It seemed a little anticlimactic to have to go out in the Knick-Knack by himself the next day. Adam had really enjoyed sailing with Carolyn on the two occasions she’d been with him, and having someone along was more fun than going by himself. He also thought he might be learning more by having someone with him, too.

With that thought in mind, when he got home that evening he called Beverly to see if she might want to go out with him the next day. “Sure,” she replied. “I had a tough day at a sale today and I could stand the relaxation.” They agreed to meet at nine the next morning at Frenchtown Harbor; he agreed to pack a lunch and bring a full cooler.

He was down at the Knick-Knack by nine, and even had the cooler loaded aboard the boat. He busied himself with getting-ready chores like getting the sail cover off the main and hanking on the jib while he waited for her to show up, which wasn’t until close to ten, wearing blue shorts and a white blouse in anticipation of a warm day. “I’m sorry I’m late,” she told him. “I got a bad start and then there was an accident that slowed things up.”

“It happens,” he shrugged. “You’re here, and that’s the important part. Let’s get going.”

“Fine with me,” she said. “Adam, I have to tell you I don’t know much about sailboats.”

“In one way, there’s not a lot to know,” he said. “You have some experience aboard boats, and that’ll count for something. There may be the odd times I’ll have to ask you to do something, but I can handle most things by myself.”

“That’s good to know,” she said. “I hate to admit it, but I’m something of a klutz around boats, but I suppose that’s at least partly because I never get to do much around them. Jack always wanted to do everything by himself. Where are we going today?”

“Not far,” he said. “I figured that since today is your first time on a sailboat we might as well not push too hard. Let’s just head up toward Grosse Ile and see if we get that far. Probably not, but it’s a direction to go.”

Soon Adam had the Honda running – the channel into the harbor was so narrow he didn’t think he’d want to try to sail it in the best of conditions. It didn’t take long to get out of the harbor, and soon he had the motor off and the sails up. The wind was somewhat behind them, so it was a quiet ride. “It seems strange with no motor,” she commented.

“No motor is the general idea,” he said. “We’re out here sailing because we want to sail. You run a motor because you want to get somewhere.”

Once Beverly got used to the idea of no motor running, she started to get used to sailing, especially the relative quiet. She commented that it made it nice for talking, and they did a lot of it. Adam purposely kept off the topic of the sale of his father’s things; they talked about it enough when they were working on the project. And, he kept off the topic of Brittany; while she knew he was divorced, it still wasn’t something he wanted to dwell on. That still left a lot to talk about, at least partly because she wasn’t as reticent about her ex-husband.

It turned out that Jack was a ways in the past – something like ten years, if he made it out correctly. He had indeed liked going down to Put-In-Bay and drinking, but then it seemed like he liked going almost anywhere and drinking. The drinking had gotten worse and worse until she’d finally had enough and left him. She’d started her estate sale business soon afterwards, since she hadn’t had to work until then, although she had some related background that helped her get going with it.

But she’d run across some interesting people in her business, and had some stories to tell, some funny, some poignant. “It seems strange for a person to put much of a lifetime into collecting things, well, like your father did, and then when they die, all that enjoyment gets sold to the highest bidder to start things all over again. But someone has to do the deed.”

“Yeah, Dad got a lot of fun out of hunting stuff down and collecting it,” he agreed. “But he never put much thought into what was going to happen to it when he was gone, at least as far as I can tell. I like to think I’ve learned a few things from that.”

“Like what?”

“Well, like I’m not one for collecting things to own them,” he said. “I mean, I bought this boat for a purpose, which is to learn how to sail and to have some fun with it. When I’m not using it anymore, I plan to get rid of it. When Brittany and I broke up, I had to limit the things I owned, and I think I’m better for it. I mean, you see how small this boat is. If I ever get to take off and go cruising, I’m not going to be able to take a lot of stuff with me, so maybe there’s no point in having a lot of stuff in the first place.”

“Do you really plan on taking off and going cruising for an extended period sometime?”

“I can’t say as I’m planning on it since it’s a ways off yet. Not aboard this boat, for sure. Let’s just say I’m hoping, but there’s a good chance it could work out.”

“It sounds like fun,” she said. “But I’m not sure I could do it. I’ve come to enjoy the estate disposal business and I’m not sure I could give it up. I could probably break free for a week or two if I had to, but it would have to be planned well in advance, and things always come up.”

“I suppose,” he said. “But don’t you ever get the desire to just throw everything overboard and sail away?”

“Well, maybe a little, but I don’t think I could do it. I like what I’m doing and don’t think I’d want to change. Just sailing day after day, well, it seems like it could get a little dull after a while.”

