She's Up to No Good(77)

“Either we’ll see a tail or spray from a blowhole. Sometimes they jump.”

“We came all this way, and we might see some water spray up?”

“If we see that, we’ll see tails, too, probably.”

“And we just watch the water?”

“We just watch the water.”

I scrunched up my nose. “Okay, I get why you didn’t want to do this.”

“Who says I didn’t want to do it?”

“You said it was touristy.”

“It is—if you go out on one of those cruises. This is two people enjoying a nice morning on a sailboat.”

“You’re not bored?”

He looked at me, and I almost changed my mind about what I was willing to do this soon. “I’m not bored.”

I was in over my head. I looked back at the water because if I kept looking at him, things were going to happen. And I saw a fin. I grabbed Joe’s arm. “Is—is that a shark?”

He followed my gaze and laughed. “No. Dolphin.”

“How do you know?”

“Dolphins swim up and down so their fins bob. The fins are also curved. And they travel in pods.” He followed the line behind the dolphin’s fin and pointed toward a dozen or more tiny fins bobbing farther away but heading in our direction. “They like boats. They might stick around for a while.”

I looked down in wonder as it swam alongside us, clearly visible in the water next to the boat. It surfaced, looking at me as it swam along, Joe at my side. “Did you see that?” I asked, whacking his arm repeatedly. “The dolphin looked at me!”

“They’re very smart.” He grabbed his backpack and pulled out his camera.

“Yes! Get a picture of this!” I glanced at him, but the camera was pointed at me, not the water. “Not me! Get the dolphin!”

The rest of the pod joined us, splashing around the boat, one of them even jumping as Joe lowered the sail so we could watch them longer. I had seen dolphins at the National Aquarium when they still did shows, but never anything like this. They stayed with us for about half an hour, then, as if on some command we couldn’t understand, they turned and left us.

“That was incredible.” I collapsed into my seat next to Joe. “How do you not just want to take a boat out every day and see that?” He was looking at me. “What?”

“I’m used to it.” He paused. “It’s better seeing it through your eyes.”

“Going to put another picture up in the gallery?”

“I might.”

“Of me or a dolphin?”

“You’ll have to wait and see.”

I elbowed him, and he pulled me in and kissed me. Slowly, like he had all the time in the world.

When we surfaced, he brushed a windblown piece of hair from my face. “Let’s go find you a whale.”

I smiled broadly at his back as he went to raise the sail and resume our course.

When a whale eventually flipped its tail at us from a distance and spouted some water an hour later, it was almost anticlimactic after what we’d already seen. But even if it lacked the sheer joy of the dolphins, I felt a deep sense of satisfaction at that huge tail. Because it was my choice to come out on the ocean and see it. And I had spoken up, said what I wanted, and made it happen. It had been a long time since I was whole enough to do that.

On the way back to town, I let Joe teach me how to steer, him standing behind me as he showed me how to maneuver. When he finished instructing and told me to do it myself, I remembered nothing but the feel of his arms around me and joked that I just wanted to go do the Titanic pose at the front of the boat.

“We could.”

“But who would take our picture?”

“No one. You’d have to live with the knowledge that it happened without anyone seeing it on Instagram.”

“What’s the point of bringing a professional photographer everywhere with me, then?”

He kissed the side of my neck, and I felt a shiver run down my back. “Do you want to be king of the world or not?” he asked close to my ear.

I turned around in his arms. “I’m good right here.” And that time I kissed him, my arms around his neck, his at my waist, our bodies pressed together against the motion of the boat.

“Have dinner with me tonight,” he said, pulling out of the kiss.

“With your mother and my grandmother? So much for romance.”

“I think it’s extremely romantic. I want you to meet my mom. And have Portuguese food. And spend time with me.”

Even though I had no desire to spend time with my grandmother and Joe together now that we were—well—whatever it was that we were and was somewhat terrified to meet his mother, I found myself agreeing.





CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE


August 1951


Hereford, Massachusetts


Evelyn sent four letters to Tony in the weeks after seeing him. The first angry and tearstained. The second pleading with him. The third reasoning. And the fourth calling him a coward. She walked defiantly past her family to hand them directly to the mailman, then waited on the porch each day for the mailman to return, not trusting her family to give her Tony’s reply.

No reply came.

For one more week after the final letter, she wallowed. Refusing meals, dropping weight she didn’t have to spare, replacing food with cigarettes that Miriam protested only once before falling silent when she saw the haunted look in her daughter’s eyes.