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“Ahoy, matey!” Dad said the next morning at breakfast, and I didn’t even roll my eyes. “What have we here?”

“It’s pretty good,” I told him. My plate overflowed with scrambled eggs, spinach quiche, and a tiny cinnamon roll. “Not bad for a ship.”

“Much better than in the eighteen hundreds,” Dad agreed. “They’d be eating hardtack and salted meat.”

“Ew. What’s hardtack?”

“It’s an unleavened biscuit sailors ate, made from water and flour.”

“Like matzo?”

Dad smiled. “A little worse. It was twice-baked for short voyages and baked four times for long trips, to make it last. You couldn’t eat it by itself. Sailors dunked it in liquid to soften it up.”

“Gross.”

“But,” Dad said, on a roll now, “the salted beef and pork the navy gave sailors was high quality. Better than they’d get if they stayed home, where most people only ate meat on holidays. Sailors were lucky in a way, guaranteed protein. American sailors in the early eighteen hundreds ate an average of four thousand calories a day.”

“Dad,” I asked, curious, “what are you getting out of this trip for the book? You can clearly do some of your research elsewhere. And we’re not eating hardtack.”

“No, though I have made it and eaten it before.”

Of course he had. “How was it?”

Dad tilted his head. “You know, I didn’t mind it.”

“Yeah, well, people don’t mind matzah, either, on the first night of Passover.”

He smiled and returned to my question. “A lot of my writing is atmosphere. This ship helps me accurately paint a picture of what life would have been like for the people I’m writing about. If I haven’t tasted the salt wind, felt how chapped my lips get, seen the scatter of the stars—I can’t describe it as well. And then my writing isn’t as good.”

“So you’re doing it for the vibes.”

He grinned and said, with great relish, “Yes. I’m doing it for the vibes.”

Oh no. I knew that tone, which appeared any time he’d learned a new phrase. He’d say he was doing it for the vibes for the next two years. “Do you have particular things you’re trying to get here?”

“Well, I’m working on a section about how the US Coast Survey mapped the coastline. When we come back, we’re going to sail around Nantucket—we need to make a circle to avoid the shoals—so I’ll be able to see what it’s like, trying to map the coast. And right now, I’m trying to pinpoint the exact feeling of finding your sea legs.”

He turned his notepad around, and I read his list:

Tremulous

Like taking a step down and finding you’ve reached a landing instead of another stair

Like drinking sprite instead of water

“I like it,” I said. “Is that how you feel?”

“I’m a little wobbly. I’m better at writing about the sea than being on it.”

“I’ve already got my sea legs,” I mock-bragged. “I’m a natural sailor. Queen of the sea.”

“?‘Queen of the Sea,’?” Dad echoed. “All-girl band playing—sea shanties?”

I shook my head, grinning. “All-girl, yes, but more regal. Maybe, like, a melancholic rock band.”

“Like the Cranberries.”

“Yeah! We’ll find another name for your sea-shanty band.”

We paused, and I knew Dad was coming up with names, but before he could offer any, words tumbled out of my mouth. “Gary said he knew Mom.”

Dad looked momentarily surprised before settling his face into neutral-but-positive. “Yes. We all knew each other in college.”

In college?“I’ve never heard of him before.”

“We haven’t been in touch for years. Not since—” He hesitated, then plunged forward. “Mom died. We ran into each other a few years ago on the island and reconnected.”

I nodded slowly, drawing a line through my eggs with my fork. “Was he always so rich?”

Dad laughed. “Not this rich. But I think his family was always wealthy.”

“Were there other people you and Mom were friends with in college? Who I don’t know?”

“Let’s see.” He looked at the ceiling. “I guess so. Miguel and Trever, Kristy and Jen—Jen and Miguel dated, though Jen dated Trever first. A complicated love triangle.” He smiled briefly. “And there was Gary and his roommate Omar. Omar was part of the group before Gary, I think, and brought him in. I think a few of them were in—oh, student government together?”

“Are you in touch with any of the others?”

He shook his head. “Everyone moved after school. But we still get holiday cards from a few of them.”

“Huh.” I’d never thought about the people behind the cards stuck on the fridge every year. “I thought I’d ask Gary about her.”

