The Unsinkable Greta James(8)

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean to—”

“It’s fine.”

The song ends, and there’s a smattering of applause from the diners. Conrad clears his throat. “We were never great without her, huh?”

“No,” she says. “We weren’t.”

“It’s even harder now.”

She nods, surprised by how quickly her eyes have welled up.

But it’s true. Everything’s harder now.

“I’m glad you came on this trip, though,” he says, and in spite of herself, Greta laughs. Conrad tilts his head to one side. “What?”

“I was literally just thinking that I shouldn’t have come.”

“Well,” he says with a shrug, “I’m glad you did.”

“Are you?” she asks, looking at him carefully, but then the Fosters and the Blooms return to the table, still laughing from their adventures on the dance floor, and the waiter arrives with their salads, and the sky outside darkens another shade, and the ship sails on into the night, and it isn’t until later that Greta realizes he never actually answered the question.





Chapter Five


After dinner, Greta returns to her room, where she sits cross-legged on the bed, her guitar balanced on her knees. The others have gone to try their luck at the casino, but the thought of all those chiming slot machines is too much for her at the end of a day like today.

She holds a pick between her lips as she tunes the old wooden Martin. She rarely travels with this one; it’s bulkier than the lean electric guitars she mainly uses when she performs. But she’s had it forever, and there’s a comfort to it, like a worn book, well used and well loved. She bought it in college, scraping together tips from her waitressing job at the local Olive Garden, every basket of breadsticks inching her closer. And though she now has literally dozens of guitars—most of them slim and sleek and powerful, more acrobatic and explosive in sound—she still finds herself reaching for this one often, each note vibrating through her like a memory.

She plays a single chord, the sound bright as a match in the small confines of the cabin. Then a few more, until she realizes she’s veered into the beginning of “Astronomy.” She lifts her hands abruptly, as if she’s touched something hot, and the silence rushes back in like the tide.

It’s more specter than song at this point. She’d started writing it on the flight back from Germany, still reeling from the news about her mom’s aneurysm. She tried to sleep, but couldn’t. She tried to drink, but her hands were shaking too badly. Out the window, the sky was completely black, and the absence of stars felt ominous. Her stomach churned.

She closed her eyes and thought about the glow-in-the-dark stars on her bedroom ceiling back home, the way her mom used to point up at them after reading her a story. The memory felt hopeful somehow, and she pulled out her notebook and began to write, trying to push back the darkness with each line, her own kind of prayer.

By the time the Atlantic was behind her, she had a full page of lyrics and the ghost of a melody. It was a song about charting your course and finding your way, but it was really—like all songs—about something more personal than that, about lying in bed with her mom when she was little, talking and dreaming and telling stories beneath those glow-in-the-dark stars.

It wasn’t finished. But it had felt like the start of something.

She just didn’t yet know what.

This time, when she begins to play, she’s more deliberate. She picks out the opening notes of “Prologue,” the first single off her upcoming album, the song she’s meant to debut at Governors Ball next weekend. It’s an entirely different sort of tune, fast-paced and full of heat, and even on an acoustic guitar, it fills the room.

She knows this is the way back, this song. It’s her chance at redemption. But already it feels like a relic, something she wrote in a different lifetime, when her mom was still alive and Greta was still full of confidence.

There’s a knock on the wall to her left, and she goes silent. She waits a few seconds before trying again, softly this time. But the next knock is more insistent. With a sigh, Greta sets the guitar on the bed beside her, grabs her mother’s fleece from the hook on the back of the door, and steps out into the hallway, suddenly desperate for air.

Outside, the night is still suspended in twilight, everything misty and gray. Greta walks along the promenade deck until she finds a quiet spot. She leans out, her eyes watering from the wind. Far below, the ship kicks up a white froth, and the waves ripple out until they get lost in the fog. Tomorrow, they’ll spend the whole day on this boat, stuck at sea until they reach Juneau the following morning. It feels like a long time to wait.

“All I keep thinking about is the Titanic,” someone says, and she glances down the railing to see the typewriter guy again. He’s wearing a waterproof jacket, trim and green with a hood, and his brown hair is mussed from the wind.

“The ship or the movie?”

“Does it matter?” he asks with a smile. “Neither ended particularly well.”

They’re both quiet, peering out at the deepening sky. Greta is about to push off the rail and head inside when he looks her way again.

“This is kind of weird, isn’t it?”

“What?”