CHAPTER 64
“Hello, it’s me,” she said, knocking on Andrew’s cabin door.
“Come in.”
He was at his small desk, writing something by hand in a journal. To the side, shelves of teak held a few rows of old books, some with calfskin covers. The picture of his wife, fastened to the wall above the desk, seemed to look down at him. Around her neck was a beautiful string of shells and silver, the same one now hanging above the compass on the bridge.
“Valentina’s necklace,” she said, indicating the portrait.
“Someday it will be yours. Promise.”
“Oh, Andrew, thank you, but I was so happy to find that it wasn’t lost with…that you still had it. And I want to thank you for everything you did and tried to do on this trip. You were the only one I could always count on. Don’t give up.”
“I won’t, but this is the last ship for me,” he said, his sea-worn smile hiding nothing.
She could only answer with a deep sigh. He pulled opened a drawer without looking and soon a shot glass of whiskey stood between them.
“Thanks.” She drank some then poured a little water from a bottle she brought into her hand and splashed it on her face. “Okay. Dad says it will be hard to win, but I don’t see how they can just take your ship.”
“They have ways.”
“But you will try to stop them, right?”
“Of course.”
“We can make a story out of this. Dad and you are still beloved by many, from the old TV specials. Is there any way I can help?”
“Rest and gather your strength. We’ll all need it.” He stopped smiling, closed his eyes for a moment. “You helped us…and me, more than you know.”
“Yeah, well, you for me, too.”
She couldn’t stop her gaze from wandering up to Valentina’s picture. “I remember the day we named the ship for her. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. As time went by, I grew old, Valentina didn’t, that’s all. She’s never really left me. I keep a place for her, and always will.”
He glanced at the brass weather clock on the wall. “Got to get up to the bridge.” He stood up and gave her a hug. “To home,” he said, lifting a phantom drink to the rest of hers, and they walked out together.
The way back home only took a few days, but it dragged for Penny. She avoided people whenever she could, with a single exception: a requested interview by one of the civilian investigators who had come on board. She answered everything, but kept strictly to the external facts, what she had done, what she saw and heard, but nothing about what she thought or felt. Almost as if what she was describing had happened to someone else. And by now it almost seemed as if it had. Yet she would never be the same. The energy wasn’t there to run her old self. And if it ever came back, she would put it in service of something else. Right now she didn’t know what and didn’t care. When the time came, when it mattered, she would. Now she only wanted to head into the silence of deep woods far, far away from the sound of waves.