Dad nodded emphatically. “Yes. You should.”

Wow, he’d really agreed there. “Cool.”

After breakfast, I joined Gary’s niece and nephew and Ethan on the deck. Because of some strange desire to keep us entertained/out of mischief/away from the adults’ main activity of day drinking, we’d been conscripted into what Gary described as “Intro to a Nineteenth-Century Sailing Vessel.” I couldn’t complain; it was another clear, bright blue day, and I was pretty hyped to learn whatever they wanted to teach us.

“My new recruits!” Gary pressed his hands together and rubbed them. “Are you lot ready for your tasks?”

Beside him, Brent looked like he couldn’t decide whether to find his husband’s behavior endearing or painful. Honestly, a mood. I glanced at Ethan, and we glanced at Gary’s niece and nephew, and then we all shrugged.

“Tough audience.” Gary gestured forward a woman around my dad’s age. And Gary’s age, I supposed, if they’d all gone to college together. “This is First Mate Wójcik. She’s gonna take it from here.”

“Hey, guys,” the first mate said. “I’ve been with the Salty Fox since she launched, and she’s one of my favorites. We’re going to get you familiar with a few of the basics sailors have done for centuries, and then we’ll give you a bit of hands-on experience.”

Despite knowing I’d likely forget all this in a week, I dove into learning, game to try adjusting the sails and climbing the rigging. By lunchtime, my arms were sore, but so was my stomach from laughing, which I hadn’t really expected. And I needed the break—I was worn out and sweaty. Ethan was too, if the way he pulled up his shirt to mop his face was any indicator. I blatantly stared at the expanse of muscles he’d exposed.

Ethan noticed and smirked. “Checking me out?”

“You should be so lucky.”

“I should,” he said, giving my ponytail a flick.

We had lunch on the deck, paninis for the most part—tomato and mozzarella and pesto for me. It was delicious. Gary waved an arm grandiosely. “The spice of the open seas.”

Brent gave him an indulgent smile. “And the ridiculously expensive pesto you insist on buying.”

After lunch, everyone split up into their preferred activities: learning more about rigging or sailing, performing experiments, chatting in clusters around the deck. Gary checked in on his guests, moving purposely from one group to the next. As he left a clump, I intercepted him. “Hi. Mr. Dubois?”

“Hi, Jordan.” He smiled broadly and focused on me, as opposed to looking like he needed to dash off elsewhere. “How are you enjoying the trip?”

Kudos for remembering my name; I didn’t think I’d have remembered someone I’d barely spoken to. But then again, he’d apparently known my dad—my parents—for a long time. Maybe he’d even heard my name seventeen years ago. “I wondered if you had a moment?”

His bushy brows skyrocketed above his eagle eyes. “Sure thing. Want to sit?”

We chose a shady part of the deck. I sat across from him, concentrating on not fiddling with my hands. “It’s a really nice ship.”

“Thanks.” Gary launched into a loving homage before abruptly reining himself in. “But I’m guessing the ship’s not what you wanted to talk about.”

I nodded quickly, bracing myself. “My dad says you knew my mom in college.”

Gary smiled. “I did, yes.”

“I wanted to ask—What was she like? What was my dad like with her?”

The question seemed to startle Gary, though it was what I wanted to ask everyone who’d known my mom. I wanted to ask her friends who still dropped by on occasion, my aunts and uncles, even my dad. But I felt embarrassed. They’d known her so intimately, so well, and she’d been my mother, after all. I shouldn’t need to ask.

Only my mom’s parents told me stories, but so wistfully I almost preferred they didn’t.

But this man, Gary, had stopped knowing my mom before she got sick; he didn’t have bitter memories of her illness shading the sweet memories of her life. When he’d last seen her, she’d been ebullient and alive, and his memories of her were probably no different from the memories anyone had of a friend they’d fallen out of touch with.

