Chapter Ten

The sailboat rocked as I stepped aboard. I must not have covered my alarm well, because Dad gave me a concerned look. “You sure about this?”

“Of course.” I accepted the orange and slightly grody-looking life vest from his hands and slipped it on. It felt bulky and highly unfashionable buckled around my chest, but at least I wouldn’t drown.

It was Thursday, one of my days off. When I’d come downstairs I’d seen Ethan bouncing like a Labrador retriever, which struck me as highly suspicious. I’d insisted he bring me along on whatever adventure he and my dad were embarking on. I wanted Dad to see I could be as good a research assistant as Ethan. Besides, I was bored.

“What exactly are we doing?” I could feel the buoyancy of the ocean beneath us as I lowered myself onto a bench. Ethan had called the activity “throwing logs” on our drive to the harbor from Golden Doors, which meant exactly nothing to me.

“It’s how sailors knew how fast their ship was going.” Ethan climbed aboard after me. We were on his family’s sailboat, with a white fiberglass hull and cushy-looking benches, and he navigated it with ease. “They threw a wooden board in the water and measured how fast it moved away. They attached it to the ship with a knotted line and counted the knots unreeled.”

“That’s where the term knots came from? Literal knots?”

“Right. Now a nautical knot is a very specific speed—a nautical mile, about one and a half miles, per hour—but it’s how the term started.”

The day was gorgeous. Clouds pastoral, sun soaking into my skin, the soft breeze like a cocoon. Dad and Ethan showed me what felt like a hundred parts of the sailboat: the mainsail, topsail, ropes called sheets and poles called booms. “Here,” Dad said, handing me a rope—the sheet—attached to the boom. “We want the wind to fill the sail, so you need to continuously adjust the boom to make sure we’re angled to catch it.”

I tried to make sure the sail didn’t totally deflate (or luff, as Dad and Ethan said, denying they’d made the word up). Keeping track of where the wind came from was difficult, even with Dad’s tips to “look at the ripples on the water” and “listen to the wind and make sure it’s passing by both your ears equally.” Thankfully, Ethan pointed out both a weathervane and a digital tracker.

After an hour of trimming and tacking, Dad and Ethan adjusted the sails in what they called a heave-to so we could pause in actively sailing. Dad took out a tiny recorder, glanced at me quickly, then started speaking. “Seventy-eight degrees, wind from the west. The water’s dark blue slanting green, sky’s clear, a few streaky clouds. Ethan and Jordan here, Jordan’s first time on a sailboat”—he turned away and kept muttering into the microphone.

I stared after him, trying to make out what he was saying about me. “What’s he doing?”

Ethan glanced at me, surprised. “Haven’t you heard your dad do this before? He’s taking notes so he can set the scene in the book.”

I winced. “Why on us, though? We’re not going to be in the books.”

Ethan gave me the kind of incredulous look one might give a potato that had started speaking. “You haven’t read your dad’s stuff?”

Self-consciousness squeezed me. I had not, in fact, read my dad’s stuff. I’d read the long-form article that launched his career. I’d listened to him read excerpts. But the whole book? Nope.

I’d meant to, when it came out. I was incredibly proud of my dad’s accomplishments. But I didn’t make it past the dedication: To my wife, Rebecca. I will miss you forever. Honestly, after that I just wanted to pat the books’ spines affectionately whenever I walked past them. I didn’t have the emotional bandwidth to crack the cover again. “I know what they’re about.”

“Hm.” Ethan looked skeptical. “Well, they have a personal vibe to them.”

“How personal?” The Atlantic article was friendly in tone, framed by first-person narration but mostly focused on history. The chapter Dad read at readings began with him, alone on a boat, trying his hand at celestial navigation, before springing backward in time to nineteenth-century navigators. “Am I in them?”

This was the most horrifying thing I’d considered in a long time.

Ethan avoided my gaze. “Not really.”