They had lunch out on the water, but they didn’t get to Grosse Ile before the time was such they had to turn around and head back toward Frenchtown Harbor. This was more into the wind, so it was somewhat more exciting; it seemed like the boat was going faster, and it threw more spray. “All right,” she said as they worked their way back down the coast. “I’m beginning to see why you like sailing. This is a lot more exciting than when we were going the other way.”

It was late in the afternoon before they pulled back into the slip. “Thanks for inviting me along, Adam,” she told him. “I had a great time, and I think I learned something about sailing. Maybe we’ll have to try it again sometime.”

“It could be fun,” he told her. “As far as sailing is concerned, I don’t get to plan a long ways ahead, but don’t be surprised to get a phone call some time.”

“Will I be seeing you this week at your father’s house? I may not be there much, I have a couple other irons in the fire, too.”

“I’ll probably be there in the afternoons one or two days this week, but it’s hard to tell. There’s still a lot of crap to go through.”

“Yes, there is, but that’s part of the business, too. By the way, thanks for introducing me to Benita. When we get through with your father’s things, I’m thinking I may hire her. She has a talent for dealing with collections.”

“I hope you do. She was with my father for a long time and was very loyal to him. I know she’s been worrying about what comes next.”

Adam offered to take Beverly to dinner at a little restaurant not far from the marina, but she said she’d been there and it wasn’t very good. “I think I’d just better head back. I’ll see you later in the week.”

“Suit yourself,” he said. “See you next time.”

He finished buttoning up the Knick-Knack, and decided to head over to the restaurant anyway. It turned out she was right; it wasn’t very good, but the beer was cold and the waitress was friendly, which made up for other deficiencies.

While he sat drinking the cold one and waiting on his dinner, he thought about Beverly a bit. She was a nice woman, and friendly – but he had the impression that she wasn’t a prospect for a serious relationship. She was too wrapped up in her career, which she clearly loved, and the idea of doing a long cruise with no planned end didn’t seem to warm her. As far as that went, she seemed like more of a rider, a passenger rather than a sailor, and that just didn’t fit into his plans.

Well, no loss, he thought. She’s a nice enough woman, clearly smart and ambitious; it would be fun to take her sailing again sometime, but for going beyond that . . . she wasn’t exactly lighting his fire. But there was no rush; his plans for cruising might not come to fruition, anyway, and if he did manage to do it, it wasn’t an absolute necessity that he’d have to have someone with him. He expected to have to do some looking to find who he was looking for, and while Beverly might be fun, he was pretty sure she wasn’t that person.

He hadn’t expected it to be easy, anyway. But at least he wasn’t as agonizingly shy with women as he had been before Brittany came along, and he wasn’t sure whether that was her doing or not.

Tuesday morning it was back to work. It turned out that Ford had reacted very promisingly toward the proposal that Bob had worked out; it wasn’t quite a done deal yet but was pretty close. As always with new jobs, it was going to involve some shuffling around to make everything work, and this one would require some new machinery. It wasn’t anything elaborate, but tightened up the time issue considerably. He spent much of the morning going over the work Bob had done on the proposal, but really couldn’t find anything to fault about it. So far, Bob was working out well, and there was no reason to think it would be any different when the management reshuffle was completed.

It had been several days since he’d tried to call Brittany. It hadn’t seemed like an imperative thing, but he was curious to find out a little more about what she was up to – and whether what she said would affect Mary and Matty. He hemmed and hawed around about it for quite a while, but that evening decided to give her a call, making a mental note to not mention Carolyn at all.

This time she answered. “Adam!” she said in surprise when she heard his voice. “I’ve been thinking about trying to call you. I have some news for you.”

“I thought I’d check in,” he replied neutrally. “Just curious to find out how you were.”

“Getting better, I think,” she told him. “Dr. Preble has me on some medications that are helping a lot.” She hesitated for a moment and said. “Look, I need to apologize to you. I realize I was awful hyper back toward the end of when we were together.”

“If you realize that, then you’re gaining some ground,” he replied supportively. “So what’s the news?”

“I had an offer on the house, and it’s a good one,” she said. “It’s actually a little better than I hoped I would get. I’m going to be buying a small house in Wychbold, near my folks’ place. Mom and Dad, well, they’re getting to the point where they can’t get around very well anymore, and I thought it would be a good idea if I was a little closer to them. I’ve been spending a lot of time there anyway.”

All that pretty much substantiated what he’d heard from Lisa and Carolyn, but he didn’t want to say that. “That’s probably a good idea,” he said. “Having something to do beats having nothing to do. How soon are you going to be moving?”

“I’m not real sure. The deal isn’t complete yet, but it could be in a couple months. But look, what I needed to ask you was if there’s anything you need from the house.”

