True to his word, Jake stayed out of the discussion after Amanda showed up from the Channel Stop; in fact, he got in his truck and went home, leaving her to do all the salesmanship.

The boat was named the Knick-Knack. Amanda said the boat had come with the name; she had no idea why it was named that, and said that she probably would have changed it to something else if she’d decided to keep the boat. Although physically about the same size as the Mary Sue, it was visibly lighter-built. Amanda explained that it had a swing keel, which swung up with the help of a winch to help the boat fit on a trailer better. She said the swing keel would also allow the Knick-Knack to poke around in water much shallower than the Mary Sue could manage, although she made the point that the keel needed to be down when sailing, except on smooth water in very light air.

Even with his limited experience, Adam could tell the Knick-Knack wasn’t fitted out as well or as strongly as the Mary Sue was, although surprisingly there was much more room inside. But Jake was right: the boat was downright barren by comparison. The interior was mostly just painted fiberglass, and it had a couple side bunks and a front V-berth that were mostly thin foam pads. The galley was nothing much more than an alcohol stove and a tiny sink; the refrigerator was merely an ice chest like a family might take to a picnic. However, everything seemed to be in good repair, at least as far as he could see.

Since there was a breeze still blowing, there was nothing much to do but to take the Knick-Knack out for a spin. It only took a few minutes to get the sail cover off the main, and to hank on the jib. Unlike the Mary Sue or the Pixie, it didn’t have an inboard engine, but a small four-stroke Honda outboard hung on a bracket at the stern. It was no trick to back the boat out of the slip and head across the protected waters of the harbor.

Soon the “Honda breeze” was taking them down the channel and out past the jetties, as Adam ran up the sails. They seemed to be in good shape, if a bit gray and aged, with a few small patches here and there. He noticed that the Knick-Knack’s rigging was similar to the Mary Sue’s, in that all the lines to operate the sails were run back to the cockpit. The jib was set on a boom, so there was no need to have to tend the jib lines when tacking, which he could see would simplify things a lot.

Once out in the open waters of the lake, Adam noticed that the Knick-Knack was a lot livelier than the Mary Sue or the Pixie; wind and waves tossed it around a lot more. But at the same time, the Knick-Knack was probably faster than either of those boats, mostly because it was hauling around a lot less weight. Amanda said she hadn’t sailed the boat very much, but it seemed to be a good vessel.

In an hour, Adam had more than made up his mind that this boat was going to work for him; it would do what he wanted it to do, at least for this summer. The wind was dying out now, so they pointed the boat back toward the harbor, and once near the channel had to turn on the Honda breeze again. He helped Amanda tie the boat up at the dock, strip off the jib, and get the sail cover on the main, then said, trying to sound a little negative, “Well, it might work for me. What do you have to have for it?”

“Six thousand,” Amanda smiled. “You can probably find boats like this for less money, but they won’t be in as good a shape as this one is.”

“I don’t know,” Adam replied unenthusiastically, trying to give Amanda a bit of a hard time; the price seemed realistic to him, and he could easily afford it. “It seems like a lot of money.”

“Don’t forget, you’re getting an almost new outboard out of the deal,” she countered. “Dad and I have been through this thing thoroughly, and while there are some things that are a little rough, everything is in good shape. We even put a new bolt in the swing keel, and had the keel itself magnafluxed. Losing your keel is a good way to louse up your whole day.”

They went back and forth for about ten minutes before Adam caved in like he knew he was going to do all along. “All right, you’ve got a deal,” he smiled. “So does that mean you’re not planning on spending the winter in Florida?”

“Still up in the air,” she said. “I’m going to look around the lakes for the boat I want, and if I don’t find it here, I may head down to Florida to look. Either way, whatever I buy is probably going to take a lot of work. If I can find one here, I’ll probably do the work here this winter. If I have to go down there, well, we’ll have to see.”

By now it was getting a little late for Adam to head back home that evening, and he had no real desire to do so, anyway. He and Amanda went back up to the Channel Stop, which was not yet open in the evenings, and sat around for a while, sipping beer with Jake and Rachel while Adam brought them up to date on his visit to see Mary.

Finally, the subject worked its way back around to the Knick-Knack. “I see you brought a pickup truck,” Jake commented. “Are you going to take it back with you?”

