Chapter Five

Day Three

Kate hummed as she prepared their second breakfast onboard. Wearing a light blue gauzy dress that allowed her body to breathe in the rising warmth of the day, she couldn't believe how much she enjoyed cooking in the custom galley. When they returned home, she would start their kitchen remodel as soon as possible.

Unless you were confined to a wheeled world, people had no concept of how difficult the most basic life necessities could be. The first time she tried to brush her teeth in her bathroom, the chair wouldn't get her close enough to the sink and she ended up spitting in the garbage can and then crying because it hadn't occurred to her to bring a cup into the bathroom. The simple things that she had never considered were always the ones that brought on strong emotions.

"Dammit," Sam exclaimed, breaking into her wandering thoughts, a second after the galley lights went out.

"Dad, language," Ryan chided, without looking up from her coloring book.

It made Kate smile. Both she and Sam tried not to swear in front of their daughter, but Sam had occasional slip-ups, and Ryan had no problem keeping him in line.

Kate glanced at the electrical lights in the control room; they were out as well. Because the yacht was older, they had hired an electrician to go through it and rewire sections for the extras they had installed. Maybe they should have had it thoroughly checked again before the voyage.

"I'll take a look," Sam said, grabbing a small toolbox from one of the storage compartments below the dinette seat and heading to the electrical room. He had stripped down to colorful board shorts he planned to swim in later. He hadn't bothered shaving, and the scruff gave him a rugged appearance.

Even though he looked the part, Kate grinned at seeing him with the toolbox. Sam was not a handyman, and Kate, having grown up on vessels that sometimes barely ran, was accustomed to the occasional mishap. She'd helped bail water for hours on one of the trips with her father when she was young, and their pump went out. During another adventure, she'd handed tools to Greg while he worked on an old engine that gave out a week into their stingray breeding behavior expedition. She looked back at it now as good times.

Within ten minutes, power was restored, and Kate resumed cooking breakfast.

"The inverter shut down," Sam explained in exasperation upon returning to the galley, hoisting the toolbox onto the table, and sitting beside Ryan. "I changed the fuse, and it started back up. We'll have it looked at when we meet up with pops."

Ryan's Gift had four solar panels and a wind generator for most of their onboard power needs. The electrician had warned them about the yacht's aging generator, which Greg had a replacement for once they rendezvoused.

"That's odd," Kate remarked. "We'll need to see if it happens again. Maybe we're overloading the circuit."

Sam shrugged. "Could be. We knew this would be an interesting first voyage."

She agreed. It had been over two years since Kate visited her father and he took her out to sea. That had only been for a single afternoon. The excursion had reminded Kate how much she loved the water. It was sad that it took a devastating accident to bring her back to the place she had called home for so many years.

"Ready to eat?" Kate asked, switching her thoughts to food. She'd prepared bacon and eggs with wholewheat toast. Sam had picked up a jar of their favorite strawberry preserves at the farmer's market, which added the perfect complement to the meal.

Sam stood and carried over the plates and bowls filled with their breakfast while Kate situated her wheelchair. With calm seas, locking it into place wasn't necessary, but she liked the feeling that it wouldn't move if they hit a few large waves, so she secured it.

"Yum, strawberry jam," Ryan exclaimed excitedly and grabbed a piece of toast as her father pushed the preserves in her direction. Before taking her first bite, Ryan looked at Kate. "Did you go poop this morning?" she asked.

"Not at the table," Kate replied, with a touch of color heating her cheeks. The hospital stay due to the impacted bowel was still too fresh, and she felt humiliated that Sam had been in the thick of the treatment to save her life. She needed to get over it, but their relationship was too undefined for her to feel comfortable about something so personal.

"It's my job," Ryan insisted. "You told me I had to help, and that's what I'm doing."

Kate wanted to hit her head against the table. She knew the question shouldn't bother her, but it embarrassed her in the worst possible way. Maybe her marriage was over, and she simply needed to face it.

"Thank you for your diligence," she told her daughter. "Yes, I did, and I logged it, no pun intended. Now it's time to eat without talking about bathroom behavior."

"What's a pun?" her daughter asked.

Sam laughed and shook his head. "She takes after your father, and it's too late to stop her now," he said.

Ryan looked indignant then grinned.

"I love grandpop, and I want to be just like him," she said earnestly.

"Eat," Kate said in mock sternness, hoping the bathroom talk was over.

"Eye, eye captain," Ryan said and added a salute that was too cute not to smile at.

"Aye, aye," her father corrected.

"What's an aye?" Ryan asked after taking a bite of eggs from her overfilled plate.

Kate was grateful to Sam for intervening and changing the focus of Ryan's never ending curiosity. She was inquisitive about everything, and her questions never stopped. Sometimes Kate or Sam had the answer, and sometimes they hit Google to satisfy their five-year-old's curiosity. She never asked the same question twice and could recite every fact she learned by storing them in her forever-stretching child's brain. She definitely came from her grandpop's bloodline.

