Audrey’s cottage proved to be not quite as elaborate as Adam had envisioned; it was fairly simple, but comfortable, with evidence of having been inhabited by the same family for decades; there was that non-showplace feel to it, a place to go and unwind. It turned out that several different members of her family used it at one time or another, sometimes several at once, making the cottage something of a family reunion spot. However, at the moment Audrey was living there by herself for a few days, and she seemed glad of the company.

They’d only planned to stay for dinner, but it turned into spending the night. Adam and Carolyn managed to protest that they’d just as soon stay on the Knick-Knack, and managed to win that fight, but over breakfast the next morning it was worked out that they’d take Audrey out for a sail just to revisit some familiar old places. It turned into a fairly long day, with some motoring and some sailing; she proved to be a fount of information about the place, and knew her way around.

She seemed especially impressed by the Knick-Knack. It was a pretty basic boat in comparison to the Alberg that she and Bert had once owned, and it was admittedly a cheap boat when it was built. But its light weight and shallow draft made it handy to get into places that she and Bert had to tiptoe into in their former boat.

That turned into dinner again, a tangy spaghetti, and another full evening of sitting around talking. By now, while they hadn’t gotten into the details, Adam and Carolyn had made it clear to Audrey that they weren’t boyfriend and girlfriend and had no desire to get that way, but were just friends who happened to like getting together once in a while.

They could probably have managed to stay another day or two, but it was getting to the point where they had to be heading back. Carolyn still had a lot of preparation for the start of school, not all that far off, now, and Adam felt he at least needed to check in at Caldwell-Deerfield because of the prospect of the building purchase in Meridian. So it was with some degree of sadness that they had breakfast the next morning, then got back in the Knick-Knack for the run back to Victoria Harbour.

What with everything, including a slow and complicated run through a twisting channel they decided to explore for no more reason than they hadn’t been there before, it was after noon before they got back to Victoria Harbour. “There’s no way in hell we can get back tonight,” Adam said as they pulled up to the pier. “And, I don’t want to be out with the boat on the trailer after dark. Let’s take our time getting stuff packed up and loaded up, and getting the boat on the trailer and the mast down, then run south far enough to find a good motel.”

“You’re not going to hear me argue about that.”

Again they took their time, and it was getting late in the afternoon before they had everything loaded, tied down and ready to go. Deciding not to push it, they went only as far south as Barrie before finding a motel with a parking lot large enough to accommodate the pickup and the Knick-Knack.

There was a restaurant up the street that came with good recommendations from the motel’s desk clerk, so after a shower each, they walked up the street for dinner. “Well, even though we have a day to get home, the fun is mostly over with, I guess,” Adam said. “But it was a damn fun trip. I don’t think I’d mind going up there again.”

“I wouldn’t either. We barely managed to touch the place. I’ll tell you what, though, after two weeks on the Knick-Knack it seems a little cramped.”

“It does to me, too,” he said. “You have to realize I never bought the boat with the intention of a trip of this kind in mind. It was just supposed to be for screwing around on Lake Erie so I could get more comfortable with sailing, and we sort of pressed it into service for this. I think it worked out all right, and I have to admit that a lightweight, shallow-draft boat is a good choice for Georgian Bay, even though it’s not as comfortable as a big keel cruiser like the one Audrey and Bert used to have, or the Pixie for that matter.”

“I suppose you’re right on that. There were any number of times I thought about how nice it was to be able to stand upright in the cabin of the Pixie, or to have a decent galley to cook in with something more than a two-burner alcohol stove that’s hard to light.”

“Yeah, or have a refrigeration system, or a fuel tank that doesn’t involve wrestling five-gallon cans around. Or, a number of things I can think of. Don’t get me wrong, I think the Knick-Knack worked out great for what we did with it, but if it didn’t teach me anything else, it taught me that it’s not a boat I’d care to live aboard for extended periods. In fact, I think we came pretty close to pushing the limits. I suppose it would be better if we were twenty or thirty years younger, but we’re not.”

“True,” she replied sadly. “You have to wonder how Matt and Mary were able to get along for years in the Mary Sue. I never saw the boat but I understand it was pretty small inside.”

