The Unsinkable Greta James(78)

“I guess,” she says flatly. “It’s just…kind of weird.”

“Asher told me you’ve been having a hard time,” he admits. “That’s why he thought this trip would be a good idea.”

Greta frowns. “For who?”

“For you,” he says as if this should be obvious. “He thought it might help if you came along.”

“Right,” she says. “Help you.”

Conrad looks confused. “No, help you. Why would it be to help me?”

“Because you were supposed to be here with Mom,” Greta says, feeling like she’s fallen into some sort of alternate reality. “It would’ve been too sad for you to come by yourself.”

“I wouldn’t have been alone,” he says slowly, as if explaining something to a very small child. “I would’ve had the Fosters and the Blooms.”

Greta throws up her hands. “That’s what I said!”

“To who?”

“It’s what I said to Asher when he asked me to come on this trip to keep you company.”

“He told you to come here to help me?” Conrad asks, and Greta nods, relieved that they’re finally on the same page. “And he told me that it would help you?”

“Pretty much.”

Conrad sits with this a moment. “Wow.”

“Yeah. He basically Parent Trapped us. On a boat.”

“It’s a ship.”

“Oh my god. Who cares?” Greta says, tipping her head back with a groan. “Why is everyone so concerned about this? Are you worried I’m going to hurt the ship’s feelings?” She searches for her phone. “What time is it anyway?”

Conrad checks his watch. “Twelve-thirty.”

“Great,” she says, looking around for a waiter. “Because I could really use a drink too.”

When she turns around again, he’s laughing at her.

“What?”

“Nothing,” he says with a grin. “I just…I don’t mind that he tricked us.”

Later, Greta will give Asher all sorts of grief for this. She’ll call him a puppet master. She’ll tell him he owes her. But right at this moment, and much to her surprise, she has to admit that she doesn’t mind either.





Chapter Thirty-One


Before the variety show, they go for a drink at the Starboard Saloon, and Greta spots a stray pack of cards on one of the tables.

“Let’s see what you got, Houdini,” she says, sliding them over to Conrad as they sit down. He shakes the cards from the box, looking handsome and relaxed in his shirt and tie.

“It’s been a while,” he says as he begins to shuffle, but then he fans out the deck with businesslike precision, nodding at the cards in his hands. “Pick one.”

She does. “Now what?”

“Now you give it back,” he says. “But don’t tell me what it is.”

He’s got this funny little half-smile on his face as he starts to shuffle again, like maybe he’s enjoying himself. But then he loses it mid-bridge and the cards go flying everywhere. Greta slides off the chair to start picking them up, while Conrad sits there, surveying the mess.

“I think I’m too old for this.”

“You’re not,” she says, lifting her head.

He studies his hands. “Well, I feel ancient.”

Greta stops what she’s doing. “This doesn’t only have to be an ending, you know. It could be a new beginning too.”

He shakes his head, his expression sober. “I don’t want a new beginning.”

“I’m afraid you don’t have a choice,” she says softly as she sweeps the cards from the floor. When she looks over again, his expression is vacant. He sets down the queen of hearts and stares at it for a while.

“We were in the middle of a puzzle,” he says, and Greta sits back on her heels to listen. “It’s been on the dining room table ever since. We hadn’t done very much. It’s a hard one. A thousand pieces. But now—now it’s like I can’t stand working on it without her, but I also can’t bear to put it away.”

Greta slides back into her chair. “Dad,” she says, and her voice breaks on the word; all at once, it feels like more than that is breaking too. She thinks of the ice cleaving off the glacier, pictures something inside her falling away. “I should’ve come home.”

“What?”

“When you called.”

Something snaps into place behind his eyes. “You didn’t know. No one did.”

“I wish I would’ve been there.” She rests her elbows on her knees, her forehead in her hands. “I’d give anything to go back and redo it. I’d give anything to rewind so I could get on the first plane out of there and make it home in time.”

She’s crying now, and Conrad—so unaccustomed to this, so out of practice—half-stands as if to comfort her. But then he sits down again, lowering his eyes. A waiter comes around with a bowl of peanuts, which he sets in the center of the card-strewn table, then leaves again in a hurry.

“I stayed,” Greta says quietly, “so I could play the fucking guitar. Like that even matters.”