“Yes,” he says. “We’re very proud.”
Which is a double lie. He’s not. And there’s no we anymore.
Chapter Three
The room is so tiny, she can sit on the edge of her bed and touch the wall. But Greta doesn’t mind. She’s spent the last fourteen years in New York City, where space is a luxury, so she’s well versed in the art of living compactly. The bigger problem is the absence of any windows. By the time she booked the trip, all that was left were interior cabins. So while Conrad’s room has big glass doors that open onto a veranda, Greta’s looks more like something out of a minimum-security prison: small and beige and just barely functional.
Seven nights, she thinks. Only seven nights.
She sets her guitar on the bed beside a thick black binder. Inside, there’s a day-by-day itinerary of the trip. They’ll be at sea for the rest of tonight and tomorrow, cruising the Inside Passage （the inside of what, she has no idea）; after that, they’ll travel on to Juneau, Glacier Bay, Haines, Icy Strait Point, and then spend another full day at sea as they return to Vancouver.
There are separate laminated pages for each port of call, filled with recommended tours, lists of restaurants, suggested hikes, and points of interest. There’s also a fairly ridiculous amount of information about the ship itself: floor plans and menus, instructions for making spa appointments, detailed descriptions of each club and bar, every lecture and game night. You could spend an entire week deciding how to fill your week.
Greta snaps the binder shut. It won’t be long now until the ship sets sail, and she doesn’t want to be burrowed inside it like a mole when it does. If she’s actually going on this trip—which it would seem, at this point, that she is—she’d at least like to witness the beginning of it.
After all, that’s what her mom would have done.
Outside, there are a few people bundled on Adirondack chairs beneath the low Vancouver sky, but most are dotted around the edges of the ship, peering either out at the city or at the hunched gray mountains that loom across the water from it. She finds a spot between an elderly couple and a group of middle-aged women in matching pink sweatshirts that say Fifty Is the New F-Word. They’re laughing as they pass around a flask.
Greta leans on the rail and pulls in a deep breath. The harbor smells of brine and fish, and far below, dozens of tiny figures are waving up at them madly, as if they’re about to set off on a dangerous voyage instead of an eight-day all-inclusive cruise with four buffets and a water slide.
A few birds circle above, and the breeze is heavy with salt. Greta closes her eyes for a minute, and when she opens them again, she can sense someone staring at her. She turns to see a girl—probably no more than twelve or thirteen—standing a few feet down the rail. She has light-brown skin and black hair, and she’s staring at Greta with a very specific kind of intensity.
“Hi,” Greta says, and the girl widens her eyes, caught somewhere between excitement and embarrassment. She’s wearing pink Converse sneakers and skinny jeans with holes in the knees.
“Are you…Greta James?” she asks, her voice full of uncertainty.
Greta raises her eyebrows, amused. “I am.”
“I knew it.” The girl lets out a surprised laugh. “Wow. This is so cool. And so weird. I can’t believe you’re on this cruise.”
“Honestly,” Greta says, “neither can I.”
“I’m obsessed with your album. And I saw your show in Berkeley last year,” she says, the words tumbling out in a rush. “Dude, you can shred. I’ve never seen a girl play like that before.”
This makes Greta smile. She hadn’t been expecting much overlap in the Venn diagram of people who go on Alaskan cruises and people who go to her shows. She fills good-sized venues and her songs are played on the radio and she has fans all over the world; she’s even been on the cover of a few music magazines. But she’s rarely recognized on the street outside of New York or L.A. And hardly ever by anyone this young.
“Do you play?” she asks the girl, who nods enthusiastically. There’s no sheepishness about it, no modesty: the answer is simply yes. She plays.
Greta remembers being that age, already full of confidence as she started to realize that a guitar was more than just a toy, more than even just an instrument. Already, she knew it was a portal, and that she was talented enough for it to take her somewhere.
Her dad was the one who’d bought that first guitar. Greta was only eight; it was supposed to be for Asher, who was twelve, but even then he had little interest in anything but football. It was acoustic and secondhand and much too big for her; it would be years before she’d grow into it. Some nights, when Conrad got home from work, he’d stand in the open mouth of the garage, the tip of his cigarette burning bright as he watched her try to work out the notes like a puzzle. When she landed on the right ones, he let the cigarette dangle from his lips while he clapped.