In spite of the increased border security these days, Adam’s entrance into Canada in the elderly Ford Ranger pickup truck was casual. “United States citizen?” the guy at customs asked.

“Yes.”

“How long to you plan to be in the country?”

“Hard to say, but probably not more than three weeks.”

“Where are you going?”

“Newfoundland, family business.”

“That’s a long haul,” the man said, a little more casually. “It’s pretty close to falling off the edge of the world. You have a safe trip.”

That was all there was to it; he was on his way.

While Adam hadn’t been a frequent visitor to Canada, he’d been there from time to time; there was a small factory near Strathroy that Caldwell-Deerfield occasionally subcontracted orders to, not very often, but he’d had to visit them once in a while. Of course, he didn’t plan on going near the place this trip.

It was taking a little time to get used to the pickup. It had been years since he’d driven one, and then not very much. It seemed strange, but somehow he found himself liking it, if for no more reason than it wasn’t his familiar car. Somehow, indescribably, it seemed to be a symbol of the new life he now had a possibility of leading.

For years Adam had given much thought to the idea of selling out Caldwell-Deerfield when his father died. It really wasn’t the life he wanted to lead anymore, and perhaps it never had been, but after a quarter of a century it had become a habit, and he felt responsible for the company and the people who worked there.

But while it had been clear for some time that his father wasn’t going to last a whole lot longer, somehow the reality of him being gone just hadn’t struck home to him. While he couldn’t actually sell out for a few more months, when his father’s will was probated and the distribution of assets made, the possibility was alive. The door was now open to his being shed of Caldwell-Deerfield just as much as he was shed of Brittany, but now that the reality was within his grasp, he wasn’t sure what to do with it. He hadn’t told anyone, not even Deke, but one of the things he wanted to do on this trip was to think about his options, not just what to do about the company, but about his newfound freedom.

What it came down to, he thought as he sped down the highway at 100 kilometres per hour, was that he had three options. He could just not do anything different; he could take himself out of daily management and just provide oversight like his father had done. Or, he could go ahead and sell out for the best price he could get.

The first option wasn’t appealing at all. It meant no change, and the last thing he wanted to do was to go on the way he had been going. It had been clear for some time that he needed to do something new with his life, although exactly what wasn’t clear by any means. Oh, there was no doubt that he could continue to do it for a while, and it might be necessary. But the amount of hassle he’d had to go through to break free for three weeks showed that it was going to be just as hard to do it in the future.

Taking himself out of the daily management of the business, while it hadn’t been an option he’d given much consideration to in the past, now seemed like it had some advantages. In essence, it was taking on the role his father had played for many years now. He wouldn’t have to be involved in the day-to-day hassles, and would be available for advice or consultation if needed. It would allow him to get away and do other things, while still keeping a finger on things. The option had some merit; Caldwell-Deerfield had been a profitable business, although there had been a couple lean years when the auto industry had been going through some hard times, and while things were on the way back they weren’t totally there yet. Still, if he took himself out of management, he couldn’t help but believe that if the worst were to come, he’d have at least as much income as he had now, without lifting a finger. In good years, it could be considerably more.

Realistically, the existing management could probably get along without him most of the time. Bob was a good manager, and there was no reason that he couldn’t continue to run things quite well if Adam were gone for months on end. That was one good thing about this trip: it would put Bob in charge for a while, so both could see how well things would be handled, not that he had any doubt about his long-time assistant.

The final option was selling out. He was aware that Greg had trolled him about selling out to Ferguson-Eagle last summer, and while it wasn’t exactly an offer, the door was open to further exploration. And there were other possible buyers out there. He really hadn’t been looking, although since his father’s death there had been a couple expressions of interest. The big problem with that was if he sold out now, even to Ferguson-Eagle, it seemed likely he couldn’t get what the company was worth. Even Greg had said last summer that Ferguson-Eagle probably wouldn’t be in a position to make a cash buyout; there would have to be a stock exchange, on a stock whose value was hard to calculate since it wasn’t a public company. Not that the issue couldn’t be worked out, but it would take some working.

One thing seemed clear in his mind: if he sold out, he wanted to sell all the way out so he could turn his back on the company and walk away. He didn’t feel like being some half fish, half fowl thing, an elder statesman dependent on the company but unable to do much to influence things.

