strain in the muscles of her neck and face. Nerves made visible via frown lines.
“Harold, are you listening? We need to take some precautions.”
“My dear, it’s a computer bug.” He made a mental note to cut more plastic tubing to protect the rode where it came around the bow of the boat.
“What if our autopilot goes down?” said Faye. “Or we lose our GPS?”
“We’ll handsteer. We’ll navigate by the stars. We’ll do as the sailors of yore. Not to mention we’ll be in Sydney by then.” They still had three weeks to make the journey to Australia, though they ought to have had six. They had tarried too long in Bora Bora, then again in Tonga. He resented how their itinerary still tormented them like a bad dream, even though they had agreed in principle that they needed to remain flexible. Boats that didn’t account for vagaries of the weather ended up at the bottom of the ocean. “With any luck we won’t have to be steering or navigating at all.” Just last night they’d reviewed the plan: one week to New Caledonia, four days at the marina, then another week to Australia, with three days to spare before New Year’s Eve and the millennial midnight countdown. The weather was the biggest variable, but Harold was feeling good about their chances. It was pretty much the only thing he still felt good about.
“Don’t talk to me about luck,” said Faye. “I mean it.”
He turned to her. Her brows were knitted together and there was an edge to her voice. He couldn’t tell if there was more to her anger than her usual pre-departure unhappiness. “Do you want to double-check the provisions? We could go get some lettuce before we set off, if you like.” Faye got temperamental the longer she was deprived of fresh produce.
His wife made a face, then nodded and headed for the galley.
* * *
—
Faye counted the remaining cans and dried goods, all the pre-portioned meals double-bagged against moisture. She didn’t actually need to count them, because she had a running tally of everything stored on the boat—food, batteries, books, Christmas presents, birthday presents. She kept the master list tucked away in a series of protective Ziplocs, but at this point she had it memorized. And she knew that what her husband really wanted was for her to go away. Sometimes it surprised her, how she knew more about that man than she could ever have imagined. But she had been majoring in Harold 101 ever since “Silly Love Songs” by Wings was a Billboard hit.
She’d met and fallen in love with Harold during an exchange year to Syracuse—his handlebar moustache and polyester slacks notwithstanding. They’d bonded over Lasers and catamarans, as Faye was from a sailing family, too, back in England. She’d cheered him on at every regatta before cooking him savoury rice and lamb dishes in a tagine. Eventually, their love of Moroccan cuisine led them to travel through Casablanca and Fez. Then it was kaeng phet pet yang and a month in Thailand, where Faye took a cooking class and shopped for rambutan and fingerroot in the public market.
They married after graduation and settled down in Montauk near his parents, who had a summer compound they’d taken to living in year-round. When Faye hinted to Harold that he could make himself into more than just a shareholder in his family’s company—more than a frequenter of his parents’ grand weekend house, a member of their yacht club, and captain of his father’s racing sloop—Harold said she was right. So he bought a full-keel, forty-two-foot cruising yacht of his own. It was a rejoinder, of sorts, though not the one she was looking for.
They named their boat and their firstborn while Faye was still in love with Italy—when she still served grappa at dinner parties and kept an Italian guidebook in their peach and white bathroom, on top of Harold’s stack of back issues of Cruising World. They sailed around Sag Harbor on Buona Fortuna almost every weekend when the weather was nice, and Domenica was an angel who slept through all of their dinner parties.
When Emma was born, they made a plan for a five-year circumnavigation that would take them from Panama to Australia to South Africa and back again, with time built in for sightseeing, relaxation, and boat repairs. The girls would come and Faye would homeschool them. She had laughed out loud when she’d heard that part. It was a crazy plan, Harold’s