had more than a week left of the trip. Olivia lay down on her bed, just for a minute. She was going to get up and take off her clothes but never did. She fell sound asleep in her dancing clothes, with her high-heeled sandals in her hand, and a smile on her face. She was going to call and tell her mother all about it in the morning, but first she had to get some sleep.
Chapter 9
They all looked a little shaggy when they met at the breakfast table at noon the next day. Olivia looked surprisingly fresh, but said she could hardly walk. Phillip was wearing dark glasses and asked for a glass of Fernet Branca, which was what he had used for hangovers in his youth.
“I think I may have a brain tumor,” he said, and everyone laughed. Amanda was extremely quiet. She had been on deck alone since nine A.M.
“It sounds like you all had a good time,” she said primly. But it had been her choice not to go.
“Grandma danced her ass off,” Alex volunteered, and everybody laughed again.
“I had a very, very good time,” Olivia confirmed, “except for the blisters on my feet.”
“I think I agreed to spend the weekend with some Italian guy from Milan,” Liz said with a dazed look. She had brought a bottle of aspirin to the table, and they all passed it around. They were a sorry group, but none of them regretted it for a minute. The headaches they had that morning had been worth it. “I think if I go swimming today, I’ll drown,” Liz said, wondering how many glasses of champagne she had had the night before. She had lost count. Carole, Alex, and Sophie had had fun too, and they had drunk less than the adults.
In the end, they decided to take the boat out and have lunch at anchor. They took turns having massages, and by three o’clock they all started to feel better, and went swimming after that. They took it easy and laughed a lot about the night before, what they remembered of it. Even Olivia admitted that she had had far too much champagne, and she called and told Maribelle all about it, as they went back to port in the late afternoon.
Maribelle surprised her when she said that Cass had come to see her the day before. She was in New York with one of her clients, and had gone to visit her grandmother. Hearing about it made Olivia wish she was there, but she knew Cass would never join them. But it was a relief to know that she was happy and well.
“You never know,” Maribelle said, when Olivia said she wished Cass would come on the boat. She didn’t have three children, she had four. Cassie was her lost child, the one that had slipped through her fingers and she couldn’t recapture. It always felt like a terrible loss to her, even if they saw each other once in a while. But there was so much damage and distance between them now, it seemed beyond repair. “Things happen. People change. Life has a way of working things out,” Maribelle said philosophically with the vantage point of age. But it didn’t seem likely to Olivia. Her mother laughed when she told her about the night before.
“You sound like a bunch of shameless drunks,” she said as Olivia described the scene to her. The only thing more shocking than how much they drank had been the bill. But she had been anesthetized enough not to care.
“We certainly were last night, but it was fun. Your great-grandchildren had me dancing all night.” Olivia only wished that she had done more of that when she was young, but she had hardly ever had the time. Sometimes it was easier doing things like that when you were old.
The others all talked to Maribelle for a few minutes, and told her they missed her, and they promised to call her again in a few days.
They ate on board that night, and after dinner they left the port and headed back toward Corsica. They were going to sail through the night, and Liz dreaded going through the Strait of Bonifacio again, but the weather reports were good, and the captain said he was expecting a smooth crossing. And then as though out of nowhere, halfway to Corsica, a mistral wind came up. It was sudden and strong, the sea grew frighteningly choppy, and the boat