Amanda’s mother Rachel flew into the Jacksonville airport a couple days later, arriving only an hour or so before Jake had to fly back.

Amanda had been looking forward to seeing her mother and showing her the Rag Doll, which was now starting to look like something. Rachel was a little shorter and more slender than her daughter, and she was always a pleasant and outgoing person.

As much as Amanda liked working on the family fishing boats, she was well aware that it wouldn’t have been the slightest bit possible if her mother hadn’t broken the trail for her decades before. Charter fishing had been a pretty much male-oriented thing, and there had been plenty of people who had real doubts about how well a woman would do running a boat and fitting in with the customers. There had been some problems when Rachel had started captaining the Chinook in rotation with her father and grandfather, but she was darn good at it. With her as skipper, the boat could produce fish when every other charter boat up and down the lake, including her father’s Coho, was getting skunked. That reputation got around, and soon the fact that Rachel was a woman wasn’t much of a factor in keeping the boat loaded with customers.

That meant that Amanda had a tough act to follow. Like her mother, she’d started helping out on the boats at an early age, and there was no doubt that she was good at handling the boat, finding fish, and pleasing the customers. But, except for when her father and mother had mostly turned the boat over to her and just worked as the deckhand while carrying the licenses, Amanda had never actually carried the whole responsibility. With fish a little spottier than when her mother had first started running a boat by herself, it presented a pretty big challenge for Amanda to make her mark in the business.

Rachel wanted to see the Rag Doll the first thing, of course, so Amanda took her to the boat yard even before they went to the motel. “It still looks a little rough,” Amanda apologized. “But nothing like the mess it was when I started. Actually, it’s been going pretty well.”

“Well, I’m thinking you’re going to have something there when you get done,” Rachel told her. “It’ll probably be pretty exciting when you get it under sail the first time.”

“I sure hope so,” Amanda sighed. “It seems like there’s still so much to do.” The two of them went over to the boat, where Amanda opened the hatch so her mother could see the progress inside, and meet Beffy, who had been left aboard when Amanda went to the airport.

Of course, Beffy got a little more attention than the beautiful but as yet still incomplete interior. She was a bigger cat now than when Amanda had rescued her from the alligator months before, but she was still a kitten and she still liked to purr when she was petted. She had a very distinctive and enthusiastic one, and like everyone else who wasn’t an absolute cat hater, Beffy won Rachel over in seconds. “Oh, yes, you really are a cute little kitten,” Rachel gushed. “I think you got real lucky when Amanda rescued you. You seem like you’re going to make a great boat cat.”

“She already is,” Amanda told her. “She’s curious like any kitty, but she just doesn’t get close to the edge of the deck and has no desire to get off the boat. I have to carry her back and forth since we’ve been going to the motel. This is home to her, and she’d rather be here than there.”

“How is that going to work when you take her back north?”

“I don’t know. I guess she’s just going to have to get used to it. Maybe we’ll have to find out if she’s a good boat cat on the Chinook.”

“By the way,” Rachel asked, “are we going to see Ron and Cordy tonight?”

“Maybe, maybe not,” Amanda said. “I usually don’t see him on nights he’s had duty, unless it’s something real important. If he does get over this way, it’s usually because he’s going out somewhere with her. He knows you’re coming, though, so either or both of them could show up. Living here in the motel isn’t quite like it was when Beffy and I were living on the boat, since we were always around if he wanted to drop by. He has my cell number, though, and I wouldn’t be surprised to hear from him.”

“I’m looking forward to seeing him, and I’m looking forward to meeting Cordy. You haven’t said a great deal, and what I hear from your father, well, it’s more made me curious than it has given me any real information. She works here in the boatyard, doesn’t she?”

“She does, but I haven’t seen her around today. That means absolutely nothing since she often isn’t working here, but on some boat somewhere else. Now that you mention it, the push boat isn’t here, so it could well be she’s towing someone, or working on some work boat somewhere else.”

“She’s pretty mechanically inclined, isn’t she?”

“Oh, yeah,” Amanda grinned. “If I had a battery in this boat I’d start up the motor so you could hear how she got it to purring. All I can say is Beffy is envious.”

“You say Ron is out with her a lot?”

“I can’t say a lot, since he doesn’t come over every night he has a duty day. But if he has a day off, I usually see them together.”

“I’m looking forward to meeting her. The stories I get about her from you, your father, and Ron don’t exactly meet up very well.”

“Cordy is one of a kind, that’s for sure. She can be very rough and crude, but she’s also very good at what she does, and once you turn her into a friend, which isn’t easy, you know you’ve got a solid and loyal one.”

