“Wow,” I said, checking the time. “That’s tight.”
“Yes, it is,” my dad agreed. “And that’s where you come in.”
“Me?” I glanced again at the Cooper-less gangway.
I really don’t want to sound like I wasn’t a team player—but given the whole urgency of the Cooper situation, I was just about to ask my dad ifhecould take the dress to the tailor… when he put his arm around my shoulder and started walking us back toward the elevators.
As soon as the doors closed, my dad lowered his voice and said, “She took me back.”
My brain was still a little addled. “Who?”
My dad looked at me, likeWho the hell else?“Your mother.”
Wait—this was huge! “She did?”
He nodded. “On a trial basis.”
I held out my hand for a high five. “Did you go full Odysseus on her?”
“Does ‘going full Odysseus’ mean bursting into drunken tears and begging? Because that’s what I did.”
We stepped out onto my parents’ floor. “Hey,” I said. “It worked, didn’t it?”
“It worked. For now. As long as I, and I’m quoting here, ‘prove to her that I can change.’”
“What does that mean?”
“Well, for one thing, it meansyouhave to take the dress to town, andIhave to stay here and tape up wedding decorations.”
Nothing about that was right. “But you don’t have any manual dexterity,” I said.
“She needs to see me trying,” my dad said.
“You’ve been trying this whole time.”
“But now she’s looking. And I have to make sure she likes what she sees.”
I gave my dad an appreciative nod. “Dad! That’s very emotionally astute!”
“I was quoting your mother.”
Ah.
As we reached my mom’s cabin, I got it. My dad going ashore—and being gone again, as usual—wouldn’t help his rebrand at all.
My dad knocked, and my mom threw open the door. “Oh, thank god!” she burst out. “You found her.”
“Caught her escaping,” my dad said, like he was the world’s best bounty hunter.
Ever frugal, my mother had assigned herself to a Harmony-like cabin: also below the waterline with no window. But she’d zhuzhed it up with some paper flowers and a piña colada–scented room spritz.
“Were you headed somewhere, JoJo?” my mom asked.
In the background, Grandma Dodie and Ashley sat on the foot of the bed. Ashley was slumped and defeated, her post-sobbing face still puffy, while Grandma Dodie patted her knee.
This really was a family emergency.
“I just—need to catch Cooper, and he went ashore.”
