Adam wound up spending a full week with Mary and Matty. They went sailing one more time on the Mary Sue, this time the other way up the coast, and then just more for the joy of being out and sailing rather than to actually go anywhere. Adam helped out with the cleaning and fixing up of the rental cabins, and on a couple days some of the “b’ys” from the settlement came by to help. It was good to talk with them, to get a feeling for what their lives were like – far different from his.

A week was about all Adam dared to stay in Blanche Tickle. He would have liked to have stayed longer, but there were things that had to be done at home, both at Caldwell-Deerfield and in working on his father’s estate sale.

Finally there wasn’t much he could do about putting off his departure any longer: he had to go, and that was that. Mary knew it was coming, of course, and said it was a shame he had to go so soon, but she understood he had things to do.

On the final morning he loaded his meager baggage into the pickup as she and Matty stood watching. “Mary, I really enjoyed myself and wish I could have stayed longer,” he told her. “And I want to come back and see you again. What with everything I have going on at home, I’m afraid it won’t be until fall, but you’re going to have your houses filled with your artist people for most of the summer anyway.”

“If ye can make it up here in the summer, then do it,” she told him. “The houses may be full but there’ll be room on the couch if it comes ta that. They’re pretty interestin’ people an’ havin’ them here changes things a mite. Ye might find yourself interested in some of the stuff they’re doin’.”

“I can’t make any promises,” he told her. “Besides, if I’m going to be doing anything about getting a boat this year it’ll have to be in the next few months. But I will give some thought to it. It’s a long haul up here, especially if I continue to have to drive it, but you never know what’s going to happen. But maybe next time I won’t be so tight for time and I’ll be able to stay a while longer.”

“I’d be lovin’ ta have ye,” she smiled. “So don’t be a stranger.”

“Oh, I’ll be back sometime. This is a wonderful place, Mary, and it’s made me think a bit about my place in the world. On top of that, it’s been the perfect getaway. I really needed the break, Mary, and this has been the perfect place. I’m just glad you were willing to have me.”

“Aw, there’ll always be room for ye,” she smiled. “Like I said, don’t be a stranger.”

It was very hard to get in the pickup, to drive away from the settlement. He really would liked to have stayed longer; in fact, more than once, he’d thought about telling Mary that if another house were to become available, he might like to buy it – but he hadn’t said it. While he liked the place, liked the people, and especially liked Mary, he’d also come to the realization that he was a stranger there, a visitor – and that he always would be. These were not his people, and their life was not his. At least he had a connection there, and intended to enjoy it, but hoped that he wouldn’t do it so much as to abuse it. While it was a place he liked very much indeed, it wasn’t his place, and he knew it.

He still faced what could be six days’ worth of travel to get back home – he thought he might be able to squeeze it down to five but didn’t want to plan on it. He had five or six days to reflect on his week there, to put a few things in perspective, and maybe to make some decisions – and plenty of time to ponder them as he drove the pickup westward.

One of the things that had given him much food for thought was how much he’d enjoyed being with Mary the last few days. Matt had certainly gotten lucky with her! Especially comparing it to the memory of his life with Brittany, Mary was very easy-going, very laid-back – but very capable of doing what needed to be done, competent without being obnoxious about it. She had been a joy to be with, and even on the times that the one-and-a-half-year-old Matty had been making a fuss she never got worked up about it. The kid was going to have a great mother, that was for sure.

In a way, he thought it was a little sad that there was so much age difference between Mary and him. It was fun to toy with the idea of perhaps getting friendlier with her, maybe even making a life with her – but it was only an idea to toy with, since there were any number of reasons he could see why it would never work. Aside from the age difference, which would bother him, the fact remained that she was a girl from Blanche Tickle, and they lived in two different worlds. Mary and Matt had been able to overcome the differences, he mused, partly because of the fact that they shared a lot of things from much the same viewpoint, as Mary had said.

But when you got right down to it, while he could appreciate Mary’s view of things, even sympathize with them, he and Mary could never be equals in the way that she and Matt had been, and there was more than age involved. He simply approached things differently, and that was that. If they were to get together, he would tend to be running things, and not approach them as equals – and the road to ruin lay down that path. And, face it, there were considerable cultural differences. Mary and Matt had been able to overcome them, at least partly due to their youth. While Mary may have seen more of the world than he had, it was still pretty much from the same viewpoint, that of a cruiser passing through. He had vastly more personal experience, and on a much different cultural level; it hardly seemed possible that they could overcome them.