“I guess I’m just going to have to wait and see for myself.”

By now it was getting late in the day, and there wasn’t much time to get started on something before they had to knock off for the day, so Amanda buttoned the boat back up for the night, and the three of them headed back over to the motel. They left Beffy there while they went out for a quick dinner. While they were there Ron called and said he and Shades were going to be out late on a problem with a navaid, but would try to get over to see his mother after he got off duty the next day.

“It happens,” Amanda shrugged. “One of the things with the Coast Guard is that they don’t pay overtime.”

“Well, we don’t on the boats or at the Channel Stop, either,” Rachel smiled. “I suppose he’s used to it. So are you looking forward to getting back home and getting back to work?”

“I guess I am,” Amanda admitted. “I’m getting kinda sorry I won’t be able to wrap up the Rag Doll this winter, but the calendar pages are turning and there isn’t any stopping them.”

“I know you’ve been having some fun and feel like you’re accomplishing things down here, but it’ll be good to have you back this summer. Things are going to be a little different than we expected them to be.”

“Dad didn’t say anything about that.”

“Well, he doesn’t know what I know. Besides, some of it has happened since he came down here, so he wouldn’t have any way to know about it. Anyway, I’ve had a couple long talks with your grandfather, and it’s beginning to look like he’s going to take a significant part of the summer off.”

“Grandpa?”

“He’s rarely taken a day off on the Coho, unless it’s been storming or something,” Rachel told her. “He likes doing it that way, although it gets to be a serious drag at times, or at least would for me. That’s why I like the way we change off, we don’t get stale that way.”

“It has its points,” Amanda conceded. “But what brought this on?”

“Lots of things adding up, or maybe just coming together. I know part of it is that he and Barb want to get out and do some things and go some places there’s no going to in the winter. I mean, national parks and that sort of thing. They’ve even been talking about a motor home, although it hasn’t happened yet. Besides, he could be in better health, although there isn’t anything really wrong with him that I know about. Me, I think they both could use the break.”

“You’re probably right. But what happens with the Coho?”

“That’s why we’re all looking forward to your being back this summer. Have you been over to the Coast Guard to arrange for your six-pack license yet?”

“I did it one day last month. It was raining and I didn’t feel like messing with the boat that much. Everybody tells me it’s a big deal to go through all the paperwork, but I had all the documentation and stuff. I don’t think it took half an hour to go through it.”

“Good, since it’s a sure thing that you’re going to be running a boat this summer, and by that I don’t mean like we did it last fall with your father or me looking over your shoulder. We need to talk to your father about how we’re going to handle it, and we probably won’t work it all out until the season gets going, but we’re going to be running both boats among the three of us, and the Channel Stop besides.”

“We can’t do all that by ourselves.”

“I agree. There’s no way we can manage it. I can come up with some summer help for the Channel Stop, we’ve had to do that for years, but we’re going to need at least one full-time deckhand, or better, two part-time ones. I haven’t started looking yet since it’s only now just becoming clear that this is going to happen at all, and I need to have a long talk with your father about it. He’ll probably have an angle on it that I haven’t thought about; he usually does. So don’t get any big ideas about staying down here and working on the Rag Doll this summer, then sailing off with it. We’re going to need you too badly at home, since we can’t count on your grandfather at all, except maybe in an emergency if he’s around at all.”

“I’ll be there,” Amanda replied. This was a little different than she had been expecting. With her new license, she’d been more or less expecting to just be a relief captain on one of the boats, most likely the Chinook; most of the time she’d still be just a deckhand. Well, that wasn’t going to happen! The odds were that she’d be out as skipper of one of the boats two days out of three, and maybe more!

On top of that, her mother’s announcement just about totally ended any fantasies she’d had about sailing off with Adam in the Moonshadow. That had never been likely, just something to kick around, although it sure looked like an interesting trip. It just wasn’t going to happen now, at least not for her, unless maybe some emergency came up and someone had to break away for a few days to deal with it – and that was something she didn’t want to wish on Adam, anyway.

Perhaps in another year, if her grandfather wanted to get back to running the Coho like he’d done all of her life, she might be able to break free and do something in northern waters with the Rag Doll. But it wasn’t likely to happen soon even though fixing up the Rag Doll and living down here all winter hadn’t exactly broken her bank account. In fact, she was well ahead of her budget thanks to the availability of the Moonshadow’s motor and the gear she’d stripped off the Sea Bright. She still faced some expenses to finish up the job, and some of them were going to be steep. She didn’t have a bit of electronics for the boat yet, and good stuff would run her some money. Then she’d have to dip into her account just to live on the boat, too. It looked do-able at this distance, but she’d have to do some serious rebuilding of the account if she were going to take off two winters and a summer.

