There was an overall silence.
“I guess you can start with the good news,” Mr. Dalrymple replied.
Bill shifted his weight from one foot to the other, stalling. “All right, then. You’re all going to experience something most visitors don’t when they come to Sable Island, and you’ll get a few free meals out of it too.”
His announcement was met with further silence.
“The bad news?” Oliver asked.
“The weather, as you can see,” Garrett said to the whole group, “came out of nowhere, so it’s not safe to fly back to Halifax. I’m afraid you’re all stuck here for the night.”
While the others groaned and panicked and scrambled to figure out how to manage this unexpected change in plans, Joanna turned to her grandfather. He simply shrugged and smiled, seeming amused by the swerving vehicle that was the universe.
The island visitors were spread out, billeted in two buildings at Main Station. Jason and the Dalrymples were welcomed in the home of a naturalist who had been living on Sable Island, on and off, for more than thirty years, while Joanna, Oliver, and the two pilots took rooms upstairs at the main building for accommodations.
Everyone had only just gotten settled when the storm reached its peak, like a raging beast. The marram grass whipped in near-hurricane-force winds, and the house creaked and groaned as if it were about to be carried off like Dorothy’s inThe Wizard of Ozand spin wildly out to sea.
Thankfully, by dinnertime, the house was still standing when Garrett and Bill served up a spaghetti dinner in the spacious common area.
“Do visitors get stranded often when the weather’s dodgy?” Joanna asked Garrett, who sat across from her at the long table.
“Almost never,” he replied. “It’s more likely that trips get canceled, but no one saw this little flare-up coming until a few hours before.”
“Lucky us.” Joanna smiled at him as she twirled her spaghetti noodles around her fork. “Seriously, I’m not sorry to be spending the night here.”
“I hope the rest of your group feels the same,” he said.
In the spirit of making polite conversation, Garrett addressed Oliver, who sat next to Joanna. “You two are from England?”
“What gave us away?” Oliver replied in a friendly manner.
Denise, one of the pilots, laughed. “It’s those gorgeous accents. Are you just visiting Canada, or do you live here?”
“Just visiting,” Joanna told her.
“And what do you both do?” Denise asked.
Joanna poked at her pasta. “I’m a veterinarian in London.”
“She looks after horses at the Royal Mews,” Oliver added, not shy about boasting.
Garrett and the pilots swung their gazes to her at once.
“You mean Buckingham Palace?” Denise asked.
“Yes, that’s right.”
Denise dropped her fork onto her plate. “How in the world did you getthatjob?”
Joanna dabbed her mouth with a napkin. “Your guess is as good as mine, but I’ve loved horses since I was young, so I always knew that’s how I wanted to spend my life, working with them in some way. By the time I was twenty, I had a mountain of volunteer experience, and they just happened to be hiring when I graduated from vet college.”
“Sounds like fate,” Garrett said.
“Maybe so,” Joanna replied.
“And what do you do, Oliver?”
All eyes turned to him, and Joanna was about to intervene protectively when he responded.
