This guy had known my mom? I’d been under the impression Dad had met Gary Dubois—and this had to be him—because they both spent summers on Nantucket and were into old boat stuff. How was my mom involved?
I had no time to ask. Gary hustled us along a theoretically stable gangway connected to his ship. I craned my head back to take in the huge masts and the crow’s nest high above, then exchanged a wide-eyed, impressed look with Ethan.
“Mike will bring your things to your cabins,” Gary said, introducing us to a crew member. “I’ll give you the grand tour, and then you can get settled in before dinner.”
Gary led our quartet around, patting the rail fondly as he gave us the ship’s biography. “She’s one hundred twenty-five feet. Just finished her two years ago. This is the first time we’re out to Nantucket, though—I kept telling Tony I would come.” He nodded at my dad.
“What do you do with the ship the rest of the year?” Cora asked.
“We keep her out of Philadelphia most of the time. I’ve got a team running tours on her—day trips for schools and tourists, and we do five-night trips, too. We can accommodate a dozen guests along with our crew on those longer trips, and the day classes are often fifty or so.”
He’d built the ship because he wanted a ship, we learned, but it was also a business. And it wasn’t all historical. While the deck and spars were made of Douglas fir, the hull and masts were steel. He led us through the decks, pointing out all the different sections: the fore, midship, and aft; then the bow, the front, the stern, the back. He named the masts—main, fore, and mizzen—and the parts of each mast, but by then I was starting to get a little loopy.
To make our way downstairs—excuse me, “below deck”—we descended steep stairs. Weren’t sailors notoriously drunk? Wasn’t the ocean, you know, not steady? This seemed ripe for disaster.
“You lot are in our midship cabins.” Gary pointed to doors where aesthetically pleasing and functionally useless gilded lifebuoys encircled our names. “Over here’s the crew quarters.” We peeked in at a room full of bunks and suitcases and people in their twenties, who waved. I imagined what it would be like to be them, headed off to sea on their own, on an adventure.
The largest part of the lower deck looked like an old-timey hotel restaurant, with a long bar along one side and skylights letting in natural light. “This is the grand salon. When we’re not on deck, we’re hanging here. Meals, socializing—and come look,” Gary said, with a wink at me.
He opened a door into a small, cozy room shaped like an octagon with books lining its walls. The ceiling lights resembled stained glass and glowed with a candle-warm light. Four armchairs nestled around a small coffee table in the center of the room, and two side tables held lamps whose stained glass shades complemented the ceiling. “My husband insisted,” Gary said. “Said if I got a ship, he got a library.”
Cora peered at the titles. “Is this whole shelf…murder mysteries set on cruise ships?”
Gary grinned. “You gotta give the people what they want. The people being my husband, Brent.”
Gary showed us back to our quarters and told us the ship would depart in forty-five minutes. My cabin was the size of a postage stamp, barely large enough to turn around in, but charming all the same. Pink and teal throw pillows and blankets enlivened the crisp white linens. The bed was beneath a round port window. I kicked off my shoes and scrambled up to peer out, smiling involuntarily at the wash of blue before me. There was also a mirror, a dresser, and a TV screen bolted to the wall—so much for historical accuracy. My suitcase had been rolled neatly into a corner.
After unpacking, I knocked on Ethan’s door. I wanted to tell him about Andrea and Frederick, and everything had been such a scramble of packing this morning I hadn’t gotten a chance. He didn’t answer. I found him on the upper deck, excitedly talking with Gary and my dad about the experiments they had planned for the trip. Of course. But I wasn’t as bitter as I might have been a few weeks before. In fact, it struck me as cute, how excited they all were.
Soon, everyone had gathered for the official departure. Gary stood at the front of the crowd. “Hello! Hello, everyone!” he cried. “I’d like to welcome all of you to theSalty Fox—yes, I named the ship after the bar where Brent and I met,” he said to a few chuckles, nodding at a blond man smiling abashedly. “Some of you have been sailing with me for a bit, but I’d like to welcome our newcomers for the next few nights. We’ve been joined bymy neighbors from New York, who are spending the summer on Nantucket, Doctors Ishikawa and Wrisberg, along with my old friend Tony Edelman, his daughter, Jordan, and his student, Ethan. We also have Dr. Cora Bradley with us, a brilliant astrophysicist.”
Everyone waved and called out hellos.
And I thought,Old friend?
“Tony here is responsible for this little adventure to see the Arborids in the darkest skies imaginable, away from light pollution. He’s been ‘lightly’ suggesting this for two years now.”
The adults laughed politely.
Gary introduced the people already onboard: his sister and brother-in-law and their college-aged kids, an old colleague, a writer and a tech bro, whose connections to Gary I missed. The crew came next, most of whom were professionals, and a few students and volunteers. “As for the person actually in charge,” Gary said, gesturing to a woman beside him, “Captain Laskshi runs the show around here, along with First Mate Wójcik and Second Mate Foster.”
“You run the show, I think,” Captain Laskshi said with a smile. “I run the ship.”
With introductions done—and a few safety measures imparted to us newcomers—we set off. Gary popped a bottle of champagne and everyone cheered as Nantucket dwindled behind us. Then, with the sun only now starting to lower, we headed into the lounge for dinner.
The newcomers ate together, and Gary and his husband, Brent, joined us. The food was better than I’d expected: sweet potatoesand tofu marinated in a soy-and-honey sauce, plus a spinach side salad and fresh-baked roll. Conversation inevitably circled to the meteor shower, which would peak for the next few nights. “We’re lucky to have our very own expert,” Gary said to Cora, smiling broadly. “Will you mind being peppered with questions?”
“Not at all.”
“The Arborids come from Gibson’s comet, isn’t that right?” one of the doctors asked. “We were wondering—why aren’t they named after the comet?”
“People knew about meteor showers long before they connected them to comets,” Cora said. “They’re usually named after the constellations it looks like the meteors originate from.”
“Where’d people think meteors came from?” Ethan asked.
“That’s outside my realm.” Cora looked at Dad. “Maybe our resident historian knows?”
I swear Dad blushed. “Ah—well. For a long time, people thought meteors were religious signs, or rocks falling from thunderstorms. Scientists were skeptical, since they didn’t think rocks could fall from the sky. But in the eighteen hundreds, a dramatic shower in France made people start thinking they were credible.” He tilted his head. “I’m not sure when people figured out they came from comets.”