Still, it would be nice to sail into Blanche Tickle just to show Mary that she had indeed taken after her half-brother a little. But now, it seemed several years away if it even could happen at all. “I’ll be there,” Amanda repeated to her mother.

It was a little strange to be sharing the motel room with her mother, rather than with her father, if for no more reason than her mother didn’t snore anywhere near as badly. They got up early the next morning – it was the usual thing among the Lewis family, winter or not – and Amanda and Rachel left Beffy behind with her cat food in the motel room while they headed over to Earlene’s Kitchen for breakfast.

Cordy walked in shortly after the two of them had sat down at a table for four, so naturally came over and joined them. Amanda made the introductions realizing that Cordy and her mother were eyeing each other pretty closely. She sort of hoped that Cordy would be on her good behavior for first impressions – or maybe not too; maybe her mother ought to see Cordy’s rough side early on so there would be no illusions. But at least the initial introduction went well.

“So,” Amanda asked, “did you happen to hear from Ron last night? All I heard was that he was working late because of some trouble with a navaid.”

“Yeah, he called me about midnight,” Cordy reported. “Got me up out of a sound sleep, too. It seems some dumb bozo managed to run some huge damn cruise ship over some lighted buoy. Apparently it didn’t hurt the cruise ship much and they managed to avoid getting the buoy’s anchor chain mixed up with one of the props, but it sure didn’t do the buoy no damn good.”

“So I suppose you sat up and talked about it for an hour or two,” Amanda smirked.

“Well, not an hour or two but it went a little later than it probably should have for both of us. I’ve still got that engine on the crane float up the harbor that needs to get fixed, and they ain’t done working on the buoy that got fucked up yet.”

Amanda could see that Cordy wasn’t putting on any special effort to impress Ron’s mother – she was just being her normal self, for better or worse. “Does that happen often?” Rachel asked.

“The crane float? All the time. The dumb bozos who own it just won’t agree that it’s a piece of shit, and that it needs some serious work, not to just get patched up again and again. But Pa and I will be over there trying to tickle it back to life again today. There ain’t nothing wrong with it that couldn’t be cured by a scrap dealer.”

“I meant the buoy, and Ron having to work late.”

“It’s surprising it doesn’t happen more often,” Cordy said. “They ain’t always in by five but they try to be. But the cruise ships, they’re so damn big they think everything ought to get out of their way, even if it’s an anchored buoy.”

“I’ve often been tempted to take a short cruise on one,” Rachel smirked. “I mean, just to see how the other half lives.”

Cordy shrugged and shook her head. “I suppose some people think it’s great, or else they wouldn’t have people lining up to take those trips. It might even be fun for me if Ron went with me. A couple days of eating too much, dancing too much, and hanging around a pool while wearing nothing much might be interesting, but I think it’d get old after a while.”

“I suppose,” Rachel giggled. “I’ll bet it would only be two or three days before I’d want to be trolling a spoon over the stern and seeing what hit it. I mean, being out on all that water and not doing any fishing seems like something of a waste to me.”

“I dunno,” Cordy replied. “I know people who fish, I mean, besides you two, of course. I work on fish boats now and then but it’s just to fix them. A couple times I’ve thought about seeing if I could go with one for a trip or two, but it strikes me as too much smell of dead fish.”

“Fortunately we don’t get much of that. And we’re usually only out for a few hours,” Rachel said. It seemed to Amanda that her mother wasn’t finding out what she wanted to know about Cordy – or maybe she was, who knew? In any event, Rachel changed her tactics a little. “So I’m told you’ve been hanging out with my son a bit.”

“Oh, yeah,” Cordy grinned. “He’s actually pretty cool for a Coastie. Every now and then I run into one who thinks that blue suit makes him some kind of god, but Ron ain’t like that. Could be he works for a living, and his job ain’t to make a pain in the ass of himself. I’m sorta glad Amanda put him and me together. We’ve been having some good times, had a few beers now and then, even some lovey-dovey stuff. It’s been more than a little fun, and I expect we’ll be having some more of it. We’ve mostly been farting around up to this point, but I wouldn’t mind it if we managed to get a little more hot and heavy.”

The conversation went on for the next half hour or so while they had breakfast. Cordy was just being Cordy, but at least she and Rachel were getting acquainted and nobody seemed interested in getting out the gutting knives. Amanda was a little surprised that her mother took so well to her friend, but then she rationalized that her mother was good at putting on a friendly face to customers, and this probably fell into the same category.

