around, agitation clear on his face. “Yeah, it’s all really helpful, but what I’d like to know is how the hell we stop a ferry from hitting a breakwall and sinking during high seas.” He rips his fingers through his hair, which he does when he’s frustrated—I know that well enough by now.
“We’re working on that,” I say coolly. “In fact, that’s what I’d like to talk about next.”
He doesn’t reply, so I go on. “Ben, do you have access to a boat that you’d feel comfortable driving—or sailing, I mean—in weather like that?”
Ben knits his brows. “I have access to boats, yes. But I’m not qualified to sail safely in those conditions.”
“Okay, that’s what I figured. No problem, it was just a thought. Next, I don’t think we try to stop the ferry from hitting the breakwall. That’s impossible. We can try to stop the ferry from sailing, but that kind of action never seems to work for us, right? Making strange claims of future disasters will only get us in trouble. I mean, I couldn’t stop the snowplow driver from driving. We couldn’t stop the shooters from attacking. So I’m assuming rather than wasting time trying to get the captain to stop the voyage, our job is to keep people from dying in the confusion that follows the impact.” I pause and look at the solemn faces looking back at me. “Right? That’s been our job all along. We do our best to stop people from dying.” I glance at Sawyer, who is half turned, listening.
“Okay,” he says. “And?”
“And so we need to be on that ferry.”
The only sound is a wooden spoon scraping the bottom of a stew pot. I smell fresh basil.
After a moment, Sawyer says, “How do we save twenty or thirty people from drowning when we’re on a sinking ferry?”
“By organizing the passengers and keeping them calm. Handing out life vests and helping the crew with the lifeboats. Taking charge of the situation and trying to make sure that the runaway lifeboat doesn’t get detached from the ferry until it’s full of people.”
“And when the ship sinks?”
“We . . .” For the first time I falter. “We get into a lifeboat too.”
“And then?”
“We get rescued,” I say. I look down at the table, staring at the remains of the charcuterie plate, no longer hungry.
Sawyer pulls an electric hand blender from a cupboard and pulverizes the contents of his stewpan into soup while the rest of us imagine ourselves in lifeboats, crashing into breakwalls and splitting our heads open on rocks.
Or maybe that’s just me.
Thirty-Two
I stay at Sawyer’s when everybody else leaves.
“The soup smells delicious,” I say, trying to get a peek at it over Sawyer’s shoulder. “Looks great too.” I wrap my arms around his waist and he pours a splash of cream into the pot. I can feel his muscles tense as he stirs.
“Almost ready,” he says. He takes a clean spoon and dips it in. “Wanna test it?”
“Of course,” I say. I blow on it and take a sip, closing my eyes to savor it. “This tastes like a cold fall day,” I say. “I forgot it was April. Delizioso.”
He turns off the burner and faces me. I put my arms around his neck and he slides his around my waist, and he looks into my eyes, not smiling.
I look into his eyes, and I don’t smile either. “Talk to me,” I say softly. “What happened to you?”
His eyes narrow a fraction. “Nothing,” he says.
I tip my head slightly. “So what’s going on?”
“What do you mean?”
Our faces are inches apart.
“What is it about the water?”
He breaks his gaze. “Oh. That. It’s no big deal.”
I stare at him. “Come on.”
He loosens his grasp on my waist and turns to look at the soup. “Okaaay,” he says. “When I was ten I was kayaking on a lake with my brother. There were two guys on Sea-Doos screwing around nearby, doing stupid stunts. One of them fell off and his Sea-Doo kept going for a ways after the motor cut, and the guy wasn’t wearing a life vest or anything.”
Sawyer stirs and shrugs his shoulders. “He was trying to swim to the craft but he was starting to struggle, so my brother and I glided over to try to give him a hand. I took off my life vest and threw it to him while my brother tried to reach out to him. The guy was starting to freak out, and he grabbed the side