Later, they’re returned to the cruise ship, and Greta follows Conrad back up the long ramp in silence. It’s the same silence they’ve been carrying between them for hours now, from the canoe to the hike to the picnic area—where they ate their strawberries wordlessly, both thinking of Helen—then back to the bus, which got stuck in the mud halfway down the mountain, so that they all had to climb out and collect sticks to shove under the wheels, watching them spin uselessly until something finally caught, and the bus gave a little buck, fishtailing a few feet down the road before coming to a stop so they could all pile on again.
It’s a complicated silence. But not an unpleasant one.
Back on the ship, they pause at the elevators to look at each other. Greta can think of nothing to say, not after all that. Neither can Conrad, apparently. When the elevator arrives, he steps on, reaching out to hold the door for Greta. But she gestures toward the hallway.
“I think I need a walk,” she says.
He nods. “I’ll see you tomorrow then.”
“What about dinner?”
“I’m sure you’ve had enough of me today.”
Greta laughs. “Does that mean you’ve had enough of me?”
“It means we survived the wilderness safari,” he says with a hint of amusement. “Which was not necessarily a given.”
And with that, he lets his hand slip and the doors close between them.
Greta stands there for a long time in her muddy sneakers, sunburned and bone-tired and restless. Her reflection in the silver doors of the elevator—blurred and distorted as if in a fun house mirror—looks alarmingly close to how she feels right now.
She still hasn’t moved when there’s another ding and the doors slide open to reveal Todd Bloom in a blue rain jacket, his curly gray hair tousled from the wind.
“Oh,” he says with mild surprise. “Hi. I didn’t know you guys were back.”
Greta steps aside so he can get off the elevator. “Just.”
“Was it good?”
“It was,” she says, thinking that she wouldn’t be able to explain it any better if she tried. “How was fishing?”
“I skipped it,” he tells her with a guilty smile. “There’s an eagle preserve in Chilkat that I wanted to—”
“Oh,” Greta says, remembering. “We saw one too.”
“A bald eagle?”
“No, this kind of sea eagle that’s really rare. Seller’s, maybe?”
Todd’s eyes go wide. “You saw a Steller’s sea eagle?”
“Yeah. It was mostly black, but it had white around the wings and—”
“You saw a Steller’s sea eagle?” he repeats as a large extended family comes pouring out of the elevator, midway through a raucous argument over who was supposed to have booked today’s floatplane tour. They stream around Greta and Todd, but even once they’re gone, his face is still frozen, like his brain has short-circuited from this information.
“I guess they’re usually from Asia?” Greta offers in an attempt to jog him out of it.
“You saw a Steller’s sea eagle?” he says for a third time. “Do you know what the odds of that are? There can’t be more than two or three ever spotted around here. Ever! They’re hard to find even in their natural habitat. And to stumble across one on a completely different continent when you’re not even looking for it?” He shakes his head. “That’s lucky. That’s, like, buy-a-lottery-ticket lucky. I can’t even begin to tell you how jealous I am.”
“Well, if it makes you feel any better, he was pretty far away…”
“No, I’m glad you saw it,” he says sincerely. “It’s something really, really special. Not just the bird itself, but it’s like…if you see a gyrfalcon in the Arctic Circle, it’s still an amazing thing, right? But when you spot one in Ohio, well, that’s something different altogether. It’s that it’s wandered so long and far, that it’s made it to such an unlikely place. The fact that it doesn’t belong is what makes it stand out. It’s what makes it even more extraordinary.”
An image of Greta’s mother flashes in her head, dancing in the crowd at one of her shows, looking entirely out of place and radiating happiness. She swallows hard.
“It should’ve been you,” she says quietly, but Todd smiles at her.
“No,” he says. “I have a feeling it was meant for you.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Greta isn’t sure where she’s headed after that, but she finds herself crossing through the indoor pool, which is crowded and stuffy, the windows fogged and the air heavy with chlorine. There are still hours left to explore the town before they’re due to leave port again, yet half the passengers are idly leafing through magazines on lounge chairs or bobbing around in the hot tub, oblivious to the towering mountains at their backs. They could be anywhere right now, at a cheap hotel in Vegas or a community pool in the summertime, even in their own backyards, and Greta has a sudden and uncharacteristic impulse to scream at them for missing it all, this trip that others would give anything to be on.
Feeling claustrophobic, she weaves through the chairs and out the door on the opposite side, back into the fresh air, where she stands gripping the rail of the ship, looking out over the bay and listening to the incessant crying of the seagulls.
“Hey,” someone says behind her, and when she turns to see Ben, her heart lifts. He’s wearing fishing gear—orange waders and rubber boots—and a Boston Red Sox cap that’s bleached from the sun. Beneath the brim, he’s watching her with a slightly puzzled expression.
“Hey,” she says, turning to lean against the rail. “Catch anything?”
He nods. She waits for him to say something more, to make a joke or step forward and kiss her. But he keeps frowning at her like something is wrong.
“What?” she says finally, her pleasure at seeing him—and at the memory of last night—melting into something far less patient. Because this day has already felt like a thousand years, and she doesn’t need whatever this is too.
“I just…” He trails off uncertainly, then pulls his phone out of the pocket of his waterproof jacket. “You’re not…I mean…you would’ve told me if…”
“Ben,” she says with a sigh. “Just spit it out.”
There’s a flash of annoyance on his face, or possibly something more than that. Finally, he says, “You’re engaged?”
She stares at him. “What?”