Eventually Cordy had to go to work on the crane float with her father, and for that matter there was work to do on the Rag Doll as well. “I see what you mean when you say she’s one of a kind,” Rachel laughed as soon as she and Amanda were in the car.

“Cordy tends to be Cordy and doesn’t try to pretend she’s not,” Amanda replied honestly. “She was being herself this morning, and not going out of the way to try and put on any act to make a good impression on you. She can clean up pretty well and she can even watch her language if she wants to, but usually she doesn’t bother. It doesn’t really seem like her when she does do it.”

“She is a little rough-cut, as you said, but I think that represents an honesty of character that I find impressive,” Rachel smiled, then let out a sigh. “I will admit, I have some difficulty imagining her making a life with Ron, but in a way he could do a whole lot worse, too. It’ll be interesting to see what happens.”

“I think so, too,” Amanda agreed. “I have to admit I think that my being here has sort of held them back a little. It would be nice to have an idea of what they’re really up to while we’re all back up north, but maybe I don’t want to know, either.”

“I have to ask, what about you and this Zack?”

“Zack is a nice guy, and he’s fun to hang out with sometimes, but it’s not going anywhere. It’ll all be over with when I head back north.”

“That’s something of a shame,” Rachel shook her head.

“Maybe not. If things were going to get serious with him it could screw up my being skipper of one of the boats, next summer or whenever. I have to think about first things first, and right at the moment getting together with some guy is not near the head of my priority list. In a few years, maybe, but not now.”

They swung back by the motel to pick up Beffy – it was a little inconvenient but had to be done, at least while Amanda was staying at the motel, which would end when her mother went back north. It was still fun to have Beffy around while they worked on the boat, although they had to be a little more careful than normal since they were doing a lot of painting, and natural kitten curiosity could easily lead to a serious mess.

But still, it felt good to Amanda to be working with her mother again. They often worked together at the Channel Stop or out on the Chinook, but often when that happened there wasn’t the chance for a good leisurely sit-down chat that made the project go quickly. There were several places that were going to need multiple coats of varnish, but slowly they started to look better and better. Even though the interior of the boat wouldn’t be finished until some details were added next fall, it was really starting to look like something. Amanda was looking forward to moving back onto the boat, since it really seemed like a different place than the dumpy hole she’d occupied for the last couple of months of the year.

The next night, Amanda and her mother actually managed to have dinner with Ron and Cordy; they went to a nice place, and Cordy actually dressed up a little. However, it was perfectly clear to both mother and daughter that Ron and Cordy were a couple now, no matter how close they actually were. Amanda was beginning to suspect more and more that someday in the future she might have a sister-in-law who knew her way around work-boat engines. While she liked Cordy, there was a part of her that wondered how she really felt about it.

Apparently her mother was starting to have some of the same suspicions. “I suppose Cordy is all right, and as you said, it appears she’s as honest as the day is long,” Rachel commented one day while she had a varnish brush in her hand on the Rag Doll. “I can’t say that I’m totally thrilled about the prospects of her and Ron, but when you get right down to it, I guess I don’t have a lot to say about it. It’s their decision to make, not ours or yours.”

It was several days before Rachel got to meet Zack – his duty schedule was screwy, as normal – but she seemed to like the guy. He worked beside them for a while and later they went out for a long, leisurely dinner. Once again, Amanda thought it was a shame that things didn’t seem to be going anywhere with him, but his natural shyness and whatever in his past he was covering up seemed to keep them at the same “just friends” level they’d had for months.

Rachel wound up sensing many of the things about Zack that Amanda had pointed out. “He might make a pretty nice guy for you,” she told Amanda once. “But if the fire isn’t there, the fire just isn’t there.” She didn’t say anything that Amanda hadn’t felt for some time.

Rachel wound up staying with Amanda for a couple of weeks. They didn’t just work on the Rag Doll; Ron and Cordy took a day to show them around Jacksonville, and they even made another beach run – ocean swimming in January was just about as big a thrill as it had been in December, at least for Rachel and Amanda. They got out to dinner several times, a couple of times with Zack along.

It seemed like it was all too soon before Amanda loaded her stuff up and moved back into the Rag Doll with Beffy. It was a different place than it had been before, brighter, cleaner, more comfortable. Beffy even had a place for her litter box on the bottom of what had once been the hanging locker, and it didn’t take her long to find it. It had been a good couple of weeks and Amanda was sad to have them over with.

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