I took it back. That was the most horrifying thing. How could I not be in a book with a “personal vibe”? I was Dad’s daughter. You couldn’t get more personal. Was Ethan in them more than me?

It would be just like Ethan to have a larger presence in Dad’s books than me. Great. Wonderful. Thrilling.

Dad came back to our side of the sailboat. “All set. You guys ready?”

“Sure,” I said. “What do we do?”

Ethan aimed his phone at the two of us.

I glanced at him, startled. “Are you—filming?”

“Ethan takes lots of notes and videos,” Dad said. “It’s helpful for later on.”

“And for social,” Ethan said.

“I am not in video-ready condition,” I said. Ethan smirked. “Especially not if you’re posting this anywhere.”

“You look beautiful,” Dad said, because he was contractually obligated to do so via the Parenting Handbook.

Despite myself, I glanced at Ethan, but of course he didn’t agree with my dad. I didn’t want him to agree, didn’t want to be thinking about whether Ethan found me beautiful or not. I smoothed the mess of my hair gathered on the top of my head. If this was what Dad always did, I could be cool about it. “Fine.”

Dad held up a triangular piece of a wood, both for me and for the camera. A rope was tied to one point and led back to a giant spool of rope, bulky with knots. “This is called a common log, a chip log, a ship log—or just a log. We’ll drop it to float in the water, and let out the rope as the current carries us away.” He held up a brass hourglass. “When we start, we’ll turn this hourglass. When it runs out, we’ll gather the rope back and count how many knots have passed through.” He lifted the hourglass in one hand, wooden plank in the other. “Who wants which?”

I took the plank of wood and Ethan, the hourglass. I was more excited than expected, like a little kid about to do the baking-soda-volcano thing. “All right,” Dad said. “On the count of one, two, three, go, turn the glass and drop the plank.”

Ethan and I exchanged anticipatory grins.

“One, two, three, go!” Dad cried. I dropped the plank into the water and watched the rope unspooling away from it, then glanced over at the sand crystals sifting down the hourglass. It was silly and bright and joy-inducing, and the sun on my face and salt on my lips made me want to stay out on the water forever. I could see why Ethan and Dad had so much fun doing these kinds of re-creations. It felt like playing, like a game I might have done as a child.

When the hourglass ran out, we towed the plank back in and excitedly counted all the knots, nodding firmly at each other as though the amount meant something to us. Then Dad disappeared again, back to the prow of the boat, notebook in hand.

“What’s he doing now?” I asked Ethan, somewhat surprised we weren’t repeating the experiment or heading home.

“He likes to write the first draft when he’s doing the experiment,” Ethan said. “He says he’s motivated. Good atmosphere.” He grinned. “And we get to spend more time on the water.”

“Can’t disagree there.” I raised my face to the sun. It bleached the inside of my eyes and waged war against my sunscreen. I thought about how this, like Andrea Darrel’s excitement about college, transcended centuries. Someone in the 1890s, or the 1500s, or a thousand years ago could have felt the same joy as I did from the sun on their face and the rocking of a boat.

By the time we made it back to the island and headed to dinner, I felt deeply content and unexpectedly tired. I wasn’t used to the uninterrupted sun, the wind chafing at my skin, the rise and fall of the ocean—let alone hoisting sails or controlling the boom. But I’d liked it. I’d liked hanging out with Dad and Ethan.

Maybe this was how it could be.

“Ethan and I are getting dinner and then going back to the office,” Dad said as we docked. “Want to join us for dinner?”

And just like that, my stomach seized.

Did I want to go with them to get dinner. Because they were the ones with the preexisting plans; they’d be going back to the office to keep working. I could join them or not, and it didn’t really matter to Dad one way or another.

The pilot light of my jealousy flared higher. “I’ll pass. I told Abby I’d meet her and her friends for dinner tonight, anyway.”

“Okay,” Dad said, nodding and already turning toward Ethan to talk about food choices. It made my gut twist even more. He didn’t even want to try to convince me to change my mind. I stuffed my water bottle and sunscreen into my tote, trying not to let my hands shake. It was fine. So I was the extra wheel. Whatever.