“The two of them…Well, she was a ball of energy, I’ll tell you that.” Gary settled comfortably into his chair. “Your dad was a nerd, head in the clouds. We all met around the same time—we were in the same dorm freshman year, and I remember us as a giant clump—but the two of them were instant friends. She was the faster walker, he was the slowest, but she’d drop back when he was around to talk with him.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. And she was loud. She had giant crimped hair and was always bossing everyone around. Freshman year, she joined a dozen clubs, then quit them all. Took up too much time, she said. She wanted to be with her friends, you know, she didn’t want to be writing articles or organizing events. She had a really strong sense of self. She was good at reaching out, at making sure she spent quality time with the people who were important to her. I think half the kids in the dorm had a crush on her. She only had eyes for your dad, of course.”

“Really.”

Gary laughed. “Didn’t he tell you? He’d been pining after her for, oh, two years. She’d been dating other people on and off, but one day she looked at Tony. They were close, we all knew that, but they’d only ever been friends. The two of us were sitting on the quad, and your dad was playing Frisbee with some of the others, and she turned to me and said, ‘Do you think I should marry Tony?’?”

I stared. “What?”

He laughed. “That’s what I said! She gave this decisive nod—she was always giving that nod—and said, ‘Yes, I think so.’ Then she got up and interrupted the game and asked him out.”

I gaped at Gary. “And what did he say?”

Gary laughed again, harder this time. He had one of those laughs that was mostly a snort, and he had to catch his breath to recover from it. “He said, ‘Uh, we’re in the middle of a game.’ And she walked away, and he kept playing for about three more minutes, and then he turned around and ran off the field and chased her down. And never left her side again. Best thing that ever happened to him, he said. She drew him out of his shell, and he calmed her down.”

I’d never heard that story before. “Wow.”

“Yeah. She was a great person, your mom. Knew exactly what she wanted and went after it. Took me a long time to learn to do the same thing.”

“Thanks for telling me.” I paused. “Crimped hair, huh?”

He laughed. “The nineties were a trip. And you should have seen our Y2K parties. We went wild.”

After talking to Gary, I headed to the little library below deck. It was empty, so I took my time scanning the shelves. I hadn’t asked if it would be here, but I had a hunch. My gaze latched onto the blue-and-white spine soon enough.

The book was as familiar as Dad: a tiny piece of his soul in physical form. It didn’t matter which physical copy of the book it was, whether one in our living room or Dad’s study, or in a library or bookstore or here on the ship. They were all the same, all part of Dad.

I flipped the book open. There, the dedication:

To my wife, Rebecca, who believed in me long before I believed in myself. I will miss you forever.

And to my daughter, Jordan, who has my whole heart.

My heart lurched. I’d remembered he’d dedicated the book to Mom, but I hadn’t remembered a dedication to me. It made my eyes strain with tears, made my stomach roil and my chest feel tight.

No wonder I’d never read further. I wanted to snap the book shut right now and start crying.

Instead, I flipped to the first page.

Several hours later, the door cracked open. “Oops,” Cora said. “Didn’t mean to interrupt.”

I tore myself away from a surprisingly riveting description of my dad attempting to use a sextant to measure the distance between the moon and a star to determine the longitude. “Just reading.”

She spied the cover. “Your dad’s book. I read it a couple of weeks ago.”

“You did? You didn’t say anything.”

She flushed. “It felt a little funny, like I was spying on him. I didn’t want to be weird about it.”

I grinned. “It’s all stuff he decided to put out there.” I looked at the book in my hand. “I didn’t know how much he wrote about me.”

“Does it bother you?”

Maybe if I’d been reading the current manuscript, detailing me right now, I’d be bothered, but these were stories of me at around age thirteen and kind of sweet. “I guess not.”

She nodded, dropping down in the armchair across from me. “You and Ethan looked cozy last night.”

“Yeah. He’s…” I looked out the porthole, two domes of blue cut through with a clear line. “It was nice.”

She cast me a slightly smug look. “He’s very cute.”

“We’re not—” I started, then faded away.

Cora lifted her brows. “Not?”

“Nothing,” I said, in a tone designed to flatten further inquisition.

“You’re not nothing.” She looked far too amused. “Got it.”

I cleared my throat. “Are you liking the trip?”

“I am.” She picked up the book, which I’d placed on the table between us, and flipped through it. She paused on Dad’s author photo on the back flap. We’d pored over options from the photo shoot he’d done with the art teacher at the high school and settled on one where he half smiled. Well, I settled and Dad indulged me. He’d wanted a serious, no-smiling photo, but I’d insisted on this one.