“Nothing I can think of,” he said. “I think I have more or less what I want from there. If you come across something of mine you don’t want, throw it away or give it to charity, but I don’t think there’s much.”

“All right, that simplifies things,” she told him. “Look, I know you don’t want to tell me much, and maybe you have your reasons for it, but I’m always wondering how Matthew Junior is doing.”

“Doing fine, as far as I know. I don’t hear a lot, but I’ve been in communication with his mother a little. Everything seems to be fine, and she says he’s growing like a weed.” There was more he could have said – much more – but it would reveal just how much he knew, and that he did in fact know where Mary and Matty were. So it was best to not go into detail.

“I still would like to see him some time. I, well, uh, I’d like to see him a lot more. He is my grandson, you know.”

“I wouldn’t mind seeing him myself,” he said. “Look, I don’t want to get negative, but I think you know why Mary is not really excited about the prospect of you seeing him. You really pissed her off, Brittany.”

“I know,” she sighed. “And I can’t really blame anyone but myself. I’d just like to see him, and find out how he is, and if he’s being properly cared for. Things like that. I’d like to, well, be more involved with him. I mean, what good is it being a grandmother if I can’t spoil my grandson?”

“He’s still a little young to do a lot of spoiling, from what I hear. I mean, he’s not even two yet.”

“I know, and I’ve already missed him being a baby. I’m missing out entirely. Can’t you work out some way I could see him?”

Adam thought quick, but he thought hard. Brittany certainly sounded like she was being reasonable about it, which was something of a surprise. He’d said right along that he might be willing to work out a brief meeting in a neutral location if he thought Brittany might be reasonable toward Mary. From the sound of this discussion that might be the case – even though he realized that she had yet to mention Mary directly, and that might be telling him something, too.

“Brittany, I can’t promise anything. It’s not my decision to make. It’s Mary’s. About all I can do is raise the idea with her when she gets in touch with me again, and that might not be for a while. But I have to tell you this much: if I can talk her into letting you meet the boy and the meeting doesn’t go well, I probably won’t be able to talk her into it again. That means you have some making up with her to do, and don’t expect it to be easy.”

“Oh, Adam! Do you really think you can?”

“No promises,” he said. “All I can do is ask and it may not be for a while. There’s a good chance Mary will say no, and that’s her right.”

“I’d be really grateful if you could at least arrange for me to see him once. I want to at least see him and touch him and know he’s real.”

“So would I, Brittany. So would I. So what’s the deal on this new house?”

“Well, it’s small, but should be easy to take care of. I don’t really want to move in with my folks, but I think I need to be close . . .”

They talked for a few more minutes about her plans to move to Wychbold, but he didn’t pull a great deal out of it. Finally they ran out of things to talk about.

After the call was over with, Adam found himself with much to think about. The call with Brittany was about as reasonable as she had sounded toward him in years. He was impressed with the fact that she wasn’t demanding for him to arrange to see Matty; in fact, she was begging, and that was something that was just about unheard of. Maybe it was a good sign.

On the other hand, she never did mention Mary by name, or even refer to her, except in a direct response to something he’d said. He couldn’t help but think that she still thought of Mary as a nonentity, an obstacle to be brushed aside, although that had been the only overt evidence of it in her call.

So, all in all, maybe things were improving a little. The decision to allow Brittany to meet Matty was not his, after all; it was Mary’s, although he was pretty sure she’d go along with what he recommended. A brief meeting in a neutral location that wouldn’t give Brittany any inkling of where Matty and Mary lived was a possibility, but it still might not be the right thing to do. Right now, he wasn’t sure what he would suggest, but had a hunch it might be a good idea to put it off for a while longer, until he could get a better feeling of what was really going on with her. It would only come after a long talk with Mary, and he didn’t plan that anytime soon.

Maybe a second opinion wouldn’t hurt, he thought. Carolyn seemed to have some contact with Brittany, and that might prove to be a factor in his thinking. Carolyn knew something of the problem, and why he was reluctant to allow Brittany to know where Mary and Matty were; she may have suspected that he knew more than he was telling her, but she also knew he had his reasons for doing so.

Well, he’d be seeing Carolyn in a few days. Maybe he could explore it a little with her.

Adam got up very early on Saturday morning, since he had a few things he wanted to do before Carolyn arrived. The first thing on the list was a stop at a supermarket; he needed to take enough food for the weekend. The kind of canned meals he’d had the night he’d gone down to North Maumee Bay might have been all right for bachelor cooking, but he felt he ought to have something a little better for her. It wasn’t that he planned to do anything elaborate, but he felt that at least some of their meals ought to not come from a can. He wound up filling two coolers with ice, food, soft drinks, and a few beers; it would be more than enough for the weekend, but the weather report called for it to be hot and he figured it would be better to have too much than too little.