"It's an old nautical term that means, yes," Kate told her.

"What she said," Sam nodded toward Kate.

"The pirates are saying ‘yes, yes?'" Ryan asked skeptically.

Sam's expression turned hard, and his voice lowered. "If you want to be keelhauled for insubordination, try my patience again, matey."

"What's a keelhaul?" Ryan asked after a small bout of giggling at her father's silliness.

Kate groaned good-naturedly, and Sam winked at his daughter.

"It was a horrible punishment for men who defied their captain at sea," he said. "They were dragged by a rope beneath the keel of the ship, and it was very dangerous. Now eat your food so we can get today started."

They finished breakfast, stowed everything in its place, and did a few chores until their food settled. When they were ready, they moved to the outside deck to repeat the prior day's physical therapy.

The morning continued to grow warmer, but it still had a ways to go before the true summer heat set in. The further offshore they traveled, the more the sea gave relief with a cool breeze. Land was far behind them, and Kate sucked in the ocean air, happy to be back on the water. She lifted her hand and blocked the sun from her eyes as she appreciated the clear blue view of both water and sky.

When she finished absorbing the beauty, she moved from the wheelchair to the casting deck. She swung her body around, dragging her legs so she could steer them into the water.

Kate gave a small gasp and froze.

Six feet off the bow, a great white shark had its massive upper body above the water with two dark eyes looking straight at her. Kate knew the eyes were actually a dark blue but right now they looked black. There had been no splash or any other indicator that the predator was in the area.

"Mom," Ryan said nervously.

"I see it, honey," Kate replied. Great whites were one of a few ocean species that lifted their head above the water to look around for prey or sometimes out of simple curiosity.

"See what?" asked Sam, who was moving the wheelchair to the side so he could stand in his exercise observation spot. "Oh!" he said when he looked up.

"It's a great white," Kate replied, sounding calm when she felt exactly the opposite. Its colossal jaws with rows of teeth that could eat through steel should give anyone pause. It continued staring and then, with no sound and what seemed to be no displacement of water, it sank beneath the surface like it had never been there. Shivers ran along Kate's skin, but she kept her smile in place.

Sharks were the stingray's closest relative, so by default, Kate was familiar with sharks. She'd gone diving with them many times and actually touched a giant hammerhead when she was a teenager. Like her father, she preferred stingrays.

"I don't think we'll be swimming here this morning," Sam said.

Ryan jumped up and down and pumped her hand. Kate grabbed her ankle so she didn't fall overboard.

"I can add a great white shark to my logbook," Ryan said with true excitement. "Grandpop will love it." She peered over the side, making Kate stretch her arms and hold a bit tighter.

"Sharks are not the mean, fierce eating machines that Hollywood makes them into, but they are dangerous," she told her daughter. "What that shark did is called spy-hopping. They either spy with just an eye above the water line or they lift the upper part of their body above the surface so they can see farther like that one did."

"Why do they do it?" Ryan asked.

"Curiosity or looking for a meal," Kate said. "Scientists believe they also do it to scent the air for large carcasses floating on the surface." She shrugged. "Killer whales and dolphins do it too."

"I don't want to be a shark meal," Ryan said and looked a little more skeptically at the area where the shark disappeared. "It had a lot of big teeth."

"They're sharp too," Kate told her. "They have three rows, and when a front tooth falls out, another moves in and takes its place. Humans only grow two sets of teeth, their baby ones and their adult ones. Great white sharks grow teeth throughout their life."

Sam grabbed his daughter around the waist and physically moved her closer to Kate. Ryan wore her swim top and a pair of yellow shorts. Kate had slathered sunblock on her this morning, though Ryan's skin was tanned from playing outside.

"You ladies do your exercises, and I'll keep watch for sharks," Sam said. "If worst comes to worst, we'll feed it roast from the freezer. Ryan would be nothing more than a light snack," he teased.

He hid it, but Kate saw the worry in his expression. Sam hadn't grown up on the water, and he'd told her before that sharks were not his favorite marine animal. She'd replied that he just needed to hang out with her dad for a while, and he would change his mind. He'd done what she asked, but his unease over sharks and other large fish with sharp teeth remained. They would be lucky if he went back into the water during this voyage.

"I would be the shark's yummy dessert," his daughter said cheekily.

"Let's not test it," Sam said. He watched nervously as Ryan went through the physical therapy steps. "We'll pull anchor when you're done," he added.

The water remained calm, and the shark was probably long gone, but Kate didn't say it aloud. Seeing a great white so close and the silence of the animal literally lifting the top part of its body entirely out of the water spooked her too.

The main reason sharks were attracted to boats was for a meal. Either a bundle of caught fish hanging over the side in the water, or guides chumming the water to attract sharks for sightseers. Both situations caused problems.

Her thoughts returned to the shark she'd just seen. Kate would swear it stared at her with menace.