But I’d always thought that she liked doing that stuff.
Maybe it was more complicated than that.
My first thought was for my mom: What would the dating pool be like for a fifty-seven-year-old lady? The pickings had to be slim. She might not ever find anyone else.
But my second thought was even worse. How, exactly, would my dad even survive without my mom? He was sixty—and his own dad hadlived to ninety. What on earth would he do with himselfwithout my motherfor the next thirty years? It was inconceivable.
A post-divorce montage for him flipped through my head: my dad in a sad, pre-furnished apartment, eating microwave dinners and drinking stale coffee, forgetting to open the curtains. All the invisible, unappreciated things my mother did that lifted up his life,gone.
That was bleak.
Without a man, my mom would still have Grandma Dodie, and good friends, and great food, and laughter, and her kids, and cozy mysteries to read, and her flower garden, and places to visit.
Without my mom, my dad would have… stale coffee.
God.
He’d wither away.
He’d forget to recycle his newspapers and become a hoarder, and stack them to the ceiling in every room—and eventually die by suffocation in his recliner when they finally avalanched down on top of him.
It was a lot to take in.
My mom concluded the talk by telling my dad not to tell anyone about this until after Ashley’s wedding.
“Let’s get through the wedding,” my mom said, “and then we’ll tell the kids.”
But my dad’s brain was still churning. “If I can change your mind on this cruise,” he asked then, “will you change your mind?”
My mother sighed. “I wouldn’t bet on it.”
“One week.” My dad nodded, like he was forming a plan.
“You’ve had thirty years so far,” my mother said, “so I wouldn’t get your hopes up.”
I COULDN’T, OFcourse, tell Ashley about any of this. And I couldn’t tell Pete, either, because he had no filter.
In the end, I just had to keep it to myself and wonder over and over if my mom had just made things better or worse.
Meanwhile, life was still happening, whether we liked it or not.
I still had a cruise to get through, and a childhood crush to conquer, and more than enough problems to solve.
I did go to Ashley’s hairdresser, and I did get a blowout. I did pack more of Ashley’s sexy clothes into my suitcase than comfortable ones of my own. I did practice walking in heels, and I did researchseduction tips for ordinary peoplein the wee hours of the internet, and I did get my toenails painted hot pink.
For luck.
I worked out the exact number of hours we’d be on the ship together to try to nail down my time frame. I color-coded the activities schedule with highlighters. I even read a book calledHow to Make a Man Fall in Love with Youand then made a spreadsheet from key points—with a tentative conquest schedule that included to-do items like “ask him about his job,” “prioritize moonlight,” and “eye contact, eye contact, eye contact.”
Would it succeed? Who knew?
But by the time our whole family showed up at the wharf on embarkation day and got in line to board, all that late-night googling settled it for me. Conquering Finn—and all my intimacy issues along with him—would be my main objective on this cruise. It would give me purpose. And focus. And—why not?—a little bit of hope.
Not to mention, it just might work.
After all, I did get catcalled on the dock that morning by three dudes from another ship, who were all wearing T-shirts that readLET’S GET SHIP-FACED.
Which they already were, by the way. At ten in the morning. So ship-faced, in fact, that they tried to boardourship—the MSEnchantment—whentheirship, the MSDecadence, was down the wharf.