What it came down to was the same thing it had been for several years, since about the time he’d watched Matt get on the boat at Frenchtown Harbor and sail away. While he had no idea about what he wanted to do if he turned his back on the company and walked away, sailing away somewhere seemed to surface near the top of his list. While he didn’t think he wanted to get on a tiny boat and sail across the Atlantic, a long coastal trip, maybe down into the Caribbean, or even that idea of going down the Mississippi, up the east coast and back to the lakes would definitely be a possibility. Of course, as he’d often mused, it would be a lot more fun to do it with someone, but maybe that wasn’t a necessity. After all, Matt had left with the idea of sailing by himself, and he’d made it as far as Newfoundland before he met Mary and changed his life in the process.

Very little of all this was something Adam hadn’t thought about many times before, but up till now it had mostly been musing, kicking things around. Now, there were options that he could actually take up, and while those options would mean some major changes to his life, he’d already managed one huge one in the past two years, getting Brittany out of his life.

But it was not as if a decision had to be made this evening. He had the whole trip to think about it, and he still didn’t have to make a decision right away, but it would be good to have some idea of what direction he was headed. He’d be satisfied if he could work out that much on this trip.

Adam drove on into the gathering darkness. He didn’t want to kill himself driving, but he wanted to keep moving, and there was no point in wasting time. Finally, around nine in the evening he decided to stop; he found a chain motel, got a room, then went to the bar for a hamburger and a couple of beers.

He was up early the next morning, grabbed a quick breakfast, and was soon on the road again. He drove all day, making only some gas stops, one of which included a drive-through hamburger. Once past Montreal, he was aware he was on the same route Matt and Mary had followed when they’d left Jake’s place three and a half years before, then headed for Newfoundland by driving north around Lake Huron.

Adam was well into Quebec when he stopped for the night. This was French-speaking country, but the motel staff mostly had some English, and he wasn’t being picky. Once again, he was on the road early the next morning, and was soon in New Brunswick, back in English-speaking country. He continued on, pushing the pickup hard; one of the pay-phone calls he’d made before leaving home was to get reservations on the Caribou, the car ferry to Newfoundland, the next day; it sailed early in the morning and he didn’t want to miss it.

Once again, he got a motel room for the night, and this time had a good dinner. He got to bed early, and was up early the next morning, had a quick breakfast, and went over to the ferry terminal to get in line.

It was not exactly the nicest day he’d ever seen. In fact, it was gray, blowing hard, and crappy, and he found himself thinking that the ferry trip was likely to be a rough ride.

It was. The boat was rolling and pitching a lot, and there were a number of passengers who were pretty green, some of them losing their breakfasts over the rail. Adam was just a little bit pleased that he wasn’t one of them; in fact, he had little motion sickness at all. He’d suspected he wasn’t very susceptible to it from riding around on the Pixie with Jake last summer, but this pretty well proved it.

The ferry ride was seven hours long, although Adam suspected it must have been much longer for several of the passengers as they rode across the Gulf of St. Lawrence to Channel-Port-aux-Basques at the western end of Newfoundland. He still was a long way from Blanche Tickle – it was still almost a two-day drive along a narrow two-lane road that was frequently crooked and rough, so he often couldn’t go very fast. A day and a half later, quite a ways short of St. John’s, he turned down a local road that would take him to Blanche Tickle.

Adam had been there before, a little more than three years before, when Matt and Mary were wintering over there after their first summer at sea. That time, he’d sneaked away from a conference he was supposedly attending in Boston, flown to St. John’s, and rented a SUV for the trip down to the settlement. He was glad he’d gotten an SUV, although he knew Matt and Mary had driven the trip several times in Matt’s little Cavalier. It was a rough, narrow, and winding road, and it was little better now than it had been then. It was part of the reason he’d bought a pickup, after all.

Finally he knew he was getting close. He turned the truck off the main road, such as it was, and drove down the hazily familiar track to Mary’s cottage. It had been a long time since he’d been there, almost three and a half years, and things had been snow-covered at the time. But Blanche Tickle was small, and he had no problem finding the little house on the edge of the village. If there was any question, it could be answered by the sight of the Mary Sue riding at her mooring in front of the house, and the familiar Chevy Cavalier parked alongside it.

He was pleasantly surprised to see Mary and Matty playing outside. Although he’d seen a couple pictures of the year-and-a-half-old boy, sent to him by e-mail, this was the first time he’d actually seen his grandson with his own eyes.