No, he realized on a gut level, without thinking very much about it, they could stay friends only if they didn’t get too close. He’d have to remain Matty’s grandfather, and Mary’s father-in-law, maybe a little bit foster father but not too much. In considering how relaxed and enjoyable the week had been it was hard to admit to, but there it was. The way things were was not broken, so there was no need to fix them.

But that still begged the question he’d posed himself at Ballycotton Cove: he’d never had a relationship like Matt and Mary had shared, and had never come close to it, especially not with Brittany. It was not too late to hope for something like that, but he would have to start to do at least a little about it, rather than just notice it as a problem.

On the other hand, he didn’t feel like he needed to rush into something for the sake of doing it. After all, he’d rushed into marriage with Brittany, whether it had been against his better judgment or not, and he’d paid the price for far too long. While he realized that his life would be less interesting without a companion, it would be considerably less interesting with the wrong one. Again, Matt showed him the way: he and Mary had lived together successfully without benefit of marriage for more than two years, and if she hadn’t gotten pregnant and he hadn’t gotten leukemia, they’d probably still be doing it today.

Whatever happened, Adam resolved that he wasn’t going to buy the cow without trying the milk first – and trying a lot of it. Having a companion didn’t necessarily mean getting married, and it offered several pitfalls. He felt he’d learned his lesson from that.

But realistically, from where he was now, there wasn’t much he could do except to keep his eyes open and pursue any good opportunities that happened to come along. If they developed into something, fine; if they didn’t, well, maybe that was fine, too. It was clear that he was going to have to come up with a woman who had some taste for adventure, for getting out and doing new things; perhaps they could build on each other.

Of course, that led directly to the question of his buying a boat, and that was actually something of a relief to him after thinking about women for so long. If there had been any question, Mary taking him sailing on the Mary Sue pretty well settled it: he wanted to do more sailing, and do some exploring in the process.

The problem there was that he didn’t feel experienced enough yet to buy a boat and take it out by himself. He felt he could handle most of the routine things about sailing one, but when things went wrong, his experience was lacking and he knew it. Plus, there was a good deal about maintaining a boat that he didn’t know, and it needed to be learned. While he’d gotten good experience sailing with Jake and others on the Pixie, it wasn’t fair to continue to lean on them. Yet, the yearning was there, and so was the sailing season; the next four months were the best time of the year to be sailing on the Great Lakes, and if he didn’t do anything the season would pass him by.

He flipped the question over in his mind for a couple hundred kilometers – it was Canada, after all – of wild, forested Newfoundland backcountry and didn’t come out any closer to an answer than he had been. The only thing that came to mind was that he needed to talk the whole thing over with Jake, whose advice on nautical affairs was just about as good as gold as far as Adam was concerned. And probably the sooner the better.

While riding the Caribou back to Nova Scotia, he happened to glance at a map of Canada. After looking at it a bit he realized that if he changed his route at Montreal on the way back, he could go a couple hundred miles out of his way, go around the north side of Lake Huron, then south to Jake’s. It was the reverse of the route Matt and Mary had taken to go from Winchester Harbor to Blanche Tickle. It might cost him an extra day or two, but a day or two more away from the company probably wouldn’t hurt anything – at least, he hoped it wouldn’t; if it did, he hadn’t left as good a management team in place as he thought he had. Besides, it was new country to see, so it didn’t take him long to make up his mind on that idea.

That got him to thinking about Caldwell-Deerfield. Selling out was certainly an option, and one he’d considered for years, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to do it right now.

The big drawback was that the auto industry was still soft. It wasn’t as bad as it had been two years before, when the government bailouts had been needed, but it also meant that the value of secondary suppliers like Caldwell-Deerfield was down. It was recovering, from what Adam could see, but it could be expected to recover more in the next few years if the auto industry was on the way back.

What that meant in practical terms was that if he held onto the company for the next few years, he might be in a position to gain a lot of money. It was a gamble, of course, but it could be a good one to make. But holding onto it meant keeping an eye on it, making sure that its value increased, that good decisions were made that would help it grow and be strong.