He made it down to the boat with plenty of time to spare, got the sail covers off, and spent some time cleaning things up. He hadn’t spent much time in the cabin since he’d gotten the Knick-Knack, and things had accumulated there that needed to be put back where they belonged, along with a general cleaning. Not all of it was easy; while there was more room in the Knick-Knack’s cabin than there was in the Mary Sue’s, he still couldn’t stand upright in it. While it was all right for now, it wasn’t something he wanted to deal with in the long run. He was already beginning to see that the boat had its limitations, and he felt he’d be looking for a bigger boat come fall; the yearning to actually get out and go somewhere now was stronger than ever.

Carolyn showed up a little early, looking eager to get going, wearing shorts and a T-shirt, and carrying a small barrel bag. “So are we heading for Put-In-Bay?” she asked.

“I’d like to hope so, but we may not make it that far. The wind is supposed to be pretty light today, and we may not be able to go very fast.”

“If we don’t, I could stay an extra day if I had to. I mean, school is out and I’m not doing much of anything.”

“I’m not going to rule it out, but I really ought to be back at the office Monday morning. I suppose if we get stuck someplace I could call in, though.”

They weren’t long in getting under way. Once again, Adam ran out the channel on motor power, but once they were outside, he shut it off and got the sails up. The weather forecasts were right; there wasn’t a lot of wind out there, and they were mostly creeping along at something under two knots, at least according to the portable GPS. “It’s going to take all day to get there at this rate, and then some,” he told her after a while. “Put-In-Bay is only about thirty-five miles from here, but it’d be after dark when we get there.”

“That’s fine. The general idea is to be out sailing, after all.”

“Well, true,” he said. “But I’ve never been there before and I don’t want to have to enter a strange harbor after dark. Maybe it’ll perk up some as the day progresses, though. I know this boat has a big drifter sail aboard, but I’ve never flown it. Maybe it’d help a bit.”

Flying the drifter needed a little figuring out, but it was simple once he did – and the bigger sail helped them move along a little better. It was hot out there in the relatively still air. At one point, Carolyn went into the cabin, and came out a few minutes later wearing a rather diminutive bikini for a woman her age. “I hope you don’t think this is overdoing it,” she said. “I don’t exactly have the body of a teenager these days.”

“Looks good to me,” he said, taking in the view. “After all, neither of us are teenagers anymore.”

As the afternoon wore on, though, it started to become clear that they still weren’t going to be making it in to Put-In-Bay before dark. “As I see it, we have two choices,” he told Carolyn. “We can fire up the outboard to help us along, or we can stop along the way. See that island up ahead and off to starboard a little?”

“I see it. Can we stop there?”

“That’s what I’m thinking. That’s West Sister Island. I sailed around it a few weeks ago. We can’t land there as it’s a designated wilderness area, and it’s supposed to be a nasty, overgrown place filled with poison ivy. But there’s no reason we can’t anchor overnight in the lee of the island, and it’ll probably be a lot quieter than Put-In-Bay on a Saturday night. It’s supposed to be party central there on weekends, anyway.”

“You’ve pretty well got me sold on the idea already.”

It still took another hour to get behind the island. If the lake was flat and dead before, it really was now, and they were only inching their way along until they were squarely behind the island. “I guess this is home for the night,” he told her as he went to put the anchor down.

“Boy, there isn’t a lot out here, is there?”

“No, it’s pretty empty. There were some boats out here fishing for walleye when I went around the island the last time, but I don’t see anyone now. We’ll be all right here as long as the weather doesn’t change, and it’s not supposed to very much.”

It was quiet out there, and while they could see power boats going by in the distance, no one got close. They took advantage of the quiet to cook dinner – not a lot of cooking was involved, and Adam did the work; they ate it in the cockpit, talking about one thing and another. Being near the longest day of the year, it was around nine before the sun set and it would be longer before it got dark. At least now it was cooling off. “I suppose we’d better think about turning in for the night,” he suggested finally. “If we decide to head back tomorrow it could still be a long haul and we may have to use the outboard for some of it.”

“We could go on to Put-In-Bay,” she suggested. “But it could keep for another weekend, too. I kind of like the idea of spending the night next to a deserted island.”

“I do, too,” he agreed. “Go ahead and get ready for bed.”

“I don’t need a lot of getting ready,” she said, taking a look around to see that no one was watching, then unhooked the bikini top and slid it off. The bottoms followed quickly; in an instant she was standing there in the nude. “Adam,” she said. “We don’t have to do it if you don’t want to, but I’d just as soon not spend the night in a bunk by myself.”

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