“I better not,” Adam told them. “I ran over a little on time this trip and I need to get back to the office. Besides, I don’t have a place to store it at home, so I’ll have to work something out on that. Maybe I could come back up and pick it up this weekend, if you could have it on the trailer for me.”

“That wouldn’t be a problem, but maybe we’d better wait till you’re here to put it on the trailer,” Jake suggested. “That way you could see how it’s done. It’ll make life a lot simpler when you put it back together again.”

Adam agreed that it probably wasn’t a bad idea at that. “I’ve never driven a vehicle towing a trailer,” he shook his head. “I guess that’s going to be new territory for me.”

“Oh yeah, you’ve got some fun coming on that. But hey, Adam, just because you have a boat down at home doesn’t mean we don’t want to see you again. If you don’t want to go to the trouble of towing the Knick-Knack back up here, you can still go sailing on the Pixie.”

“All right, I’ll try to make it up here sometime, but I think my weekends are going to be a lot busier than they used to be.”

Adam got up early the next morning; if he made it back in good time, he could at least drop by the office and see how things had gone. Even so, he stopped by the slip where the Knick-Knack was moored, just to look at it and shake his head. He really had only come by Jake’s looking for advice; he’d never expected to be a boat owner when he left.

Even as he looked at the boat he realized its limitations: as Amanda had also figured out, it was not a boat that he wanted to live on for an extended period. Even though it was bigger than the Mary Sue, it had its limitations, and even Amanda thought it was pretty primitive. But it would do for now, he sighed as he let up on the brake and got the pickup moving again, wondering just what Amanda would come up with to replace it. That could be interesting.

The trip back home was familiar; he’d driven it often enough before, and he didn’t think about it much. Only as he neared the end of the trip did he realize he had a problem; he still didn’t want the pickup associated with him any more than necessary. As he was getting close to the edge of the city he made a fuel stop, and called the contact Deke had given him to pick him up at the shed where he’d been storing the truck. The elderly man, who he only knew as “Chuck,” met him at the shed and took him several miles to the other storage shed where he hid the car for a quick and quiet twenty-dollar bill. “I’m going to have to do this Friday,” he told Chuck. “Then again on Sunday. After that, it could be a while.”

“No problem. I’m not doing much most days besides watching TV. I wouldn’t mind making a double sawbuck for a half hour’s driving more often.”

“All I can say is that I’ll let you know,” Adam replied, more than a little irritated at the need for this double shuffle at all. It was entirely based on the thought that Brittany might have a competent detective trying to tail him, and the hidden vehicles meant a thinner connection between him and Blanche Tickle. In fact, the whole thing was a pain in the neck. While the long drive had mostly been enjoyable, and had allowed him to work out a few things in his mind, it had been a heck of a long trip for the relatively short time he’d been able to spend with Mary and Matty. If he decided to go up there again, especially this summer, he thought he might have to re-evaluate driving a trip that long, although how he could make the trip without leaving a trail of credit card transactions escaped him more than a little.

It felt strange getting into his familiar car again; it had been three weeks after all, weeks in which he’d put a lot of miles on the pickup and gotten very comfortable with it. It was as if he was stepping from a dream back into his old life, one he wasn’t very thrilled with. But maybe that was changing, too.

He drove straight to the Caldwell-Deerfield office; Marcia was surprised to see him walk in. “Hi, stranger,” she said. “Long time, no see. How was your trip?”

“About all I could have expected it to be,” he said. “I managed to accomplish a few things that needed to be done. I take it the company is still here.”

“Things are just about like normal, as far as I know,” she told him. “Would you like to see Bob for a more formal report?”

“Unless he’s busy with something.”

“I doubt he’s too busy for you,” she replied. “I’ll give him a call.”

Adam headed on into his office with a distinct feeling of unfamiliarity. Although he’d spent an awful lot of time here, somehow it seemed like it was already in the past. He flipped on the computer monitor; the screen was the familiar wallpaper he’d left up when he’d left weeks before. As he admitted to himself that he had to get back to business, he glanced at the familiar picture of Matt on the Mary Sue, with the iceberg in the background. Somehow, after the experience of the trip, he felt a little closer to the memory of his son, a little closer to following in his footsteps.

Bob was a while getting there, and it gave Adam a chance to glance over the daily reports for the last three weeks – just the production summaries and financials; everything was about like he’d expected, not that it was any surprise.

He was concentrating on the financials when he heard Bob say, “Glad to see you back. I was beginning to wonder. Did you have a good trip?”

