One of the advantages of Brittany being in the Brookview Residential Care Facility – which was a nice way of saying expensive private mental hospital – had been that she hadn’t been continually watching over him. For many years she’d spent most of her time looking for something to criticize, second-guessing every move he made, or whining at him about one thing or another that she thought he’d done wrong. It was nice to be away from that. Most especially she hadn’t been bitching about him letting Matt go sailing, and winding up with what she referred to – when she was being nice – as “that red-headed slut.” Brittany would never admit it, but Adam was sure that Mary was about ten times more woman than anything Brittany could have ever dreamed of being herself.

If there had been any question of the need to divorce Brittany, the last four months had proved it. Except for the sessions with Dr. Preble – not common – Adam had been totally free of that stuff, and it was like a new life had dawned right there. His blood pressure had dropped over thirty points in the process, which only underlined how bad things had been.

But he’d used his time wisely to get set up for this day arriving. Adam tended to be a planner, an organizer, and without her watching his every move he’d been able to get things set up right. While he’d had no idea how long she was going to be at the residential care facility, it had proved to be more than enough time for what he wanted to do. He’d moved what he needed out of the house and into a nearby apartment early on; he hadn’t even been over to the house in some weeks, except for this morning to turn the heat up, just as a courtesy thing. The apartment was on a year’s lease; he’d fitted it out with cheap furniture, some secondhand. In a year, possibly two, the worst of this would be over with, and he could make plans about doing something more permanent. That was in the future, an unknown, and not an item to concern him now.

As Adam drove his car from the office, he realized that his life for the next few months was going to have to be pretty low-key. Well, that was no problem; he was a low-key person anyway. He’d never been much of a person to make friends, and as Brittany’s temper had gotten worse over the years, he’d become increasingly reluctant to expose what friends he had to her. While he was friendly with a number of people at the company, his position as chief operating officer meant that he was reluctant to get too close to anyone who worked there.

But right now, it would feel good to sit down and have a beer or two with a friend, just to talk out his frustrations a little. But there was no one who was that good a friend, not anymore.

But there was one man he felt he needed to talk to, and who would understand. They weren’t exactly friends, but they shared a couple common bonds, the most important of which was that they’d shared Matt as a son. And they’d shared Brittany as being a pain in the neck.

While Adam had talked with Jake Lewis on the phone several times since Matt’s death, they hadn’t had a face-to-face meeting since Boston. Now might be the best time to square things away there, too. Besides, if he were going to be out of touch for a few days, it would be a good place to actually be out of touch.

In only a few minutes, Adam pulled into the covered parking space at the apartment; he’d chosen it because it was close to his office at Caldwell-Deerfield Manufacturing. That was a huge improvement over the long drive across several Detroit suburbs to the pretentious house Brittany had petulantly insisted upon back when Matt had been in high school, not ten years before. His apartment was in a low, townhouse affair, unobtrusive and anonymous. In the quiet of his new home, Adam dialed a number that had been in his memory for a good many years, the number for the Winchester Harbor Channel Stop, many miles to the north.

“So how are things in Winchester Harbor today?” Adam asked Jake when he answered.

“About the same,” Jake replied. “Spitting some snow, cold enough that the harbor might skim up with ice if the wind were to die down. So what’s happening with you today?”

“Long story, but the key point is that they let Brittany out of the funny farm today, and I had her served with the divorce papers as soon as she got home.”

“I’ll bet she didn’t like that.”

“You’d bet correctly,” Adam smiled. “I’m sort of thinking I need to lie a little low for a while, and I’d like to talk to you anyway. Have you got a motel room free?”

“They’re all free, except for the one Amanda is living in. If you want to come up, I’ll go run up the heat in one for you.”

“I’d appreciate it. There’s no way I can be up there before dark, but I’ll be on the road in a few minutes.”

“Take your time,” Jake told him. “No rush on my account. It’ll be good to see you again, Adam.”

“Same here. See you in a while.”

It didn’t take long to pack enough clothes and things to last him for several days. No suits, no ties, but most of the warm casual clothes he owned. Comfortable clothes, in other words; that represented another problem to be solved, but one that wasn’t as imperative as getting the Brittany issue under control. First things first.

In only a few minutes he was out on the Interstate. Traffic was mild right now but would be picking up shortly; still, he ought to be ahead of rush hour.

