The Unsinkable Greta James(24)

Both women laugh. “No, no,” Mary says. “A veterinarian. She treated his puppy, which is how they met.”

“He has a puppy?” Greta says, picturing the white carpets in his sleek high-rise apartment. “Since when?”

Mary frowns. “Maybe a year or so?”

“Don’t you two ever see each other?” Eleanor asks. “The Big Apple can’t be that big.”

“Bigger than you think,” Greta says morosely.

Davis and Todd return then, plates heaped with pancakes. They make an odd pair: Todd, skinny and pale and so like a stereotype of an insurance adjuster that it’s almost weird that he is one, and Davis, broad-shouldered and athletic, with a personality even bigger than his stature.

“Hey, kid,” Davis says as he slides awkwardly into a too-small chair. “Heard your dad spent the night getting acquainted with the bathroom floor.”

“You talked to him?”

He nods as he pours syrup over his pancakes. “He’s in rough shape.”

“He didn’t sound that bad last night. Just annoyed.”

“Well, he’s that too,” Davis says. “But he’ll be fine.”

“We decided it wasn’t the food,” Eleanor says, watching carefully as Todd shoves a forkful of eggs into his mouth, “since the rest of us are still okay.”

“He probably picked up some sort of bug before we got on,” Mary agrees. “Hopefully it’ll be quick.”

Underneath the table, Greta sends him a quick text: Doing okay?

Conrad replies immediately with a deeply sarcastic super.

“You taking his spot today?” Davis asks, and Greta looks up again. “We’re gonna watch them stuff some salmon into a can.”

“Then they’re gonna hoist us up Mount Roberts,” Todd says, pushing a brochure across the table to Greta. It shows a red box of a tram strung up on a cable, rising steeply up the side of a tree-covered mountain. “I’m hoping we might spot a sooty grouse up there.”

“That sounds like a drink,” Eleanor says. “Some sort of wintry cocktail.”

“I think it’s a whisky,” Davis offers.

Mary shakes her head. “That’s Famous Grouse.”

“Who says the sooty grouse isn’t also famous?” Eleanor asks with a grin, and Todd rolls his eyes at all of them.

“It is,” he says. “At least in the Pacific Coast Ranges.”

Greta is busy examining the pictures of the tram. She doesn’t know if she can spend the whole day with them. Not just because Davis will be asking the tour guide a thousand questions and Mary will be trying to make Greta feel included and Eleanor will be forcing them all to take silly group photos at the top and Todd will be wandering around making bird noises.

It’s because they were supposed to be doing all this with her mom.

Mary seems to read her mind. “No pressure at all,” she says. “We have an extra spot on the one-twenty tender if you’re interested.” She nudges a different brochure in her direction. “But if not, you definitely won’t be bored in Juneau.”

“Thanks,” Greta says with a grateful smile, taking it with her as she heads over to the buffet.

While waiting in line for an omelet, she leafs through the various tour options: whale watching and helicopter rides and dogsledding. When she flips to a photo of the Mendenhall Glacier, white and craggy and hulking, she realizes she’s seen it before: on her mother’s calendar back in Ohio.

She glances up again, her heart fluttering.

Over the heads of the other diners, the windows are specked with rain, everything beyond wreathed in haze. She looks back down at the picture. It’s impossible to grasp the scope of the thing; she knows it must be huge, but in the photo, it looks like nothing more than a patch of snow caught between two mountains.

Still, all at once, she’s desperate to see it.





Chapter Eleven


Even once she’s standing on the wooden slats of the boardwalk, Greta can still feel the waves beneath her feet. This is the first time in two days she’s been on solid ground. The air smells of damp pine needles and the promise of rain, and a low fog hangs over the port of Juneau, a smattering of brightly colored clapboard shops and restaurants with a steep mountain rising into the mist behind them. She zips her waterproof jacket, another one taken from her mom’s closet. Conrad had unceremoniously handed them both to her when they’d met at the airport that first morning in Vancouver, assuming—correctly—that she hadn’t packed properly for a trip like this.

She turns in a small circle, trying to figure out what’s next. Around her, other passengers walk with purpose, clutching tickets and itineraries, eager to begin their adventures. She spots a row of small wooden stalls, each one with a sign for a different activity: mountain biking, helicopter rides, float planes. There’s one that says MENDENHALL GLACIER, and she walks over. The guy in the window—who has blond dreads and a bored expression—looks up from his phone. “Bike, dogsled, or kayak?”

She shakes her head. “I just want to see the glacier.”

“Right,” he says slowly. “By bike, dogsled, or kayak?”

She blinks at him. “Can’t I just…walk?”