“Not bad. I managed to get a few things done that needed doing. I take it we still have a company?”

“Oh, yeah. There haven’t been any real problems. We had a little glitch when a storm took out power at Betzer for about half a day, but they’ve managed to catch back up. Other than that, no real production issues. The tail end of the last week we got a bid request from Ford on another part, one back from China like that GM deal last summer. It’s not going to be a real big job, but a buck is a buck and they want a quick answer. You want the details?”

“Not right now,” Adam said, leaning back in his chair. “I’m still getting my feet back under me from being gone so long. Are things under control with the bid?”

“As near as can be. We’ve got space in Plant 4 if we get it, and it’s going to take some new machinery, but nothing a fab shop can’t pull together in plenty of time. I was getting set to send it out to Ford if you didn’t make it back pretty quickly.”

“If you think it’s good to go, then send it out. Bob, while I was on this trip I got the chance to think about a few things, and one of the conclusions I came to is that I want to limit my day-to-day involvement in operations. We probably can’t make all the changes I’d like until my father’s estate is probated, and that’s still something like six or seven weeks off, but let’s start thinking about how we can rearrange things and pass some of the responsibilities over to you. Now, with that will come a substantial pay increase, of course.”

“I have to admit I thought there was a chance that something like that might happen after your father died.”

“I knew something was going to happen, but it’s taken a little time to work out exactly what, not that it’s all thought out yet. I’ve been doing most of the chief executive officer’s job without being the CEO. I’m thinking when we get done with the shift I’ll come out of it as the CEO while you become the chief operating officer, although you’ll be doing a great deal of what I’m doing now.”

“So essentially what you’re saying is that you’re going to take over your father’s job, and the responsibilities he had.”

“Pretty much, although I’ve still got to work out exactly what. Now, along with that after the estate has been probated I’ll see that you get a small chunk of stock. I don’t own much stock in the company as it is, so it’ll probably be about equivalent to what I have now, but that’ll qualify you to be vice chairman of the board, while I move up to chairman. So we’ve got a couple months to work out how we’re going to do that, and along the way we need to come up with someone to fill your current position and move them into it.”

“Fred Redding would be my choice. He’s been a lot of help while you’ve been gone.”

“I pretty much agree with you, but I wanted it to be your choice. In any case, one of the things we have to do is to reorganize the executive structure to adjust to this change. I don’t want your answers right now, but I do want you to think about them and prepare an outline for discussion in the next few days. We’ll just have to go from there.”

“Sounds like you got quite a lot of decision making done while you were gone.”

“Some, but the process isn’t completed there, either.”

“Well, it’s good that you’re keeping us an independent company. I half thought you were planning on selling out when you got the chance.”

“It was an option to consider, and it’s not off the table yet, although it’s probably not likely to happen for a while.”

“So what are you going to do, sort of semi-retire like your father?”

“I’m working in that direction. That’s the short-range plan anyway, and, really, there isn’t a long-range plan yet and may not be for a while. Bob, I learned a lot while I was gone, and managed to set a few priorities straight. I’ve taken very little vacation time over the years, and I want to catch up on that. On top of that, I want to do some new things, take on some new challenges. One of the things I did while I was gone was buy a sailboat, a fairly small one to learn on. I’m planning on taking some time this summer to learn to sail it. When I get comfortable with it, I may trade up and take off cruising for a while. Not anything quite as ambitious as Matt did, but just to see what’s out there a little. However, I’ll need the time to do it. Once this transition is made I plan on still being more or less available for a while if needed, but with any kind of luck it’ll be less so as time goes on. So are you up for it?”

“Sure, and while I’m sorry you lost your father, I think this is a step that needed to be taken. I was worried that the reason you were gone was to negotiate a sellout to one of those shark outfits that buy up companies to get the job contracts they have. I was afraid that we’d all be out the door by a week from Monday while the actual work got subbed out to China or something.”

“I don’t intend to do that, not now, not ever. We have a valuable company here and there’s no reason it can’t continue to be valuable to us, not just to some shark from New York who’s only out to line his own pocket. The future is still the future, but we’ve weathered the worst of the recession in good order, and there’s no reason we can’t continue to be prosperous. So let’s get working on a transition plan.”

“I’ll put some thought into it tonight, and maybe we can talk it over some tomorrow.”

“Sounds good. I probably should be in at least part of the day tomorrow.”