I did get dinner with Abby and Stella, and Stella’s girlfriend Lexi, and Abby’s roommate Jane, and it was nice, and by the end I felt stable again. I needed to let go of wanting Dad to pay more attention to me. It was probably good he didn’t depend on me, right? I mean, obviously I wished he’d pick me over Ethan, but I’d be going to UMass in a few months. It was good he didn’t only rely on me.

And if I didn’t want him to lean on Ethan, I’d have to find someone else to occupy his time.

On Friday morning, I turned to Cora. “Any plans this weekend?”

I thought she and Dad could be a good match. I didn’t know if they’d think so—the only thing I knew about Cora’s romantic life was she’d once gone on a date with a guy she’d cross the street to avoid—but they were both nerdy, kind, driven, smart people. So I didn’t mind trying my hand at yenta-ing.

Cora looked up from a notepad filled with erratic equations. “More work, I guess. Catching up on sleep, if I’m lucky.”

“The Barbanels are having a party tomorrow at five,” I said. Apparently they always had one for the official start of summer at the end of June. “You should come.”

She looked horrified. “Oh, no, thanks.”

“It’ll be fun.” I paused. “Or maybe it won’t. Honestly, who’s to say? But it’ll definitely be an experience. And the Barbanels told me I should invite you, and anyone you want to bring.”

“They did?”

Well, Miriam had said there’d be around a hundred people at the party, so I was pretty sure no one would notice an additional two or three. “Yeah.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“Cool.” I slung my bag over my arm. “Hopefully I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”

Step 1: Seed planted. Step 2: Calling Dad before the party to make sure he dressed appropriately. “Wear one of those nice button-downs Aunt Lou bought you,” I said over the phone on Saturday morning. “And steam it in the shower to get rid of the wrinkles first.”

“Who’s the adult here?”

“The one who was probably going to wear a college T-shirt with a bleach stain on it.”

“I do know how to take care of myself, you know.”

“I have not seen concrete proof of this.”

We hung up, and I showered and blew out my hair so it looked sleek and smooth instead of like a living cloud capable of eating small children. My makeup was easy because I had exactly two looks: eye makeup with red lipstick and without.

Someone knocked. “Hey, it’s me,” Ethan called through the door. “Can I come in?”

“No!” I shouted, panicking and wrapping my towel tighter.

“Come on, just for a second,” he wheedled. “I wanna show you something.”

“Oh, I’ve heard that line before,” I muttered, looking around for clothes to pull on. Though on second thought—

Securing the towel, I opened the door, batting my lashes up at Ethan. “Yes?”

His gaze fell and he blinked several times. “Oh, uh—hi.”

I smiled and stepped back. Daring him. “Come on in.”

He hesitated in the doorway. He held a book in his hand, a familiar one. My father’s. “I wanted to show you—a few passages—maybe another time.”

“Chicken,” I said softly as he turned to go. My lips turned up. “Red junglefowl.”

He spun around, heat in his eyes, and stepped so close I could feel his breath. “Ask me to stay, then,” he said, voice just as low.

I swallowed. Heat suffused my entire body, prickling and intense, and I was suddenly very aware my towel was a single piece of fabric held up by one hand. I stepped back. “I should get ready for the party.”

“I’ll see you down there.”

I shut the door, then leaned my forehead against it. What was I doing?

Trying to ground myself, I turned back to my closet. Downstairs, I pictured a sea of white pants and linen dresses; mint greens and lemon yellows and pale pinks. Oh well. I pulled on the vegan-leather black dress I’d worn to prom and added ruby-red glass earrings to match my toenails and lipstick. Feeling much more myself, I headed downstairs.

The lawn had been transformed. White cloths covered tables laden with cascades of grapes and pyramids of cheese. Giant vats of water had been infused with chunks of coconut and pineapple. I spied trays of watermelon and tiny fruit tartlets and skewers of juicy heirloom tomatoes and mozzarella.

