Despite knowing I’d likely forget all this in a week, I dove into learning, game to try adjusting the sails and climbing the rigging. By lunchtime, my arms were sore, but so was my stomach from laughing, which I hadn’t really expected. And I needed the break—I was worn out and sweaty. Ethan was too, if the way he pulled up his shirt to mop his face was any indicator. I blatantly stared at the expanse of muscles he’d exposed.
Ethan noticed and smirked. “Checking me out?”
“You should be so lucky.”
“I should,” he said, giving my ponytail a flick.
We had lunch on the deck, paninis for the most part—tomato and mozzarella and pesto for me. It wasdelicious. Gary waved an arm grandiosely. “The spice of the open seas.”
Brent gave him an indulgent smile. “And the ridiculously expensive pesto you insist on buying.”
After lunch, everyone split up into their preferred activities: learning more about rigging or sailing, performing experiments, chatting in clusters around the deck. Gary checked in on his guests, moving purposely from one group to the next. As he left a clump, I intercepted him. “Hi. Mr. Dubois?”
“Hi, Jordan.” He smiled broadly and focused on me, as opposed to looking like he needed to dash off elsewhere. “How are you enjoying the trip?”
Kudos for remembering my name; I didn’t think I’d have remembered someone I’d barely spoken to. But then again, he’d apparently known my dad—myparents—for a long time. Maybe he’d even heard my name seventeen years ago. “I wondered if you had a moment?”
His bushy brows skyrocketed above his eagle eyes. “Sure thing. Want to sit?”
We chose a shady part of the deck. I sat across from him, concentrating on not fiddling with my hands. “It’s a really nice ship.”
“Thanks.” Gary launched into a loving homage before abruptly reining himself in. “But I’m guessing the ship’s not what you wanted to talk about.”
I nodded quickly, bracing myself. “My dad says you knew my mom in college.”
Gary smiled. “I did, yes.”
“I wanted to ask—What was she like? What was my dad like with her?”
The question seemed to startle Gary, though it was whatI wanted to ask everyone who’d known my mom. I wanted to ask her friends who still dropped by on occasion, my aunts and uncles, even my dad. But I felt embarrassed. They’d known her so intimately, so well, and she’d been my mother, after all. I shouldn’t need to ask.
Only my mom’s parents told me stories, but so wistfully I almost preferred they didn’t.
But this man, Gary, had stopped knowing my mom before she got sick; he didn’t have bitter memories of her illness shading the sweet memories of her life. When he’d last seen her, she’d been ebullient and alive, and his memories of her were probably no different from the memories anyone had of a friend they’d fallen out of touch with.
“The two of them…Well, she was a ball of energy, I’ll tell you that.” Gary settled comfortably into his chair. “Your dad was a nerd, head in the clouds. We all met around the same time—we were in the same dorm freshman year, and I remember us as a giant clump—but the two of them were instant friends. She was the faster walker, he was the slowest, but she’d drop back when he was around to talk with him.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. And she wasloud. She had giant crimped hair and was always bossing everyone around. Freshman year, she joined a dozen clubs, then quit them all. Took up too much time, she said. She wanted to be with her friends, you know, she didn’t want to be writing articles or organizing events. She had a really strong sense of self. She was good at reaching out, at making sure she spent quality time with the people who were important to her. Ithink half the kids in the dorm had a crush on her. She only had eyes for your dad, of course.”
“Really.”
Gary laughed. “Didn’t he tell you? He’d been pining after her for, oh, two years. She’d been dating other people on and off, but one day she looked at Tony. They were close, we all knew that, but they’d only ever been friends. The two of us were sitting on the quad, and your dad was playing Frisbee with some of the others, and she turned to me and said, ‘Do you think I should marry Tony?’ ”
I stared. “What?”
He laughed. “That’s what I said! She gave this decisive nod—she was always giving that nod—and said, ‘Yes, I think so.’ Then she got up and interrupted the game and asked him out.”
I gaped at Gary. “And what didhesay?”
Gary laughed again, harder this time. He had one of those laughs that was mostly a snort, and he had to catch his breath to recover from it. “He said, ‘Uh, we’re in the middle of a game.’ And she walked away, and he kept playing for about three more minutes, and then he turned around and ran off the field and chased her down. And never left her side again. Best thing that ever happened to him, he said. She drew him out of his shell, and he calmed her down.”
I’d never heard that story before. “Wow.”
“Yeah. She was a great person, your mom. Knew exactly what she wanted and went after it. Took me a long time to learn to do the same thing.”
“Thanks for telling me.” I paused. “Crimped hair, huh?”