Mary looked up at the unfamiliar vehicle as it drove up, but her eyes brightened when she saw Adam turn it off and get out of the seat. “Adam!” she said with a smile. “Ye made it after all. I was beginnin’ ta wonder.”

“It was a little touch and go,” he told her as they walked into a hug. “But I made it. Mary, it’s good to see you again, and it’s especially nice to see Matty. So how have things been going for you?”

“Not badly,” she told him. “An’ how are you?”

“A little frazzled,” he said. “The last few weeks have been one thing after another, but I think I got the worst of it thrashed out.”

“I know ye’ve been havin’ some problems,” she said as they broke apart. “But I guess I haven’t heard all about it.”

“Long story, but I have time to tell it,” he told his daughter-in-law. “At least I don’t have to rush back this time.”

“Well, there’s room for ye,” she told him. “Not a lot of room, but there’s room.”

“That’s fine,” he replied. “Now how’s my grandson?”

“Toddlin’ along just fine,” she replied. “I have ta keep my eyes on him just about every minute when he’s awake, he’s at that age when he wants ta check out everythin’, but he seems like a happy and healthy young lad. He takes after his pa, he likes ta go sailin’ when we can. What d’ye say we go and sit for a spell?”

“No rush to do that,” Adam told her. “I’ve been sitting in that thing long enough, I need to stand up for a bit and move around.”

“Aye, I don’t mind,” she said, scooping Matty up and getting him on her hip. “Matty, I want to introduce ye ta your grandpa.”

“Grandpa?” the boy replied, a little puzzled at what that meant.

“Never mind,” she smiled. “This is your pa’s pa. He’s a nice man, an’ he’s come ta see us. Adam, would you like to hold him a bit?”

“I’d like nothing better.”

Mary passed the boy over to his grandfather, and asked, “So Adam. How long can ye stay for?”

“Good question,” he said. “Things have changed a lot, and I’m afraid I’ve only given you the briefest possible outline of what’s happened over the last few months.”

“I’ve known it was quite a bit,” she nodded. “But I figured there was more happenin’ than you let on in your e-mails. I talk ta Jake every now and again, and he’s been tellin’ me about some of what ye’d been dealin’ with.”

“Quite a bit, especially since I didn’t want anyone to know I’d been exchanging e-mails with you. In fact, I’ve gone quite a ways out of the way to keep anyone from knowing, and as far as I know only Jake and my attorney knew where I was going on this trip. Right now, all I want to do is to stay out of sight and unwind for a while.”

“I figured you were goin’ through some tryin’ times.”

“That’s an understatement,” he shook his head. “Look, I know you knew that Brittany had to be hospitalized after she found out you and Matt had escaped from under her nose.”

“Aye, I knew that,” she said. “I remember ye said she was in some mental hospital.”

“Yeah, that was bad enough,” Adam said. “I would have liked to sneak up here when Matty was born, but I just didn’t dare get away. I was dead right that the first thing she did when she found out about Matty was to try to somehow get him away from you, and we’ve talked about that. I’ve since kicked myself several times over for even telling her, but I guess I wanted to twist the knife a little bit. It would have been a damn sight easier if I’d just kept my mouth shut about it, but what’s done is done. I’m sorry, Mary. I should never have done it. At least I filed for divorce. I should have done that years ago, it would have saved me a lot of trouble.”

“So you’re divorced now?”

“Yeah,” he said. “And not a moment too soon, either. It was final back in January, which is a darn good thing. If it had taken very much longer it could have cost me a bundle. The last time I saw her, back in March, she seemed like she’d gotten a little more reasonable, but I wouldn’t want to bet on it, and she might have decided it wasn’t a good idea to bring Matty up, under the circumstances. I honestly don’t think she’s given up.”

“Adam, I’m sorry to hear that,” she replied. “I really am. I mean, if she’d been halfway reasonable, there’s no reason she couldn’t have been able ta enjoy her grandson, at least some.”

“I realize that,” he said. “But the chances of her being halfway reasonable were, well, slim and none. She wanted all the potatoes and no one else’s interests mattered. Anyway, I put up with it for too long, and I got the final papers signed just a few weeks before my father died. If I hadn’t been divorced by then it would have really have screwed things up. Mary, I’ve been thinking about it a lot the last few months. I made a big mistake in marrying her a long time ago, and probably made a bigger one in staying with her. But over all that time I was at least able to keep her off Matt’s back a little, especially as he got older. But once he died, there wasn’t even the reason to stay with her for that. I decided I needed to regain a little control over my life.”