“It’s funny, though,” Cora continued, in one of those trying-to-sound-casual-but-not-feeling-casual voices. “I’m pretty sure everyone thinks I’m here because your dad and I are dating.”

My gaze whipped toward her. “Really?”

“Mm-hm.”

Okay. Wow. How to handle this? I probably shouldn’t blurt out interrogating questions like And would you date him? Shall I make you dinner reservations as soon as we get back? “I could tell people to stop, if it, you know, makes it uncomfortable.” I stared at my hands. “Does it make you uncomfortable?”

She shot me an unreadable look. “I was wondering if it made you uncomfortable.”

I stared at her. “I’m sorry,” I finally said. “Was I being subtle by accident? Because Ethan once told me I wasn’t subtle, and honestly, I agree.”

She looked startled. “What?”

Wow. Maybe I had been subtle. Or maybe adults were astonishingly obtuse? I returned to her question. “No. It doesn’t make me uncomfortable.”

She nodded. “Does your dad date a lot?”

“Does my dad—” I snorted a laugh, then broke it off at the look on her face. “Oh, you’re serious.”

Cora raised her brows. “I was until you laughed in my face.”

“He doesn’t date at all. I don’t think he’s been on a single date since my mom died.” At Cora’s expression, I realized this was probably not the right way to signal Dad was emotionally available. I backpedaled. “Which doesn’t mean he’s not ready to date! Just, he hasn’t. But he’s not anti-dating, I’m sure.”

“Hm.” She straightened. “I’ll leave you to your book. Good talk.”

I saluted, because I was a weirdo. Oy.

“And don’t worry,” she said as she left the small library. “You’re not subtle.”

I read until dinnertime, which was another loud, boisterous meal. Afterward, like the day before, everyone watched the sunset from the deck. Ethan leaned next to me at the rail. Our arms pressed together, his skin warm against mine.

“I never get bored of looking at the ocean,” I said. “Or the sky. They’re always different. Always interesting and beautiful and changing.”

“And always connected,” Ethan said.

My mouth quirked in a smile. “How poetic.”

“Am I wrong?”

I took in the vaulting sky, the endless dark sea, the way the horizon circled us in a stark line of dark and light blue. Our ship was the only small thing in the center of the blue world. “No. I guess not.”

“Two halves of one whole.” Ethan sounded satisfied.

I opened my mouth to tease him about better halves, but my lips stretched into an unstoppable yawn. “?’Scuse me.” I covered my mouth.

“You better not fall asleep,” Ethan warned. “Tonight’s the best night for the meteors.”

He was right; not only was tonight the peak of the shower, but tomorrow we’d start heading back toward land and light. “I don’t know if I’m gonna make it. All this exercise stuff really got to me.”

He angled his body toward me. “Well. The best viewing is at three a.m. Total darkness.”

“Is it?” I arched my brows. “Maybe I should go to sleep now, then.”

“Maybe you should,” Ethan agreed. “Maybe I should, too.”

“Maybe we should both just happen to come up here at three.”

“I’m in if you’re in,” Ethan said, and when I nodded, he grinned at me. “It’s a date.”

A date. My whole body tingled as I watched Ethan walk away. Not a date-date, I knew—it was just a turn of phrase—but the word caused me to shiver.

Dad joined me. “Don’t look directly at the sun.”

“Dad,” I reprimanded, because I was too old to receive such parental advice. Even though, admittedly, I had been looking directly at the sun. Just a peek! It glowed orange, perfectly round, and it was amazing you could look at it and see anything besides blinding light.

Dad held up his hands. “I have no choice. It’s in the rulebook. See someone seeing something, say something.”

I rolled my eyes but then leaned into his side. “I started Mapping.”

Dad looked confused for a second, though we traditionally called his first book Mapping—the whole title, Mapping the Atlantic: A History of American Maritime Cartography, was too much of a mouthful. And often, we didn’t even say that, just “the book” or “book one.” Slowly, he realized what I meant, and his expression looked torn between happiness and terror. “Really?”

