Petronella confided to Bob and Catherine at dinner that she feared I’d gotten too much sun that day.
I’d seen a faint pink when I changed for dinner and that was only compared to the stark white of the towel folded into a bunny that Eristo had left on the bed.
“She looks fine to me,” Bob said heartily. “Healthy and better rested than she did last night. Few more weeks of that treatment and she’ll be beyond blooming.”
“Thank you, Bob.” I hadn’t been aware of not feeling rested, but now that he mentioned it…
Petronella immediately accepted his view as gospel and didn’t bring it up again. That definitely contributed to my rested feeling.
After we’d ordered and the waitstaff left us, Catherine leaned in close.
“Did you hear? The passenger who fell on the stairs today — you knew of that? — is hurt worse than they feared. They’re concerned about her neck.”
I closed my eyes an instant. Petronella had lifted the woman’s head to jam a sweater under it. Please, let the woman be okay. And please don’t let Petronella be the cause if she isn’t.
“That poor soul.” Petronella, with no apparent linking in her mind between her sweater-jamming and potential neck problems, told Catherine and Bob about being there when the woman fell. They exclaimed over her.
My relief that she hadn’t mentioned her sweater activities deepened when Catherine said in a low voice, “I heard they’re worried about paralysis.”
Petronella covered her mouth too late to stop a gasp that turned a few heads. “How horrible.”
Catherine sat back, looking innocuous.
“Any idea who she is?” I asked quietly.
Bob gave a scoffing, huh. “Of course, she does.”
With a casualness to inform anyone watching that she wasn’t saying anything the least bit interesting, she said, “Have you encountered a group of, ah, younger wives of older men? I see you have. This is—”
“She’s blonde,” Petronella interrupted.
I looked from her to Catherine. “Really, really light blonde?”
“Blonde,” Petronella said.
“Not as light as another in their group,” Catherine said. “Piper has the lightest blonde hair. Coral is the one who fell.”
Interesting. That made Piper the one who’d gone into the windows. But Imka had called her Ms. Laura. Last name, presumably. I wondered where Piper Laura had been when her opponent in that great spa duel went down the stairs.
Wait a minute. Mr. Grandfather’s Sailboat on the Label had said the friend of the faller had quite the badunkadonk—”
That sounded like Piper.
“Coral fell? Not Piper?”
Catherine tipped her head. “That surprises you?”
It did.
Why? They were walking up the stairs together, didn’t that indicate they’d reached equilibrium, if not an accord?
Catherine’s voice pulled me back. “Why are you smiling, Bob?”
“I heard something, too. We’re swinging in close to land to drop her off in Gibraltar. Should be pretty seeing the lights at night up close.”
“Oh, but that poor woman, to miss the rest of cruise,” Petronella protested.
“Doesn’t hurt her anymore if we enjoy the lights. Might as well.”
Catherine patted his hand. “My practical Robert. Can you pity me for living with such an entire lack of sentiment?”
Petronella looked uncomfortable at the joking lament.
Bob looked thoroughly satisfied with his wife’s touch and words.
I grinned.
Catherine didn’t quite quell the twitch of her lips.
* * * *
After dinner, Catherine lured Petronella away from her perceived duties as my watchdog by saying she needed a bingo partner, since Bob’s failure to pay close attention to the calls had surely cost her thousands in winnings over the years.
Catherine winked at me over her shoulder as they departed.
With gratitude in my heart, I went to the Wayfarer Bar for a quiet drink alone.
Jason was not behind the bar tonight, so no Veuve Clicquot.
Nor were the musicians here. So no hope of identifying the song that had become an earworm.
Instead, there was a young man with a strong accent, trying to run a trivia game. The most frequent question back at him from the players — including me — was “What?”
No one, from any country, appeared to be able to comprehend his accent. He finally resorted to pantomime when none of us could unravel Al-pa-hand as elephant.
In the end, it wasn’t that anyone won the trivia game as much as the last person still trying got the grand prize — a cruise line pen. I’d quit two rounds earlier. Darn.
With that distraction over, I sipped at my drink and realized a couple had come in while I tried to unravel the trivia questions/pantomime and now sat directly across a small table from me.
The intricacies and intimacies of the woman’s family history unfolded in detail, as if a person feet away — say, me — couldn’t hear them.
I tried to block it out, but I’m no good at that. I might never have been good at it. After the years with Aunt Kit, I’d become an always-on radar dish pulling in signals.
Kit maintained eavesdropping was a vital tool for creating characters and their stories.
Quickly, I learned that the woman had a cousin who got married late in life, followed his wife to a “settlement, no more, well east of Calgary, in the middle of the plains” and was now raising two small children. Because the wife up and left him and the “settlement.”
“I think she’s realized now how much of a—” She said a word that made me blink. “—he was.”
He was? He was the one stuck in isolation she’d picked, then left. And he was raising the kids, while she took off.
“She’s thinking about what’s good for her at last. She’s shaken off his spell,” the man said.
Good for her? What about those kids?
This was the drawback to eavesdropping that Aunt Kit never seemed to experience. She absorbed what people said, who they were and stored it away to use for a character at some future time without getting involved with the real people. Her characters, yes. But not the people who’d contributed real life stuff to their creation.
Me? I wanted to argue with them. I wanted to set them straight. I wanted them to give the cousin who was, “late in life,” raising two kids, alone, out on the plains, a break. Heck, I wanted to go find the guy and give him a hug.
Aunt Kit would warn me he might be a pervert.
“Sheila. Did you hear?” Catherine was beside me, ending my force-fed eavesdropping and my cogitations about Aunt Kit.
“Hear what?”
“Bob was right. We’re swinging close to Gibraltar, much closer than planned. They’re not only dropping off that young woman who fell on the stairs, they’re taking her to the hospital there. They feel she needs more specialized care than the ship’s medical staff can give her.”
“Paralysis? She’s that much worse than they thought?”
“Not necessarily—”
The PA system came to life with a mechanical clearing of its throat. “This is your captain,” the voice said, before pretty much repeating what Catherine said. Though not as succinctly.
“How did you know that?” I asked when the captain signed off. “Good grief, you could have written that announcement. Or at least read it beforehand.”
She gave an airy, dismissive wave. “You learn a thing or two when you’ve cruised as much as I have.”
“You said not necessarily when I said she must be hurt badly. What did you mean?”
“Oh, that. Word is that she was quite the thorn in their bums and the medical staff can’t wait to get her off.” She took my elbow and tugged me up. “C’mon. Bob and Petronella went up top to save us spots at the rail. Let’s go see Gibraltar.”