Cooper wasn’t on board?
I looked around, like maybe I could locate him, just as my mom and Ashley showed up, demanding to know what had taken us so long.
“We ran into some traffic,” my dad said, giving me a little wink, like that was all they needed to know.
Ashley took her dress and cradled it. “Thanks, Dad,” she said.
“You got it, squirt,” my dad said, like a guy who’d just saved the day.
Which he really had, I realized. He’d grabbed the dress, saved my life, and gotten us both back to the ship—all in record time. But here was another thing I was noticing about my dad: He wasn’t a guy who liked to take credit for things.
My mom was squinting at my dad like she could tell there was more to the story, and then, as we all started to make our way back to the main deck, she noticed him limping a little.
“What happened to your leg?” she asked then.
My dad glanced at me. I’d maimed him a bit with that hug earlier, that’s what happened.
I gave him a little nod, likeTell her!
But he just gave me a tiny headshake, likeNot necessary.
But itwasnecessary—right?
It’s one thing to not be show-offy about things—it’s quite another thing to not even mention them. How exactly was my mother supposed to appreciate him if she didn’t know what there was to appreciate?
This guy needed a PR team!
“Dad is being modest,” I said. “He didn’t just pick me up back in town… he rescued me. Hesavedme.”
That got everyone’s attention.
“Rescued you?” my mom said.
Just as Ashley said, “Saved you?”
Did we need to get into the wholemenaced by Pork Piesituation? No. Those vibes were too creepy to make the conversation-topic cut for the best week of my sister’s life. Pork Pie was not worthy of our attention today. We could process all that later—if ever.
But the topic ofhow great my dad was?
That, we needed to process right now.
“I got myself locked into a lighthouse,” I explained.
My mother sighed, like this was really not the week for shenanigans of that nature.
“Anabandonedlighthouse,” I added, trying to capture my desperation, “out at the end of a peninsula, with nobody around.” I was trying to cherry-pick my details without actually lying about anything, and I decided it was fair to classify Pork Pie as “nobody.” I glanced at my dad to see if he caught the Homeric reference, but he was studying the ground, like he really, truly was uncomfortable getting any credit for anything.
Huh. Had he always been this way?
I went on. “I was locked in, and then I accidentally shattered my phone, and I really, really thought nobody would ever find me and I would just have to die there. Right? How would anyone ever even think to find me? I thought I would just slowly starve to death, like a lizard in a sunroom.”
I took a step closer to my dad, and then I put my arm around his shoulders like we were BFFs.
“But this guy figured it out,” I continued, “like a total hero—and he came to my rescue.”
I wasn’t even exaggerating.
“He noticed I wasn’t back yet, and he couldn’t get in touch with me, so he went ashore to check in with the tailor, learned that she’d texted me the dress was ready but never heard back, did some stalking on his phone to figure out my last known location, showed up there, got me out—and then brought me and the wedding dress back here just in the nick of time. All without a wrinkle!”