Mostly, he was thinking about Jake. If Brittany hadn’t made things so uncomfortable, he’d often thought that Jake would make a fine friend, but as it was, things had often been awkward. Still, they’d often worked together for Matt, against Brittany. It had been Jake who had helped spirit Matt out of his hospital room and onto his boat, the Mary Sue, back in August; Adam’s part in the deal had been to keep Brittany from knowing what was going on. He hadn’t breathed a word to Brittany about either his or Jake’s involvement in that, and didn’t plan on it, but Jake had done a big service in helping their son die in peace, the way he wanted to.

And it was a case of their son – his and Jake’s. Technically speaking, Jake was Matt’s birth father, a fact none of them had been aware of until the surprise of neither he nor Brittany testing right for a bone marrow transplant back when Matt had been dying in University Hospital, half of Matt’s all too brief lifetime before. Adam had known that Brittany had spent the night with Jake back before he’d started going with her; it was something rarely talked about around the Caldwell house. But Adam had surmised that Jake might possibly be the solution to keeping Matt alive, and so it had proved.

But Jake had donated more than his bone marrow to Matt; he’d donated care and devotion – and room to grow away from Brittany. Jake had always been “Uncle Jake” to Matt, although he’d known soon after he’d started to get better what really had happened. For months, Jake had spent a couple days a week at the hospital with Matt, at first reading to him, then bringing him books, telling him stories, and just being friends. Jake was a charter fishing boat captain and had managed to infect Matt with a love of boating, something that led directly to Matt’s voyaging.

The summer when Matt was fourteen and mostly recovered from the leukemia, he was extremely bored with sitting around the house, without any friends, and with nothing to do. It was hard on Brittany, too, and when Matt had suggested he’d like to see Uncle Jake again, she realized she needed the break, and agreed. It had only been intended to be for a couple weeks, but Matt wound up staying the rest of the summer.

That summer had been good for Matt in so many ways it wasn’t funny. Jake hadn’t seen Matt as a weak little kid who needed pampering; he saw him as a boy who needed to grow, have some responsibilities, and have something useful to do – something Brittany could never see. As a result, Matt spent most of the summer working on the fuel dock at the Channel Stop, learning to be a short order cook in the snack bar, making up motel rooms, and being a helmsman and deckhand on the Lewis family charter fishing boats. When he’d finally come home in time for the start of school, he was so strong, tanned, and confident that Adam and Brittany hardly recognized him.

It had worked so well that there could be no denying him another summer, and another – clear up through the summer before his senior year at the University of Michigan. What Adam and Brittany hadn’t been told was that Jake had helped Matt buy the Mary Sue during his freshman year at college, and had helped him rebuild it, fit it out, and learn to sail it out of Winchester Harbor over the following summers.

When Matt surprised his father and mother by sailing away only days after he graduated from the university – well, it hadn’t been pretty. It was only after Matt showed up with Mary the following fall that Jake was replaced by someone else as the top spot on Brittany’s most-reviled list. Adam respected Jake a good deal, even if it had to be done quietly; after all, Jake had been the one who had contributed to Matt’s becoming a man, rather than a spoiled mama’s boy. Adam had been unable to do much about that, and was immensely glad Jake had managed it despite Brittany’s interference.

So Adam felt he owed Jake a considerable debt of honor, quiet though it had to be. And besides, there were some things Jake needed to be brought up to speed on, especially the issues of today’s confrontation.

The afternoon wore on as Adam let the cruise control take him northward, thinking about things that might have been, and things that might be someday. At least there might be some of the latter now that the Brittany situation was finally being dealt with.

The Interstate couldn’t take Adam all the way to Winchester Harbor; eventually he had to get off the four-lane and follow two-lane local roads through the wind-driven spitting snow in the gathering December darkness. It wasn’t a route Adam had followed often, and not at all the last few years, but he knew it well enough that he didn’t have to wonder about where he was going. Finally he turned off the main road, went down a narrow lane that most people would think didn’t go much of anywhere, and pulled to a stop in the parking lot of the Channel Stop.

The house at one end of the motel was lit, both inside and out with colorful Christmas lights, although the Channel Stop and most of the motel rooms were dark. Adam wondered if maybe he ought to go over to the house, when the door opened and Jake came out. “Well, Adam,” Jake said. “You made it here quicker than I thought you would.”

“Nothing to stop for, so I just kept moving.”

“Have you had dinner yet?”

“No, and to tell you the truth, I haven’t felt much like eating.”