“Yeah.” I expected him to ask what I’d thought, but he didn’t, instead continuing to look astonished. “I’m halfway through. It’s good.”

“Really,” he repeated. “You like it?”

“Yeah. It’s fun. And smart.” I ducked my head, feeling almost shy. “I really like it.”

I once again expected a different reaction—for Dad to joke and say, “I am really fun and smart.” Instead, he smiled widely. “Thank you, Jordan.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t read it before.”

Dad looked scandalized. “Why would you be sorry?”

“I don’t know. I feel like I should have? To support you.”

“Jordan.” He leaned toward me, a crease in his brow. “I’m really glad you’re reading and liking the book. But there is no pressure or expectation for you to ever read any of my work. You support me by being a great daughter. You don’t have to do anything else.”

I blinked rapidly and looked away. I wasn’t entirely sure I was a “great” daughter—I was fine, I supposed. Definitely adequate at the daughtering. Could do better. Six out of ten, tops. “Thanks.”

He kissed the top of my head. “I’m glad you came out here. Not just on the ship, but to Nantucket.” He hesitated. “It hasn’t been all bad, has it?”

My throat closed a bit at Dad’s earnestness. “No. It’s been nice.” I nodded at Cora, laughing with a group of other people across the deck. “I like working with Cora.”

“You seem to have learned a lot.”

“And she’s great.” I tilted my head. “Don’t you think so?”

Dad frowned. “I know what you’re doing.”

I looked up at the night sky, the pinprick stars and whirling clouds. “Hm?”

“With Dr. Bradley.”

I gave him an oblivious smile. “Categorizing space trash?”

He sounded sober and disapproving. “She’s too young.”

“She’s thirty-eight. I wouldn’t call her young.”

He flinched. “Brutal.”

“For you, Dad,” I said, finally admitting what we were talking about. “You’re only forty-four. That’s not even middle-aged. I mean, hopefully.”

“I’m ancient. And I’m balding.”

“True.” I patted the thinning hair on the crown of his head. He made a face; clearly I’d been supposed to defend his diminishing hair. “But you have a job, and you’re smartish.”

“Jeez, are those the requirements these days?” He struck a pose. “What about how I’m debonairly handsome?”

I tried to rein him in by flatly saying, “Dad.”

“And I’m witty. I’ve got a great sense of humor. I have a great car—”

“From 2007.”

“It’s still alive! It’s amazing!”

“Hm.”

“I have a beautiful daughter—”

“This is true,” I allowed. “But you have a severely lacking love life.”

“Which is none of your business.”

“Fine. Whatever.” I leaned against the rail. “So, ignoring my evil machinations, what do you think of Cora?”

“She’s very smart,” he said primly.

I rolled my eyes. “She’s smart, she’s hot, and she’s a nerd. I honestly don’t know what more you could want.”

“For my daughter to back off,” Dad said firmly.

“Whoa.” I held up my hands. “Strong words.”

Dad sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Just—will you let me do this how I want to do this?”

I perked up. “Does that mean you want to do this?”

“Jordan!”

“Dad, you’re out of practice. You haven’t—you haven’t dated since Mom.”

I held my breath. I’d never said anything so blatant before about his dating life.

Dad didn’t say anything.

“If you don’t want to date, fine,” I said. “As long as it’s because you don’t want to, not because you’re concerned about me. Because I’m okay, Dad. I’m good. You don’t need to worry about me.”

He looked at me for a long moment. “Of course I have to worry about you. You’re my daughter.”

I swallowed hard. “Okay.” I refused to lose sight of the goal, even if that’d been an emotional sucker-punch. “You can worry about me, but you shouldn’t also avoid living your own life because of it. You can’t use me as an excuse.”

He sounded astonished. “I’m not!”

“Good. Don’t. I want you to be happy, Dad. I want you to date, if it makes you happy. I think it might.”

For a moment, he was silent. We listened to the roar of water. Always here, out on the ocean, but so ever-present it was easy to forget it, despite how loud it really was.

“Okay,” Dad finally said. He reached out and hugged me to his side. “I’ll think about it.”

“Good.”

We stayed there and watched the shooting stars for a long time.