I’d been right about the style: no one wore all black like me, but I felt comfortable enough at Golden Doors by now not to care. The women wore nice dresses or blouses; the men had tucked in their button-downs. Their sweaters were faded, their sandals worn. But I’d been thrifting long enough to recognize quality. I could spot 100 percent cashmere at ten paces and knew the difference in how outfits hung when they’d originally been priced at three digits.

I grabbed a plate and piled it high with cucumber salad, fresh guac, and warm pitas. Balancing it on one hand, I snagged a glass of freshly squeezed lemonade with the other and carried everything to where some of the older cousins and the triplets sat.

“Jordan will know,” one of the triplets said as I joined them. “You know astrology, right, Jordan?”

“Astrology?” I met the gaze of David, Ethan’s middle brother, who spread his hands, palms up. “Uh, not really.”

“Really?” The triplet—Lily, maybe—widened her eyes. “But you study the stars.”

Another triplet—I knew there were only three, per the term, but it seemed like there were so many of them—spoke. “She does astronomy, Lils. The real one.”

“Astrology is real,” Lily said with a simple elegance, as though she refused to defend facts. She focused on me again. “You understand the stars, right? You know about constellations and stuff?”

“I mean, from a technical perspective,” I hedged.

“What’s your sign?”

“My birthday’s September twenty-seventh.”

“Libra. An air sign,” she said. “Interesting.”

“Is that—good?” Most of what I knew of constellations had to do with finding them in the sky, and not particularly even the twelve of the zodiac.

“Leo’s a fire sign,” she said. “But I think that’s a good match.”

“Who’s Leo?”

Lily looked appalled; one of the other triplets smirked, and the other—dare I say it—cackled.

“Never mind them,” Shira said from across the table. “I don’t understand what they’re saying half the time.”

“She still might know,” Lily said. “We have a meteor shower and a comet coming up. How are those going to affect our astrological charts?”

“Um,” I said. “Hopefully not at all?”

Lily looked very disappointed in me.

“It’s interesting, though,” I said, feeling like I needed to offer something. “Meteor showers happen when the debris from a comet’s trail burns up in our atmosphere, but it’s not super common to see a meteor shower and its parent comet at the same time. But the Arborids come from Gibson’s comet, and we’ll see them close together, so that’s pretty cool.”

“But is it good or bad?” Lily asked.

“Um. I guess a long time ago, people thought meteors were good signs.” I recalled Dad’s stories from when I was a kid. “Gods listening to mortals, peeking down on us from the heavens. But, uh, I think comets were bad. Death of kings. I think a Chinese emperor once abdicated?”

“I’m not abdicating,” one of Lily’s sisters said.

“You don’t have a throne,” the other said.

I polished off my food, keeping my eyes peeled for both Dad and Cora. I spotted my boss first and felt a surge of relief that she’d come. She stood next to another woman, both of them clutching their drinks like children clutching blankies and trading laughing whispers. I’d never seen Cora in anything besides leggings or jeans, but today she’d put on a royal-blue jumpsuit and pulled her hair up into a braided high bun.

I made my way over. “Cora! Hi! You made it.”

“Hey, Jordan.” She gestured to the woman next to her. “This is my friend Bao, who’s visiting from Boston for the weekend.”

“Oh good.” Bao grinned at me. “I was beginning to think we’d gate-crashed and Cora didn’t want to own up to it.”

“No, no, definitely a real party. I mean, a real invite.” I felt unexpectedly nervous and awkward. Both these women seemed so much cooler than everyone else. Obviously I’d thought Cora was cool before, but in a nerdy-scientist way. Seeing her all glammed up made me wonder if I’d bitten off more than I could chew with this matchmaking.

Bao asked me the usual questions adults did about college and majors, and I asked her what she’d seen on Nantucket so far. I tried to keep my eyes politely on hers instead of scanning constantly for Dad. Where was he?