Besides, he had some reservations about just turning his back on it and walking away, no matter the amount of money involved. He had been part of the company, and the company part of him for so long that it would be a difficult and abrupt change of life. While he had nebulous plans to go sailing or do other such things, nothing was set in stone. In the back of his head he thought he might be a little lost without the rock of the company to hold on to. Perhaps it would be best to wean himself away from it a little at a time while he re-ordered his life in the process.

After all, he had a good management team – he had to believe it or he wouldn’t have taken this trip at all. Perhaps the best thing to do was to have them take over the bulk of the routine things, while he spent time away from the company and only concentrated on major issues like contract negotiations and bidding on new jobs.

It was at least worth a try, and would free up his time considerably. If he wanted to take off cruising, or go to Blanche Tickle to visit Mary and Matty, it shouldn’t involve the trouble that opening up a hole of this size had caused. It seemed logical, and would move him in the direction he wanted to go, while still leaving room for more involvement with the company if necessary.

And besides, it probably was best not to just disappear off into the wild blue somewhere. While Brittany seemed to be quiescent in her attempts to get to Matty, that didn’t mean she’d given up on the idea. He needed to be keeping a closer eye on that question than he had in the recent past; she could be up to a lot of things that he might not have heard about. It probably wouldn’t hurt to do a little snooping around himself. Maybe he ought to contact her sometime, just to find out how things were going, while trying to not raise the subject of their grandson. At this point it was best for the boy to be with his mother, and as far as he could see it would be best if Mary stayed in Blanche Tickle, at least for now. That could change, and stood a good chance of changing – but having Brittany out there as a possible problem was something he had to confront somehow. Freeing up his time with the company would give him more opportunity to keep an eye on her.

All of these conclusions didn’t come to him at once; they came little by little as Adam sat behind the wheel of the pickup and drove, along with spending most of a day riding the Caribou back to Nova Scotia. While he hardly had everything worked out in his mind, at least he’d managed to settle some priorities, which was about all he could have asked out of that part of the reason for his making the trip.

At Montreal he turned off of the route he’d taken outbound to Newfoundland, and headed up the Ottawa River valley, the old voyageur route. Past Ottawa the road was two-lane, and not terribly busy; it was different than the outbound route. He crossed back into the US at Sault Ste. Marie with little more drama than he’d had crossing into Canada, and headed south for Winchester Harbor.

He arrived at the Channel Stop late in the afternoon; it was the middle of the week, and things were moderately busy, although nothing like as busy as they would be in a month. As he drove in, Adam could see that Jake had just gotten in with the Chinook, and the customers seemed happy with what they’d caught. Having helped from time to time with the unloading and servicing the boat, he pitched in without comment. All Jake said was, “Adam, I didn’t know you were coming up.”

“Just stopping by,” he said. “I need to pick your brain on something. But let’s get these people on their way first.”

It didn’t take long, and soon Jake and Adam were doing the routine chores needed to shut the boat down for the night and have it ready to go the next day. “Well, that’s about that,” Jake said after only a few minutes. “Those guys left a few beers in the cooler and I didn’t notice it till they were gone. Would you like one?”

“To tell the truth, a beer sounds pretty good.”

Soon Adam and Jake were sitting in deck chairs on the Chinook, with ice-cold cans of beer in their hands. “So what is it you wanted to pick my brain about?”

“Well, I’ve been thinking about getting a boat,” Adam started, “And I don’t want to have to keep coming up here and begging you people to take me out on the Pixie.” Over the next few minutes, he gave Jake a thumbnail version of the way his thoughts had been running while on the road. “I’m beginning to think I need a boat something like your original Pixie, something I can keep on Lake Erie, close to home, so I can go out when I feel like it and have a few hours to spare.”

“That was awful small for cruising,” Jake pointed out.

“I know it, but I’m really not thinking about cruising at this point. I’m thinking about just day sailing, maybe the odd overnight once in a while, a temporary boat to learn with. I’m thinking that I might only use it this summer, just for the sake of getting experience, and then maybe looking for something more like your current Pixie. In a year or so I might be tempted to get a bigger boat that I could use to go somewhere.”

