“How do you even havetimefor this?”
He raised his brows. “It’s not like I’m putting on an epic play or entertaining relatives or trying to seduce anyone. It’s just me and my moms.”
Right. “Well, it’s great.”
He looked past me. “Is that him?”
I followed his gaze and nodded.
Tyler eyed him critically. “Cute, if you like the type.”
“The type?” I echoed, amused. “You mean tall, dark, and handsome? Yes. I do.”
“He’s notthattall.”
I didn’t deign to reply. Isaac, at well over six feet, had several inches on Tyler.
He gave me a sharp smile. “And how’s it going? He’s everything you ever wanted?”
“Pretty much.”
“Hmm.” Tyler cleared his throat. “I looked up the sailors.”
My head jerked up. “Really?”
“Yeah. There’s a database of crew lists and a newspaper article naming the ones who died. Two were in their forties and fifties, but the first mate... he was twenty-six. This was his second trip to South America.”
Twenty-six. He would have been twenty-four when he left, when the girls were seventeen, fifteen, and fourteen. Which made the argument for Shoshana more compelling, if he’d been the sailor. Well, hopefully, eesh. “What was his name?”
“Charles Turner.”
“Did you look up the crew who lived? It still could have been one of them.”
“I did, yeah. There were four guys in their teens and twenties, so they can’t be ruled out. But if the sailor survived, why would she have the quarterboard? Why wouldn’t they have gotten married?”
“She could have kept the board because she was sentimental? And he might have left. The whaling era had basically ended—a lot of guys were joining the Union army or going out west to look for gold. Or it could have been because of their religions.”
He frowned. “You think religion was important?”
“In the 1840s?” I shot him an amused look. “Yeah.”
“Thereisseparation of church and state.”
“There’s... a bit of separation,” I relented. “I think Nantucket was pretty chill as far as religion went, because Quakers ran it. But I don’t think people in the nineteenth century were giving three cheers for inter-anything marriages.”
“Fair. It’d suck, though, if they could have been together and weren’t.”
“Yeah. Though that’s pretty normal, right? So many factors go into the choices you make. If it was Shoshana... maybe her family pressured her to choose someone in the family business. Someone who understood where she came from. Or maybe she chose Nathaniel, her father’s apprentice, because he felt safer. More secure.”
“What would you do?” Tyler asked. “Pick the safe choice or the exciting one?”
“In terms of romance or other things?”
“In terms of anything.”
I looked out over the crowd, people milling in their holiday best, couples standing shoulder to shoulder, catching each other’s eyes. I wondered what all their stories were, who chose the safe path versus the exciting one. If either path was better than the other, really. “I don’t know. I don’t even know which I think would be right. Exciting is exciting, but is it real?”
“It’s worth experiencing.”
