnoxiously.
She looked away, then jerked a couple of the life vests free and covered them with the blankets. “Lie down here, children, and try to go to sleep.”
Theodore looked to be already half asleep. Lydia slid under the covers but scooted as close as she could to the goat, which was curled in a small space near Theodore. The animal shifted slightly, then rested its bearded chin on her narrow shoulder.
Margaret settled down beside Lydia. She cradled sleeping baby Annabelle into the crook of her arm. She sighed, then stared up at the black night sky where the clouds grew spotty and a thin slip of a new moon shone for a brief instant. Before long, the clouds thickened again.
