“That’s a sign of good luck,” Meredith said, coming up beside her.
Nina opened one arm, let Meredith snuggle under the blanket beside her. “It’s cold as hell out here. ”
“But beautiful. ”
Up ahead, a lone lighthouse stood at the rugged green end of an island.
“You were restless last night,” Meredith said, reaching for Nina’s hot chocolate.
“How do you know?”
“I’m an insomniac lately. It’s one of the many prizes you find in the Cracker Jack box of a crumbling marriage. I’m always exhausted and I never sleep. So why were you tossing and turning?”
“We’re three days away from Juneau. ”
“And?”
“I found him. ”
Meredith turned to her. The blanket slipped out of Nina’s fingers and slid downward. “What do you mean, you found him?”
“The professor of Russian studies. Dr. Adamovich. He’s in a nursing home on Franklin Street in Juneau. I had my editor track him down. ”
“So that’s why we’re on this cruise. I should have guessed. Did you speak to him? ”
“No. ”
Meredith bit down on her lip and looked out at the water. “What are we supposed to do? Can we just show up at his door?”
“I didn’t really think it through. I know. I know. Big surprise. I just got so amped when I found him. I know he’ll have answers for us. ”
“He wrote to her. Not us. I don’t think we can tell her. She’s . . . fragile, Neens. Dad was right about that. ”
“I know. That’s why I wasn’t sleeping. We can’t tell her we’ve been researching her life, and we can’t just show up at the professor’s nursing home, and we can’t sneak away for a day after all the fuss I made about us being together. And if we did sneak away, he might not talk to us anyway. It’s her he wanted to see. ”
“I can see how all that would keep you up. Especially with the rest of it. ”
“The rest of it?”
/> “Your nature, Neens. You can’t not see him. ”
“I know. So what do we do?”
“We will go see the professor. ”
Nina gasped at the sound of her mother’s voice and turned around. In her surprise, she caught the side of her cup on the railing and hot chocolate splashed everywhere.
“Mom,” Meredith stammered.
“You heard it all?” Nina said, licking chocolate from her fingers. She knew she looked calm—it was one of the many things photojournalism had taught her: how to look calm even if your insides were shaking—but her voice was uneven. Things were going so well with Mom lately; she hated to think she’d ruined that.
“I heard enough,” Mom said. “It is the professor from Alaska, yes? The one who wrote to me years ago?”
Nina nodded. She pulled the blanket off of her and Meredith and carried it over to Mom, wrapping it around her thin shoulders. “It was me, Mom. Not Meredith. ”
Mom held the blanket closed at her breast, her fingers pale against the red plaid. She glanced at the deck chair beside her and sat down, covering herself carefully with the blanket.
Nina and Meredith took chairs on either side of her, flipping the blankets out, too. A steward came by and offered them each a hot chocolate.