“Something special?”

“Well, to tell the truth, I’ve got to find a place to park a sailboat for the summer, probably down on Lake Erie, and I’ve got to get in touch with the gal who’s doing the estate liquidation for my father and see where she is on that. There’ll probably be a couple other things that need doing after being gone all this time.”

While it wasn’t a done deal yet, and couldn’t be for a couple months, it was as easy as that to take care of the largest part of his concerns about the company, and the amount of time and attention it would take. That counted up to getting started on two of the four main things he’d worked out in his mind on the way back from Blanche Tickle. But they were the two easy ones, and the other ones probably would be harder.

But first things first. Adam resolved he’d try to spend a half a day at the office each day for the rest of the week; that would give him time for running around on a number of things that needed doing.

Finding a place for the Knick-Knack proved to be easy. His first thought was Frenchtown Harbor, where Matt had kept the Mary Sue for a while; it wasn’t terribly far from the office or his apartment, about half an hour if the traffic was light. Even though it was early in the season, boat business was down with the economy, and the marina there had plenty of slip spaces on rental at a discount price. It didn’t take Adam much time at all to realize that keeping the boat in the water would be even less trouble than keeping it on the trailer, and when the marina offered to throw in trailer storage for free it was a done deal.

Several other things got done, among them a luncheon appointment with Deke, to bring him up to date at least a little on what had been happening, and on his trip to Blanche Tickle. Deke told him that he hadn’t heard much about Brittany, but at least she hadn’t been making trouble, or not as far as he knew. Still, it was good news, such as it was.

Looking into the Brittany issue a little more seemed to be a good idea, so that evening he called Greg and Lisa Alwyn, mostly to announce that he’d bought the Knick-Knack and would be keeping it at Frenchtown Harbor. “If you want to go sailing some weekend and don’t want to go up to Winchester Harbor, give me a call,” Adam said. “This boat stuff is still pretty new to me and I can always use an experienced hand.”

Over the course of the conversation, which wandered to several places, Lisa happened to mention that Brittany had the house up for sale, and as far as she knew Brittany was planning on moving back to live near her parents. That sounded like good news in a way, but he still wasn’t sure what it meant or whether it might mean less trouble in the long run. He thought that maybe it would be an excuse to call Brittany and get a little bit better information from the horse’s mouth, but when he called her home right afterwards he didn’t get an answer. Oh, well, there would be other opportunities, he thought.

The next afternoon he had an appointment with Beverly and Benita at his father’s house. They had been making very good progress with sorting out his father’s things, and there was an excellent collection of things Beverly thought would go well at auction. There was, of course, some trash and some things that would just have to be disposed of, perhaps at a charity secondhand store, but that would have to wait until the estate had been probated.

What was more troubling was that there was a big collection of personal items that Adam would have to go through and make the decision about what to do with them – there was a large pile of them concentrated in an upstairs room. The only way he could see to deal with it was to take the time and get on with it, so it was clear that several of his half-days away from the office were going to be spent on that project.

He continued to be impressed with Beverly. She was an attractive woman with chestnut hair, somewhere around his age at a guess, and while she’d obviously put on a little middle-aged spread she hadn’t put on too much. Over the course of the afternoon she happened to mention her ex-husband, and he took note of the fact that she wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, which got him to thinking a little. Beverly was a bright, personable and friendly woman, and more than once the thought crossed his mind that he wouldn’t mind getting to know her a little better, at least once they weren’t associated in a business sense. She might be a possible prospect, he thought, but it was much too early to even take a step in that direction while the estate sale was still in progress.

It was going to be strange to be back in the dating game, he reflected as he went back to the apartment that evening. He’d been out of it a long time, and he’d never really done all that much before Brittany came along. This was going to be a different world for him, and he expected some adventures along the way – but at least hoped things could come out better than they had the last time.

The week went by quickly; he hadn’t done nearly as much as he’d hoped to do, but there was still plenty of time to do it in coming weeks. Besides, his fingers were starting to get itchy about getting the Knick-Knack from Winchester Harbor, and getting to know the boat on his own.

At noon on Friday, Adam called Chuck and asked him to meet at the storage shed in an hour; his bags were packed, such as they were, and he was ready to head north again. The ride from the storage shed where he hid his car to where the pickup was hidden was quick, and soon he was heading north toward the Channel Stop and the Knick-Knack, looking forward to a new future and new adventures.

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