The Shippers(21)

“What does that mean?” my dad asked.

But my mom didn’t answer.

“What are you saying?” my dad pressed.

“I guess I’m saying,” my mother said, her voice so calm it was almost spooky, “that I want a divorce.”

Wow …

Wow.

A divorce?

I mean, there were many—many—things about my parents’ marriage that could be improved. But a divorce?

After all this time?

They just had their thirtieth wedding anniversary!

After she said the word divorce, my dad panicked and begged her to reconsider, but I could already call it.

My mom had made her decision.

“Don’t tell me I don’t love you,” my dad said.

My mom sighed. “I’m just really not sure,” she said, “if you even know what love is.”

After a while, my parents got quiet. So quiet, for so long, I couldn’t stop myself from tiptoeing down—skipping the squeaky step—and peeking into the kitchen.

My dad was in a kitchen chair, his arms clutching my mom’s waist.

She was tolerating it, and absently patting his head, and staring off into the middle distance like she was still trying to absorb the conversation they’d just had.

“It’s for the best, Raleigh. I really think it is.”

In a thousand years, I never, ever would’ve imagined my parents getting a divorce. This was the life they’d built for themselves. This was what they’d agreed to. It wasn’t gonna win any prizes, but they were okay. They were fine. They’d been fine for years.

Except, I guess, maybe they weren’t.

Maybe, deep down, my mom had been seething. Or, short of that, maybe just lonely.

That was enough of a reason, wasn’t it?

He really was always working. It was the only thing he liked to do. He didn’t have hobbies. Or friends. Or areas of interest.

Those things were my mom’s.

She maintained their social circle, and sent the Christmas cards, and made dinner, and confirmed doctor’s appointments, and brought fresh flowers home from the grocery store. All the mortar that held everything together? That was her.

But I’d always thought that she liked doing that stuff.

Maybe it was more complicated than that.

My first thought was for my mom: What would the dating pool be like for a fifty-seven-year-old lady? The pickings had to be slim. She might not ever find anyone else.

But my second thought was even worse. How, exactly, would my dad even survive without my mom? He was sixty—and his own dad had lived to ninety. What on earth would he do with himself without my mother for the next thirty years? It was inconceivable.

A post-divorce montage for him flipped through my head: my dad in a sad, pre-furnished apartment, eating microwave dinners and drinking stale coffee, forgetting to open the curtains. All the invisible, unappreciated things my mother did that lifted up his life, gone.

That was bleak.

Without a man, my mom would still have Grandma Dodie, and good friends, and great food, and laughter, and her kids, and cozy mysteries to read, and her flower garden, and places to visit.

Without my mom, my dad would have … stale coffee.

God.

He’d wither away.

He’d forget to recycle his newspapers and become a hoarder, and stack them to the ceiling in every room—and eventually die by suffocation in his recliner when they finally avalanched down on top of him.

It was a lot to take in.

My mom concluded the talk by telling my dad not to tell anyone about this until after Ashley’s wedding.

“Let’s get through the wedding,” my mom said, “and then we’ll tell the kids.”

But my dad’s brain was still churning. “If I can change your mind on this cruise,” he asked then, “will you change your mind?”

My mother sighed. “I wouldn’t bet on it.”

“One week.” My dad nodded, like he was forming a plan.

“You’ve had thirty years so far,” my mother said, “so I wouldn’t get your hopes up.”



* * *



I COULDN’T, OF course, tell Ashley about any of this. And I couldn’t tell Pete, either, because he had no filter.

In the end, I just had to keep it to myself and wonder over and over if my mom had just made things better or worse.

Meanwhile, life was still happening, whether we liked it or not.

I still had a cruise to get through, and a childhood crush to conquer, and more than enough problems to solve.

I did go to Ashley’s hairdresser, and I did get a blowout. I did pack more of Ashley’s sexy clothes into my suitcase than comfortable ones of my own. I did practice walking in heels, and I did research seduction tips for ordinary people in the wee hours of the internet, and I did get my toenails painted hot pink.

For luck.

I worked out the exact number of hours we’d be on the ship together to try to nail down my time frame. I color-coded the activities schedule with highlighters. I even read a book called How to Make a Man Fall in Love with You and then made a spreadsheet from key points—with a tentative conquest schedule that included to-do items like “ask him about his job,” “prioritize moonlight,” and “eye contact, eye contact, eye contact.”