“Hell, the Knick-Knack has tons of room compared to the Mary Sue. I mean, there’s a foot more headroom in the cabin than they had, and you still can’t stand upright unless you’re poking your head out the hatch. I guess it helps to be young, be out on deck a lot, and be very good friends. But the Knick-Knack wasn’t intended for ocean cruising, and the Mary Sue was. But still, neither of them are anything I’d want to live aboard for any extended period.”

“Are you thinking about that?”

“Yes, I am,” he admitted. “I mean, it was in the back of my head almost from the first, and the run to the North Channel with Jake in the Pixie last fall only sharpened it. Now, this trip has sharpened it some more. The hell of it is that summer is almost gone. I’ll put the Knick-Knack back into the water down at Frenchtown Harbor and probably leave it there for a while, but once you get past the middle of September the weather starts to go to hell in a hurry. There might be a few good days here and there, but it’s going to be all too soon that I’m going to have to have it on the trailer for the winter.”

“Then what are you going to do?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “Sailing has done a pretty good job of using up my spare time this summer, but I’m going to be having more spare time to deal with than I had before. The thought of having a bigger boat keeps coming to me, one I could take south for the winter.”

“That’s what Amanda is planning on doing,” she pointed out. “She’s planning on sailing down south in the winter, and coming back up to work the charter boats in the summer.”

“It’d be a great life for a kid, and I wish her all the luck in the world. But even she thought the Knick-Knack was a little on the small side for living like that, and that’s with the example of Matt and Mary to work with. Have you heard about how she’s doing looking for another boat? I haven’t talked with Jake for a while.”

“Still looking, the last I heard, but it’s been a while for me, too. She doesn’t have a lot of money to work with, and according to him she’s looking for a pretty solid boat without much money to spend. I suppose that means she’s planning on doing a lot of work on it, when she finds what she’s looking for.”

“Again, it helps to be young and have the time to do it. And, in her case, the skills to do it. I’m not much of a handyman. I mean, I can do the normal household-type things and odds and ends around a boat, but she’s probably talking about a major rebuild. Just between you and me, it wouldn’t surprise me if she has an ocean crossing or two in mind.”

“Me, either. I know she was pretty impressed by Matt and Mary on the Mary Sue when she was with them in Europe that time.”

“Hell, I was impressed too, but that’s one of those things I don’t know if I’d get around to doing. If I did, I might get tempted to just fly over there and rent a boat for a while.”

“That would be a fun trip. I know it was for them. I wouldn’t mind doing it myself. If you decide to do it, let me know. I might be able to work a few weeks for it into my schedule. So are we planning on coming back up here next summer?”

“Maybe, and maybe not. A lot is going to depend on what happens over the next few months. Jake tells me that fall is the time to go looking for a boat because prices are down. I may just spend a little time looking. If I do have a bigger boat, a more comfortable one, I may well be spending the summer going south with it. Or, we might get up here earlier in the summer before I head south. But that’s all gas at this point, I don’t really have any plans, other than the fact that a boat like the Knick-Knack might not be the best boat for coming up here again.”

“Look, Adam,” she smiled. “I don’t know the numbers, but I know you came out pretty well after your father died. Maybe you ought to think about both.”

“It’s a thought,” he agreed. “But it also has the potential to be a pain in the neck, too. I don’t know, Carolyn. There’s too much that has to be decided along the way. I’ll tell you right now, I don’t think I’d mind living aboard a boat next summer, whether I’m heading south with it or not. But if I do, it won’t be the Knick-Knack.”

They spent one last night together in the motel in Barrie – in fact, the first night they’d spent together not on the Knick-Knack. It seemed a little strange, but that didn’t keep them from enjoying their time together.

The next morning they got into the pickup and started for home with the boat in tow. Adam felt pretty good about the trip, and about his time with Carolyn. It was a darn shame, he thought, that she seemed so resistant to being together on a more or less permanent basis. He thought he could understand where she was coming from on that, and she certainly had a right to live her own life the way she wanted, but she was a good companion and they’d had a lot of fun together. Already, in talking it over, they’d agreed that they weren’t going to be able to get together the way they had once school started, and he’d come to accept that, no matter what he wanted.

But still, he wasn’t complaining. Having an occasional fuck buddy beat not having one at all, and it sure beat hell out of what he’d had with Brittany. About the best he could hope for was that they’d stay friends, and maybe they’d be able to enjoy each other’s company more along the way somewhere.