“Well, we haven’t eaten either,” Jake replied. “I told Rachel to hold dinner for you, since I figured you wouldn’t stop along the way. Let me help you with your bags.”

In a few minutes the couple of pieces of luggage Adam had brought with him were in the motel room, and Jake led him into the house.

It was a very small house – it would probably have come close to fitting in the living room of the house Brittany had forced on him, and that he’d despised as a result. Jake had told him long before that it was limited by the lot size and shape, but he and Rachel didn’t mind living in a small house. In years past Jake and Rachel had sometimes moved their kids into one of the motel rooms; Matt had spent his summers there living in one of them, granting him a degree of independence that would have been impossible for him to acquire at home. “Hi, Adam,” Rachel said from the kitchen as they came in. “How are you doing?”

“Hard to say. This has been a difficult day, but it’s good to see you again,” he said to the small, good-looking fortyish brunette who didn’t look even close to her age.

“Adam, I’m sorry I couldn’t make it to Boston last summer. I don’t know if I could have helped, but I felt like I ought to have been there. But it was right at the height of the season, and we really had to struggle to even get by without Jake for a few days.”

“That’s all right,” he replied. “As it turned out you didn’t miss much besides Brittany making a hell of a scene a few times. I never did get the chance to tell Matt goodbye the way I would have liked to, but I guess it worked out for the best.”

“Matt and I didn’t get to talk about it much either,” Jake reported quietly. “He wasn’t in the best of shape, but he really appreciated the help you gave him by keeping his mother off his back. That service, at that time, may have been the best way you could have said goodbye to him.”

“Well, I hope you’re right. It still burns my butt, though, and was part of the reason I knew things had to change.”

“Maybe you ought to think of it as his final gift to you. Are you handling it all right?”

“Pretty much, now,” Adam sighed. “I never really did get to cry for him, but now that some time has passed and today has happened, well, maybe it doesn’t hurt quite as much.”

“It hurts for me, too,” Jake agreed. “But still, I have no doubt we did the right thing. I know it was hard for Mary to do what she had to by herself, but she knew that if it had to be done she was the only one who could.”

“Adam,” Rachel broke in, possibly because she could see where this discussion was going. “It’s still going to be a while on dinner. Can I get you something? Pop, coffee, beer?”

“A beer sounds fine,” he said. “I’m not much of a drinker, but I’ve wanted one all day.”

“I could stand one too, honey,” Jake said. “In fact, right now it sounds pretty damn good.”

“We’re almost out here, but if we need it I can have Amanda get a twelve from the cooler in the store,” she said as she went to the refrigerator. “I know there’s some there.”

A couple of minutes later Adam and Jake had cold cans of beer in their hands. Jake held his high in Adam’s direction. “Mary Sue O’Leary Caldwell,” he said in a casual toast. “What an impressive young woman. Matt couldn’t have done any better.”

“Agreed,” Adam said, holding his can high. “I never got to talk with her very much thanks to Brittany, but I sure wish I’d known her better.”

“Amen to that,” Jake agreed. “So are you hearing anything from her?”

“Not much,” Adam admitted. “I know she and Matty are doing fine, but I told her we’d have to be careful with making contact until this thing with Brittany gets sorted out. When I told Brittany about Matty, everything else just came to a screeching halt. I mean, Brittany had a new obsession that quick. I’m afraid it’s going to cause trouble. I didn’t tell Brittany that I’m pretty sure Mary and Matty are at her home in Blanche Tickle. I didn’t even want to hint about that. If you happen to know for sure, don’t tell me. That way I can say I don’t know.”

“What’s the place like?” Rachel asked. “I know you visited Matt and Mary there once.”

“It’s all right,” Adam said. “The house is small, a lot smaller than this, but snug and cozy and well kept. Blanche Tickle is just about what you think of as a postcard Newfoundland fishing village, rather picturesque. In fact, I know Mary has rented her place to some artist who came up there the last few summers to paint. I don’t know what might happen with that in future years. The house does have inside running water and propane heat to go along with a wood stove, but no inside toilet. That doesn’t concern Mary very much. It’s how she was brought up, after all. The village, well, it’s not rich by any means, but has some proud, strong, and competent people in it. I didn’t get to spend much time there, but I could see where Mary got that part of her character.”

“Is it going to be a good place for her to raise Matty?”