“That’s probably not a bad plan. My opinion is you’re farther along than you think you are, but a summer of local sailing like that would go a long way toward building up your confidence. How much money do you want to spend on something like that?”

“Well, I don’t want to say money is no object, but I can spend it if I have to. I’m thinking something relatively small and cheap, so if I really screw up something royally I won’t be out that much money. But something that’s not going to lose a lot of value if I decide to sell it after a year or two.”

Jake got an interesting grin on his face. “It just so happens we’re sitting within fifty yards of what probably would be the perfect boat for that, and I know it can be had at a reasonable price. It’s a twenty-five foot MacGregor, probably twenty-five years old too, but in good shape.”

“That’s a little bigger boat than I was considering, I think. Hell, that’s right up there with the Mary Sue.”

“Well, yes it is, and no it isn’t. Among other things, it probably weighs only about a third of what the Mary Sue does. It’s very lightweight, really pretty Spartan, and you wouldn’t want to take it out unless the weather is pretty nice. It’s in good shape and has been gone through recently. It would be possible to do limited cruising on it, but it doesn’t have a cabin you could stand up in. It is more or less set up for single-handing, and it doesn’t have the fourteen tons of electronics that every boat salesman seems to think is a requirement these days. If you’re mostly going to be day sailing, or taking the occasional overnight, it ought to work for you. What’s more, I know the owner wants out.”

“Any reason for that?”

“Well, yeah,” Jake grinned sheepishly. “You know about Amanda’s plan to spend the winter in Florida this year, don’t you?”

“Don’t tell me.”

“Yep. She bought it with that idea in mind and we spent a while going through it. It’s in good shape and she spent some time getting it cleaned up and fixed up. Then she went sailing on it and decided she didn’t like it for what she wanted to do.”

“Is there something wrong with it?”

“Only in her mind,” Jake smiled. “It’s a darn good boat for day sailing or overnighting, and would be a good one for a kid like her to take the type of cruise she was originally thinking about. But, to be blunt about it, it’s not an open-water sailing boat. Amanda won’t quite come out and admit it, but she wants to do a little more than hop from marina to marina along some coast. I’m pretty sure she’s thinking about wanting to take after Matt and Mary and do some offshore sailing with it. Hell, knowing her, maybe a lot of it, and the boat just isn’t up for it. So she’d be willing to sell it, since she wants to start looking for a bigger, stouter boat capable of a little more serious voyaging.”

“And you’re going along with it?”

“Well, yes and no, given that she doesn’t quite understand that I’ve figured out what she’s up to. Hell, Amanda isn’t quite as old as Matt was when he took out for Ireland in the Mary Sue, and she’ll be another year older before she can get going, now. I’m not really all that concerned about it, other than the concern a father is supposed to have for his daughter, but given Matt’s example I can’t say no, especially since Amanda is a much more capable sailor than Matt was when he started out.”

“I’m beginning to wonder what Matt would be thinking if he knew what was happening,” Adam shook his head with a grin. “He sure planted a lot of seeds. So you think it would be a good boat for what I want, and you don’t think anything is wrong?”

“Well, yes and no. A good boat for what you want, in fact, exactly for what you want. Like I said, it’s a little barren and Spartan for someone our age, but you could do some limited cruising on it. As far as its condition, well, we went through it pretty good, but it’s a twenty-five-year-old boat, and you never know for sure. One of the neat parts about it is that it’s designed as a trailer boat, like the original Pixie, so it’s no trick to put it on the trailer and move it somewhere else if you want. In fact, if you find the right marina you can store it on the trailer with the mast up and launch it when you want to use it. That’ll save you a ton on dockage fees, and keep the hull from getting grubby from sitting in a slip all summer.”

“I’m beginning to think this has potential.”

“I don’t think it’s the boat you’ll ultimately want, but it will do what you want a boat for this summer, maybe even next summer,” Jake said.

“Well, let’s go take a look at it.”

“How about if I do you one better on that?” he smiled. “I know Amanda is up at the Channel Stop. How about if I call her down here and let her sell you on the boat? She could use the practice, just don’t make it too easy for her.”

“I get it. A little more of her dad teaching her how things really work.”

“You got it,” Jake laughed. “Hell, I had to do the same thing with Matt.”

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.