They got back to Frenchtown Harbor early enough that they decided to unload the Knick-Knack, then get the mast up and get it back in the water while he had her extra hands available. When they finished up, the boat was sitting in its familiar slip, seeming ready to head out on another big adventure, but Adam didn’t know when he was next able to have one. They kissed goodbye shortly afterwards, and once again he watched her taillights as she headed back to her home in Amherst.

It was just as well he got back from the trip when he did, for he had things to do, some of which he hadn’t been expecting. He hadn’t been following the lawsuit against the Children’s Protective Service very closely, mostly because he hadn’t taken it seriously – it had been mostly a harassment thing to keep them off his back, a diversion and nothing more. However, when he got into the office on Monday morning there was a message waiting there for him from Deke; the service had lost their third appeal on turning the records over, and finally, with some reluctance, they’d released the requested documents.

Not surprisingly, the only complainant on record was Brittany, and the complaints had been vague enough that it was clear that she had no idea what she was talking about. With that cleared away, the main lawsuit, for damages caused by Diane Balch’s over-zealousness could go forward, and Deke wasn’t wasting any time in doing so. After all, it was a contingency-fee case, and he stood to make out pretty well from it. “We’ll probably have more filings and court dates and appeals and all that crap from now until the cows come home,” he said. “But we’ve got them right by the nuts on a downhill pull and everyone knows it. I wouldn’t be surprised to see them offer a settlement on the deal, but then, I wouldn’t be surprised if they don’t, either.”

“Well, all I can say is keep in touch on it,” Adam told him. “I don’t really care if I win or lose, but it’s a damn shame they let a loose cannon like her out on the street without a keeper.”

“They were more than a little arrogant on the deal, and they’re going to wind up paying for it in the end. The hell of it is that most of the time they do good work, but they have few controls to keep things from going way out of bounds, like they did in this case. I mean, hell, any idiot could look at those records and see they didn’t have a leg to stand on. It’s just that now we’re going to have to prove it in court.”

“Well, whatever it takes, I guess. We’ve gone this far with it so I suppose there’s no point in giving up now.”

“I don’t see any reason to, either. The only thing is, don’t be too anxious to disappear for long periods without checking in with me. We may have some court dates come up, and some of them may come up quickly without being very predictable. I mean, we could reschedule if we had to but I want to make it clear to the attorneys for those jokers who’s holding the wrench, if you get what I mean.”

“I get what you mean. I don’t have any plans to take off for extended periods for a while, but I’ll let you know if I plan on being gone more than a few days.”

Adam was hardly off the phone with Deke when Marcia called to say that Bob wanted to see him. Of course, Adam had him come right in. “So,” he asked when Bob walked into the room, “I take it everything is quiet around here?”

“The routine stuff is still pretty routine,” Bob told him. “We had a couple of the normal glitches but nothing to worry about. I’ve been concentrating on the new building in Meridian. The long and the short of it is that it’s a darn good deal. We had some people go through the place pretty thoroughly. There’s some stuff that needs attention, mostly electrical, and the place needs a darn good cleaning, some paint, a few windows, and things like that, but nothing out of line. We managed to beat the owners down on price a little since they’re anxious to get rid of it, and we signed an option. I’m recommending we go ahead with the deal.”

“I’ll go along with your recommendation on that. After all, you were the one who put it together, and from what you told me a couple weeks ago and what I knew already, I pretty well agree with your thinking. We were getting near the limit on facilities ever since that deal with Ford last year, and we can use the extra space. If not now, we’ll need it in the future.”

“Good. I’ll get the paperwork over to you to sign so we can go ahead with the deal. But there are details, like financing and an action plan for moving the lines around that I’d like you to go over to get the benefit of your experience. We don’t have to be in a huge rush on this, but when we start moving lines around I want to be able to do it so that we cause the minimum disturbance to production. I’d like your thinking on that, too.”

“Sure, it’ll be good to do some useful work for a change.”

It turned out to be a little more complicated than that. For the most part Adam didn’t have any objections to the arrangement that Bob and his team had put together, but there were some open questions that had to be looked at, especially in what lines to move and when. It was going to involve employment issues, and a few people were going to have to drive extra distance to and from work, which the union wasn’t very happy with. Rather than get into a big pissing match over it, Adam suggested a supplemental benefit to cover the extra mileage, and that the displaced workers would be moved back “home” as soon as possible. It really wasn’t very complicated, but it took a lot of back and forth to get everything arranged, as it often did with union issues.