“I hope so,” Adam sighed. “You saw how it came out for her. I mean, think about it. She was orphaned twice. First, her parents died when she was a little girl, and then she was orphaned a second time when the cousin who took her in died while she was in high school. She spent her spare time growing up working on his fishing boat with him. After he died, she made it through the winter jigging cod out of the harbor. She never made it out of high school; she had to find a job to survive. I don’t know that it may not have been a better education for her than any university could have given her.”

“I knew most of that,” Jake nodded, taking a sip of his beer. “And it made her just exactly the woman Matt needed.”

“True,” Adam conceded. “And I can’t see how it can harm Matty while he’s a little kid. When he gets older . . . well, I have some questions. I mean, about education and things like that. By then I should be able to help some, maybe influence things a little. I don’t want to even think about it right now, especially considering what Brittany might try to do.”

“You’re probably going to disagree with me on this,” Jake smiled. “But I don’t necessarily put a high value on college. I mean, I see a lot of college graduates working drive-up windows in fast food places. Neither Rachel nor I have been to college. Our kids haven’t either. I know Ron isn’t planning on it; he wants to go career in the Coast Guard. The jury is still out on Amanda, but she wants to take after her mother and work on our charter boats. We may not have the richest life, but it’s honest and we’re happy with it. I see a lot of college graduates who aren’t happy about what they’re doing with their lives.”

Adam took a drink of his beer before he replied, “I don’t know how much I agree or disagree with you. You’re a special case, Jake, you and your family. College would have been a waste of time for you. I know Matt thought it was a waste of time for him, but he was a special case, too. And sometimes I think it was a waste of time for me. I certainly wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing now if I hadn’t gone to college, and I’m not at all happy with what I’m doing now, even if you leave Brittany out of the equation. But even with her hopefully out of my life before very long, I don’t know how to change it.”

“With her gone, I’d think it would be easier,” Jake smiled. “I know my life got a lot more comfortable once I got her out of it, although there was a year there that wasn’t a lot of fun.”

“Oh, you had fun all right,” Rachel said in a teasing tone. “I still hear stories about those days, and I watched a lot of it.”

“Well, there were satisfying moments when it happened,” Jake admitted. “But most of it involved getting her out of my mind in the first place. Then you turned eighteen, announced you were in love with me, and blew that shit right out of my life. But that was a long time ago and neither here nor there anyway. But Adam, getting Brittany out of your life has got to simplify things for you at least a little bit.”

“Oh, it does. Maybe I’ll have time to figure out some other interest, one I can enjoy. But the main problem is that I’m still stuck with the company. It’s mostly owned by my father, and when you get down to it I’m just an employee, and not a highly paid one at that. I can point out any number of people in positions similar to mine who are making considerably more than I do. I’ve invested a lot of time and my whole career in Caldwell-Deerfield and wouldn’t have much to show for it if I just walked away right now. Believe me, when I watched Matt sail out of Frenchtown Harbor on the Mary Sue I’d have given a great deal to be on that boat with him. But for several reasons I can’t consider doing something that radical.”

“Maybe you’re going to have to come to grips with that question.”

“I would sure like to, but first things first. The first thing is to get this situation with Brittany cleared up. The brutal part of it is going to be in the next month or so, but it’s still going to take a year for the divorce to become final and to clean up the loose ends. I can’t even think about doing anything really different until that’s over. A lot could happen in that year, in a lot of ways.”

“I don’t know what I can do to help,” Jake sympathized. “But I’ll help if I can.”

“Well, there is one thing,” Adam smiled. “I’ve often wondered what it would have been like to be out sailing with Matt, but the only time I’ve ever been on a sailboat is when I took Matt to Frenchtown Harbor that time. Matt showed me around the Mary Sue, but I never sailed on it. I mean, it was just tied to the dock.”

“That’s one I think I can help you with,” Jake grinned. “Of course it’s the wrong time of year right now, and the Pixie III is on the stands for the winter, but when it warms up, come on up here and we’ll take you sailing. Rachel or Amanda or I will be available when the time comes, depending on how the charters go, and we can probably rig things around a little if we have some warning. Do you just want to go out for a sail, or do you want to learn how to do it?”

“Good question. I think right now that I just want to get out on a sailboat to get some feeling of what Matt must have experienced. If I like it, well, maybe I’ll want to learn more about it. Maybe if I’m stuck with staying at Caldwell-Deerfield I could have a boat so I could get out with it on the weekends sometime. At least it might be a step in the right direction.”

“Just say the word, Adam. Just say the word.”

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