It occurred to me as I said it that it might not technically be true. That dress had hit the ground pretty hard when I knocked my dad over. And I was feeling a little wrinkled myself, to be honest.
But the point remained.
My mom was taking it all in, frowning. “And the limp?” she asked.
“I was so overjoyed to be rescued,” I said, “that I tackled Dad with a hug—and knocked him right over.”
My mother looked back and forth between us. “You hugged your dad?”
I nodded.
“So hard that you knocked him over?”
I shrugged and said, “Yeah,” likeOf course. Like we all tackled Dad with hugs all the time.
My mom looked at my dad.
He shrugged, too.
But she was impressed. I could tell.
That’s when Cooper got paged again, and we all paused at the sound of his name. “Is Cooper not back yet?” my mom asked.
“Sounds like maybe not?” I said.
“Well, where is he?” my mom demanded of me, like he was being naughty and I had to account for it.
“I really don’t know.”
“You always know everything about Cooper,” my mother said.
Not everything. Not always. “He might not be coming back to the ship,” I said, thinking my mom probably didn’t need to be actively worrying about Cooper on top of everything else. Then I said, “He might have missed the boat on purpose.”
“On purpose?” my mother asked.
I sighed. Time to say it. “This morning, he said he was quitting.”
“‘Quitting’? Quitting what?”
Quitting me, I supposed? The idea squeezed my heart. “Leaving the ship,” I clarified. “And going back to London. Today. That was the last thing he said to me.”
“How’s he going to get there?” my mom demanded. “Swim?”
“He said he’d figure it out.”
My mom was so baffled, but as she turned it all over in her mind, she started to suspect it was my fault. “Okay,” she said, putting a hand on her hip. “What did you do to him?”
“Nothing!” I said. “We just had a—misunderstanding.”
Sheesh. Ifthatwasn’t the understatement of the year.
My mother tilted her head. “A ‘misunderstanding’ that made him want toleave the ship?”
“I guess, technically,” I said, “it was more like a fight.”
“What were you fighting about?”
Where to begin?“I don’t know. Just—the usual.”