All that ate up time. As if that weren’t enough, the estate sale auction at his father’s house was getting closer, set for the first weekend after Labor Day, and there was still quite a bit to be done there. Adam still hadn’t finished getting through all of his father’s personal papers and files, and although there wasn’t much worth saving, a little bit of it was. That meant that he had to make the decision on a lot of things. He spent several afternoons and evenings at the house, dealing with that, and working with Bev and Benita to get ready for the sale.

What with everything, he wasn’t wanting for things to do. He did manage to get out on the Knick-Knack a couple evenings, and one of the days of the Labor Day weekend, but the other two days had to be spent on getting ready for the sale. The one day sail out of Frenchtown Harbor was a little disappointing; it went well enough, but it was a relatively calm day on Lake Erie, nothing special, and it certainly seemed like a come-down after the beautiful countryside and clear waters of Georgian Bay. Worse, he knew that the season was rapidly coming to an end, and it wouldn’t be long before the boat was on the trailer and covered with tarps for the winter.

While he was out sailing that day, he kept thinking over what he’d talked with Carolyn about, getting a bigger boat, one he could live on. The idea was appealing, there was no doubt about it; he could see he was going to have less to distract him in the coming months, and it was a problem he was going to have to come to grips with. But the idea of living on a boat in the short season on the Great Lakes definitely had its down side, too. Buying a boat and taking it south for the winter was out of the question this year, but it was a possibility for another year.

There were times that he thought about Mary’s light-hearted suggestion that he sail up to Blanche Tickle. The idea had some merit; it would be a long haul, but it was do-able. Matt had pushed pretty hard taking the Mary Sue from Frenchtown Harbor to St. John’s years before, but he was pushing to get across the Atlantic at the best part of the season. Adam wasn’t terribly interested in fighting bad weather on a new boat; he still felt his experience was lacking in that regard, and had no intention of sailing the ocean. But he thought out such a trip, totally in his head – if he could get a good start and perhaps push the season a little, he could get to Blanche Tickle while the weather was pretty good. He could still have time to get at least partway back down the Atlantic Coast before fall set in. He could follow the season southward, and spend the next winter in Florida. He didn’t think about it much farther ahead than that; it was too far in the future to contemplate.

Perhaps it was just a pipe dream, but at least it would be something to do, something to work toward, which really, he didn’t have right now.

The next weekend was the sale. It proved that Beverly had known just exactly what she had been talking about. She had a good crowd there of knowledgeable collectors, people with money in their pockets and the intention of spending it. Spend they did; it took most of the day, but the income from the sale was a much higher dollar figure than Adam had ever dreamed. Of course, Beverly got a large commission from the sale, which was only fair from the amount of work she’d put into it.

When the dust settled, Adam was in a position to buy a brand new boat if he’d been of a mind to, and a pretty expensive one at that, without dipping into other accounts or company stock. On top of that, his father’s house was largely empty. Even the trash that he’d accumulated from going through his father’s papers had been hauled off, as had the things that would go to charity. Although it had worked out that Benita was going to go to work for Beverly on future sales, Adam managed to get her to go through the house one last time, getting things ready to put the house itself on the market. It was listed right after the sale, and was one more thing taken care of.

But with the sale over with and the sailing season winding down, Adam went back to his lonely apartment that evening with unhappy forebodings in his mind. Most of the things that had kept him busy all summer long were now ending, and he wasn’t sure what he was going to do to fill his time. The one thing that had kept him going for years, Caldwell-Deerfield, wasn’t going to help much; he’d pretty much turned the job over to Bob, and it wouldn’t be right to horn in on his territory. The last several years hadn’t been all that thrilling, anyway.

It would have been nice to have someone to share his time with, someone, say, like Carolyn. But that was pretty close to impossible, too – unless she changed her mind about what she wanted her life to be like, which might change her away from the things that had appealed to him. Realistically, Beverly was the only other prospect he’d developed over the summer, and somehow it just didn’t feel like a fit; she was too wrapped up in her career, too. She was fun to be with for a date or an evening, but he couldn’t imagine sailing off toward Blanche Tickle with her.

Right then, it looked like it was going to be a long, dull winter.

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