Finally, I caught sight of him on the other side of the lawn. He’d worn one of his blue-checked shirts, which meant he was Making an Effort. He still wore socks with his sandals, though. The blight of my life.

Should I steal all his socks for the duration of the summer?

“Dad!” I waved at him, too wildly to be cool, but desperate times. “Dad!” Two parentally aged men turned in my direction. Oy. “Tony!”

Dad’s eyes focused on me, surprised, then happy. He made his way across the lawn. I studied him. His shirt wasn’t too wrinkled, and he’d clearly bothered to comb his hair. “Dad, you remember Dr. Bradley? And this is her friend Bao.”

“Nice to meet you,” Dad said politely, and, “Nice to see you again. Are you enjoying the party?”

They made affirmative noises.

All right, launching Conversational Gambit #1. “Are you?” I asked Dad. “Or are you still too traumatized by last night?” To the women I said, “The Red Sox game.”

Bao looked unmoved—a woman after my own heart—while Cora grimaced sympathetically. “You’re doing better than we are. I’m from Minneapolis.”

“A Twins fan?” Dad perked up. Sportsball! “You live in Boston, though, right? We haven’t rubbed off on you yet?”

“I don’t think Boston can ever rub off on me enough to switch sides,” Cora said, and they laughed. Bao took a small sip of her drink, covering a smile.

Baseball carried them for a few minutes, and when the conversation started to run out of steam, I moved us on to Conversational Gambit #2. “Dad’s always trying to get me to go to sports games,” I said, playing Wry Teen Daughter to a T. “Or go running, but I can barely last a mile.”

“Oh, are you a runner?” Cora asked my father. Cora, according to her Instagram, had run a 10k last month.

“A bit,” Dad said.

“Dad’s run four marathons,” I said. “He did Boston this year.”

Dad looked like he might die of mortification. God forbid I mention an accomplishment not related to the book. “Jordan.”

“Cool,” Cora said, unfazed by my father’s impending demise. “I did my first half six months ago.”

“Good for you,” Dad said, happy again. “Where was it?”

This conversation felt more concrete. Once they were firmly ensconced in a discussion about running-shoe brands, I murmured an excuse about getting more water and slipped away. It wasn’t even a lie—the day had been boiling, and even now, near eight, the late-June sun felt like a comforting blanket. I downed two glasses of water in quick succession before lingering more slowly over a lemonade. Leaning against a high-top table, I tried to decipher Dad’s and Cora’s body language. They both looked friendly and engaged, but no more or less so than Bao, an equally weighted part of their triangle.

A movement caught the corner of my eye. Ethan settled next to me, resting his arms next to mine on the table, our forearms brushing. “Whatcha watching?”

“None of your business.” I gave him a Cheshire cat smile.

“Are you trying to set your dad and Dr. Bradley up?”

I sipped the tart lemonade. “Do you think it would work?”

“I think your dad can handle dating by himself.”

I snorted. “Why?”

He paused. “Okay, fair point.”

“I think they’d be a good match.” I looked at Ethan expectantly. He probably knew my dad better than anyone else on the island, save me. “What do you think?”

“I think…I dunno?”

“Well, try to know a little harder.” I ticked off points on my fingers. “They’re both driven and focused. She’s an academic and he writes, so they’re both always working really hard and learning new things. And they both like sports and sci-fi shows.” Cora had cracked three Star Trek references in my hearing already.

“Wow,” Ethan said. “Have you always been this invested in your dad’s love life?”

“He’s never had a love life.”

“Really?” Ethan looked surprised. “So he hasn’t dated since—Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry.” It was a relief to talk about it. “Exactly. I think he uses me as an excuse to not live his own life.”

“What do you mean?”

I told him about the conversation I’d overheard between my dad and aunt. “So I need to make sure he doesn’t worry about me.”

Ethan’s brows shot up. “Ah.”

“Ah what?”

“Nothing.” He crumbled under my gaze. “It makes sense why you’ve decided, you know, no more hooking up.”

