The Unsinkable Greta James(55)

When it’s his turn, he stands there for a long time, his head bowed as if in prayer. Behind him, Greta quietly says a prayer of her own: “I love you, I love you, I love you.”

This, too, is carried off by the wind.

Afterward, Conrad tucks the empty bag into his pocket and wipes a sleeve roughly across his face. Down by the canoes, Bear is shouting for them, his voice faint. But they take their time anyway. About halfway there, Greta is seized by a sudden impulse. She loops an arm through her dad’s, and he stiffens for a moment, then relaxes. So they walk the rest of the way like that.

They’ve barely left the banks of the river, the glacier already starting to recede, when Greta feels a drag on the canoe. She turns to see Bear with his oar braced in the water, his eyes on a line of spruce trees. “Shh,” he says, though none of them are speaking. He half-stands, the canoe tilting beneath him, and the rest of them lift their dripping paddles, trying to follow his gaze. One of the men passes over a pair of binoculars, and Bear lets out a soft laugh as he looks through them.

“Holy shit,” he says. “I heard there was a Steller’s sea eagle spotted in Juneau last month. He must’ve made his way up here.”

“A what?” says the woman with the compass.

Bear hands the binoculars to her. “A Steller’s sea eagle. They’re incredibly rare. Especially around here. This one is a vagrant.”

“A vagrant?” the husband asks. “What does that mean?”

The binoculars reach Conrad, and Greta watches as he lifts them to his eyes, scanning the trees. She can tell when he’s spotted the bird by the way his whole body goes still.

“Just that it’s way off course,” Bear explains. “They’re usually only found in Asia.”

“Wow,” says one of the other men. “So what’s it doing all the way over here?”

Conrad hands Greta the binoculars, which are heavier than they look. When she peers through them, the world skids madly before righting itself. She searches the feathery tops of the trees until she sees a pop of orange: the great curved beak of the bird, which looks enormous in a way that has nothing to do with magnification. It’s huge and black with white-tipped wings, and it sits placidly in the branches, its beady eyes alert, its head moving mechanically back and forth.

“Well, that’s just it,” Bear is saying. “We don’t know. But legend has it that these birds are messengers from the land of the dead, returning to visit their loved ones.”

Greta lowers the binoculars and turns to Conrad, her heart beating fast. He’s looking at her in disbelief, his face suddenly pale. For a moment, the canoe spins slowly in the water, everything so quiet it almost feels loud. And then Bear begins to laugh.

“No, I’m just messing with you,” he says with a grin. “It probably got lost. Or blown off course in a storm.”

All the tension floods back out of Greta. She wants to laugh along with the others, but she can’t. When she looks back at her dad, he gives her a slightly embarrassed smile, and it makes her feel less alone, imagining that he believed it too, even though they both know better, even though they both understand that it’s far easier to get lost than to reach across such impossible distances.

Later, they’re returned to the cruise ship, and Greta follows Conrad back up the long ramp in silence. It’s the same silence they’ve been carrying between them for hours now, from the canoe to the hike to the picnic area—where they ate their strawberries wordlessly, both thinking of Helen—then back to the bus, which got stuck in the mud halfway down the mountain, so that they all had to climb out and collect sticks to shove under the wheels, watching them spin uselessly until something finally caught, and the bus gave a little buck, fishtailing a few feet down the road before coming to a stop so they could all pile on again.

It’s a complicated silence. But not an unpleasant one.

Back on the ship, they pause at the elevators to look at each other. Greta can think of nothing to say, not after all that. Neither can Conrad, apparently. When the elevator arrives, he steps on, reaching out to hold the door for Greta. But she gestures toward the hallway.

“I think I need a walk,” she says.

He nods. “I’ll see you tomorrow then.”

“What about dinner?”

“I’m sure you’ve had enough of me today.”

Greta laughs. “Does that mean you’ve had enough of me?”

“It means we survived the wilderness safari,” he says with a hint of amusement. “Which was not necessarily a given.”

And with that, he lets his hand slip and the doors close between them.

Greta stands there for a long time in her muddy sneakers, sunburned and bone-tired and restless. Her reflection in the silver doors of the elevator—blurred and distorted as if in a fun house mirror—looks alarmingly close to how she feels right now.

She still hasn’t moved when there’s another ding and the doors slide open to reveal Todd Bloom in a blue rain jacket, his curly gray hair tousled from the wind.

“Oh,” he says with mild surprise. “Hi. I didn’t know you guys were back.”

Greta steps aside so he can get off the elevator. “Just.”

“Was it good?”

“It was,” she says, thinking that she wouldn’t be able to explain it any better if she tried. “How was fishing?”