“I seem ta recall ya sayin’ somethin’ about that, too. But I also seem ta recall ya sayin’ you couldn’t do much about it till your father died.”

“That’s true,” he agreed. “When you get right down to it, I was just an employee. A well paid employee, I’ll grant you that, but I made up my mind long before he had his heart attack that I wasn’t going to even try to fill his shoes. Don’t get me wrong, we got along great, but we’re not the same people. I will admit I sort of got pushed into going into the company when Brittany got pregnant, since we both thought Matt was my kid. I honestly think now she saw me as a meal ticket, and Matt as the key to it. What do you know about how we got married?”

“Not much,” Mary admitted. “I got the impression that Matt didn’t know much about it, either.”

“Well, I probably never got around to telling him the whole truth, and I’m sure Brittany never did, either. What it comes down to is that Brittany was really broken up after the night she’d spent with Jake. Now, Mary, I’ve never been too good with women, and it struck me that if I were to, well, supply a shoulder to cry on, it might work out well for me in the end. To tell the truth, I never saw her as much more than an easy score, right at the beginning. It wasn’t until after she announced she was pregnant that it became clear who scored on who. I guess I always resented that.”

“I’ve had that impression from Matt.”

“Well, that understanding didn’t come till later. By then, I figured it was a case of I’d made my bed, I had to lie in it. But that’s all in the past now, and it seems almost like a bad dream.”

“It’s good ta have behind ya,” she smiled. “So now ya want to unwind in Blanche Tickle a little bit. Ye don’t have ta head back to the company for a bit, I take it?”

“I have a week or so before I have to leave here. I don’t really want to, but there are still things I have to clear up after my father’s death, and it’s going to take a while to get everything done. Mary, there’s some things I need to clear up about that with you while I’m here, and it’s part of the reason I made the trip. It isn’t all worked out yet, but he left the company to me, and he left a large cash legacy to both you and Matty.”

“How large?”

“It was five million each, American. Matty’s is in a trust fund he can’t access until he’s twenty-one, unless he needs to use the money for college. It works out something a little different Canadian, thanks to exchange rates. The money hasn’t been transferred yet, and won’t be until his will is probated, probably in July. If you want, we can have Matty’s account placed in a bank in the US, since there won’t be as big a tax bite. But the money for you we need to work out a way to get it to you in some way to hold down on the taxes, and in such a way that Brittany can’t use it as a way to find you and Matty. My attorney has some ideas on that, but we don’t need to go over them right now. Let’s just say that Matty won’t have to worry about where the money to go to college is going to come from.”

“That’s if he goes to college,” Mary smiled. “He may not want ta. Matt always said it was mostly a waste of time for him, except for the time it gave him to learn how ta sail the Mary Sue.”

“Well, we have a few years to work on that. We don’t have to fight it out right now, and there are some angles I’ve thought of that you probably aren’t even aware of. But again, that’s not something we need to work out right now. We can get to it sometime in the next few days.”

“Aye, I guess we might’s well. Ye said it’d be July before the company is in your hands, right?”

“Pretty much. I still don’t know what I’m going to do with it; in fact, that’s something I wanted to work out on this trip. I’m still not all the way sure, except for the fact that I know I’m not going to keep on the way I was going. I want out from under the day-to-day stuff, and I’m sure I’m going to do it. The question is how I’m going to manage to do that so it’s to my best advantage.”

“So now you’re lookin’ for somethin’ to do.”

“Pretty much,” he replied. “Mary, do you have any idea how much I envied you and Matt your chance to go out sailing, to see the world, to have some adventure?”

“I got the impression you were lustin’ after it.”

“I was so damn jealous it wasn’t funny. I would have liked to do something like that, but I couldn’t. I was trapped by the company, trapped by Brittany, and maybe even trapped by Matt a little. All that’s pretty close to gone now, and I’m having a little trouble getting used to it.”

“So ye came here ta think about it?”

“More or less,” he sighed. “Tell you what,” he said. “Maybe we should have a cup of coffee or something, and go sit in the shade to talk about it.”

“Sounds good ta me,” she told him. “It’d take a moment ta make some coffee, but there’s iced tea in the fridge. You bring Matty, an’ I’ll grab a couple of his toys. We can go sit on the far side of the house.”

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