“I mean, also I don’t feel like getting my heart broken.”

“Right. But also, your whole insistence on, I don’t know, proving to him you’re capable and smart and everything, when obviously he knows you are, and you should tell him if you want to hang out more. You don’t need to change yourself.”

“I don’t think it’s changing myself to prove I’m smart,” I shot back.

He groaned. “That’s not what I meant.”

“Besides, I don’t see you telling your family they don’t take you seriously enough.”

He let out a long sigh, squeezing the back of his neck. It made the muscles in his arm stand out, and I tried hard not to stare at them. “I think sometimes our parents get stuck on what we were like when we were kids. They think we’re the same as when we were at five, ten, fifteen. We don’t change.”

“But everyone changes. They have to realize that.”

“I dunno,” he said skeptically. “I didn’t eat tomatoes until I was sixteen, and it’s been two years, and my parents still think I don’t like tomatoes.”

“You didn’t…eat tomatoes?”

He shook his head. “I thought they were shit. Watery. Gross.”

This wasn’t the detour I’d expected this conversation to take, but I couldn’t let it go. “What about, like, pizza?”

“Oh yeah, I ate tomato sauce and cooked tomatoes. Just never fresh ones. Then I went to Turkey and the bed and breakfast we stayed at served a platter of tomatoes and cheese and olives every morning and I was so hungry I was like, well, better learn to like them. Also, it turns out tomatoes in Turkey are way better than here.”

I stared.

He tilted his head. “You’re thinking, Fuck that boy, not all of us can fly out to Turkey to change our minds about tomatoes.”

I snorted because he wasn’t far off. “No! Just, uh, maybe you could have tried a farm-fresh tomato first.”

“True.” He laughed, then sobered. “I’m just saying, your dad thinks you’re great.”

“Hm,” I said, noncommittal.

“Your job sounds cool,” Ethan said, because Ethan was sometimes a golden retriever who wanted people to feel better. “I feel like we’re both…I dunno. Cartographers. You of the sky, me of the sea.”

I laughed, though I liked the way he made it sound. “More like, I’m an assistant to a cartographer of space trash, and you’re an assistant to an historiographer of cartography.”

He grinned. “My version’s easier to say.”

“You have me there.” I tilted my head back. It was too light to see the stars, though the faint white moon floated through the sky. “You know Polaris?”

“The North Star? Yeah.”

“I’m learning about a group of astronomers who categorized all the stars in the sky by their brightness. They needed a scale to measure the brightness against. The director, Pickering, picked Polaris as the comparison point. Not because it was the brightest star, but because its light is unwavering. It would be the steadiest, the truest. It’s least susceptible to distortion. I like that, don’t you? It’s a nice metaphor.”

“What’s the metaphor?”

“You know. You don’t have to be the best or the brightest to be the true star. The starriest star, the Rudolph of the stars. You just have to be unwavering.”

He stared at me, for long enough I started to feel uncomfortable. “What? Was the Rudolph metaphor too weird?”

“No. Not at all. I think—being unwavering is a great quality.” His attention switched over my shoulder, and I turned. Dad approached us—Cora nowhere in his vicinity, drat.

“Hi, honey,” Dad said. “Having fun?”

“Yeah.”

“I was telling Jordan about ’Sconset,” Ethan said, which he patently had not been. “You guys should go.”

“You haven’t been yet?” Dad said in surprise, as though I’d been anywhere here he didn’t know about. I shook my head. “It’s very nice.”

I bit my lip, glancing at Ethan. He nodded in encouragement, and I looked back at Dad. Well, why the hell not. “Maybe we could check it out tomorrow?”

Dad looked surprised. “Of course. Unless—you’d rather go with your friends?”

“No, Dad,” I said, more sharply than I’d intended. I just didn’t think I should have to spell out wanting to hang out with him. I softened my voice. “It’d be fun if we went.”

Dad looked pleased. “Great.”

When I glanced over at Ethan, he smiled so broadly back, my heart hurt.