The Shippers(82)

I gave him a little nod, like Tell her!

But he just gave me a tiny headshake, like Not necessary.

But it was necessary—right?

It’s one thing to not be show-offy about things—it’s quite another thing to not even mention them. How exactly was my mother supposed to appreciate him if she didn’t know what there was to appreciate?

This guy needed a PR team!

“Dad is being modest,” I said. “He didn’t just pick me up back in town … he rescued me. He saved me.”

That got everyone’s attention.

“Rescued you?” my mom said.

Just as Ashley said, “Saved you?”

Did we need to get into the whole menaced by Pork Pie situation? No. Those vibes were too creepy to make the conversation-topic cut for the best week of my sister’s life. Pork Pie was not worthy of our attention today. We could process all that later—if ever.

But the topic of how great my dad was?

That, we needed to process right now.

“I got myself locked into a lighthouse,” I explained.

My mother sighed, like this was really not the week for shenanigans of that nature.

“An abandoned lighthouse,” I added, trying to capture my desperation, “out at the end of a peninsula, with nobody around.” I was trying to cherry-pick my details without actually lying about anything, and I decided it was fair to classify Pork Pie as “nobody.” I glanced at my dad to see if he caught the Homeric reference, but he was studying the ground, like he really, truly was uncomfortable getting any credit for anything.

Huh. Had he always been this way?

I went on. “I was locked in, and then I accidentally shattered my phone, and I really, really thought nobody would ever find me and I would just have to die there. Right? How would anyone ever even think to find me? I thought I would just slowly starve to death, like a lizard in a sunroom.”

I took a step closer to my dad, and then I put my arm around his shoulders like we were BFFs.

“But this guy figured it out,” I continued, “like a total hero—and he came to my rescue.”

I wasn’t even exaggerating.

“He noticed I wasn’t back yet, and he couldn’t get in touch with me, so he went ashore to check in with the tailor, learned that she’d texted me the dress was ready but never heard back, did some stalking on his phone to figure out my last known location, showed up there, got me out—and then brought me and the wedding dress back here just in the nick of time. All without a wrinkle!”

It occurred to me as I said it that it might not technically be true. That dress had hit the ground pretty hard when I knocked my dad over. And I was feeling a little wrinkled myself, to be honest.

But the point remained.

My mom was taking it all in, frowning. “And the limp?” she asked.

“I was so overjoyed to be rescued,” I said, “that I tackled Dad with a hug—and knocked him right over.”

My mother looked back and forth between us. “You hugged your dad?”

I nodded.

“So hard that you knocked him over?”

I shrugged and said, “Yeah,” like Of course. Like we all tackled Dad with hugs all the time.

My mom looked at my dad.

He shrugged, too.

But she was impressed. I could tell.

That’s when Cooper got paged again, and we all paused at the sound of his name. “Is Cooper not back yet?” my mom asked.

“Sounds like maybe not?” I said.

“Well, where is he?” my mom demanded of me, like he was being naughty and I had to account for it.

“I really don’t know.”

“You always know everything about Cooper,” my mother said.

Not everything. Not always. “He might not be coming back to the ship,” I said, thinking my mom probably didn’t need to be actively worrying about Cooper on top of everything else. Then I said, “He might have missed the boat on purpose.”

“On purpose?” my mother asked.

I sighed. Time to say it. “This morning, he said he was quitting.”

“‘Quitting’? Quitting what?”

Quitting me, I supposed? The idea squeezed my heart. “Leaving the ship,” I clarified. “And going back to London. Today. That was the last thing he said to me.”

“How’s he going to get there?” my mom demanded. “Swim?”

“He said he’d figure it out.”

My mom was so baffled, but as she turned it all over in her mind, she started to suspect it was my fault. “Okay,” she said, putting a hand on her hip. “What did you do to him?”

“Nothing!” I said. “We just had a—misunderstanding.”

Sheesh. If that wasn’t the understatement of the year.

My mother tilted her head. “A ‘misunderstanding’ that made him want to leave the ship?”

“I guess, technically,” I said, “it was more like a fight.”

“What were you fighting about?”

Where to begin? “I don’t know. Just—the usual.”

Just then, the ship blew its horn, and we all looked around to notice we were moving. The dock was sliding away past us.

I ran to the railing. “Are we setting sail?”