He laughed. “The nineties were a trip. And you should have seen our Y2K parties. We went wild.”
***
After talking to Gary, I headed to the little library below deck. It was empty, so I took my time scanning the shelves. I hadn’t asked if it would be here, but I had a hunch. My gaze latched onto the blue-and-white spine soon enough.
The book was as familiar as Dad: a tiny piece of his soul in physical form. It didn’t matter which physical copy of the book it was, whether one in our living room or Dad’s study, or in a library or bookstore or here on the ship. They were all the same, all part of Dad.
I flipped the book open. There, the dedication:
To my wife, Rebecca, who believed in me long before I believed in myself. I will miss you forever.
And to my daughter, Jordan, who has my whole heart.
My heart lurched. I’d remembered he’d dedicated the book to Mom, but I hadn’t remembered a dedication to me. It made my eyes strain with tears, made my stomach roil and my chest feel tight.
No wonder I’d never read further. I wanted to snap the book shut right now and start crying.
Instead, I flipped to the first page.
***
Several hours later, the door cracked open. “Oops,” Cora said. “Didn’t mean to interrupt.”
I tore myself away from a surprisingly riveting description of my dad attempting to use a sextant to measure the distance between the moon and a star to determine the longitude. “Just reading.”
She spied the cover. “Your dad’s book. I read it a couple of weeks ago.”
“You did? You didn’t say anything.”
She flushed. “It felt a little funny, like I was spying on him. I didn’t want to be weird about it.”
I grinned. “It’s all stuff he decided to put out there.” I looked at the book in my hand. “I didn’t know how much he wrote about me.”
“Does it bother you?”
Maybe if I’d been reading the current manuscript, detailing me right now, I’d be bothered, but these were stories of me at around age thirteen and kind of sweet. “I guess not.”
She nodded, dropping down in the armchair across from me. “You and Ethan looked cozy last night.”
“Yeah. He’s…” I looked out the porthole, two domes of blue cut through with a clear line. “It was nice.”
She cast me a slightly smug look. “He’s very cute.”
“We’re not—” I started, then faded away.
Cora lifted her brows. “Not?”
“Nothing,” I said, in a tone designed to flatten further inquisition.
“You’re not nothing.” She looked far too amused. “Got it.”
I cleared my throat. “Are you liking the trip?”
“I am.” She picked up the book, which I’d placed on the table between us, and flipped through it. She paused on Dad’s author photo on the back flap. We’d pored over options from the photo shoot he’d done with the art teacher at the high school and settled on one where he half smiled. Well,Isettled and Dad indulged me. He’d wanted a serious, no-smiling photo, but I’d insisted on this one.
“It’s funny, though,” Cora continued, in one of those trying-to-sound-casual-but-not-feeling-casual voices. “I’m pretty sure everyone thinks I’m here because your dad and I are dating.”
My gaze whipped toward her. “Really?”
