Miscalculation
“All set?” Ada asked. “Of course you are. There isn’t a Girl Scout in the world who took ‘be prepared’ as seriously as you did, Sarah.”
“From the size of that trunk I saw poor Mr. Parsons carrying out of here, I’d say you’re the one who’s over- prepared,” Sarah Milington replied. “Really, Grandmother, we’re only staying on the Queen Mary overnight.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” her adoptive grandmother said, embracing her as she reached her. “And it’s likely I still haven’t brought half of what I really need. You’re the one who’s best at details. If you would come to live with me again-”
“Grandmother…” Sarah warned.
“Never mind, I won’t pester you about that now. I think a trunk makes it seem so much more like a real cruise-Oh, here’s Robert,” she said, seeming so pleased that Sarah had to tamp down an annoying little flair of jealousy. More irritating, she was fairly sure Robert Parsons had noted her discomposure.
Although he was always polite to her, Sarah had yet to feel completely at ease around Parsons. Some of this unease was undoubtedly due to her grandmother’s delight in surrounding both Parsons’s background and his position in her household with an air of intrigue, but Sarah knew this was only part of why she felt self-conscious when Parsons was near.
For all his own quietness, his presence in this house caused of a great deal of talk. He was the inspiration for plenty of local gossip-gossip that undoubtedly pleased Ada Milington. Robert Parsons-good-looking, broad- shouldered and not more than thirty years old, had been part of Ada ’s household for nearly a year now.
At first, Sarah had believed that the rest of the staff, all much older than Parsons and notoriously protective of her grandmother, would rebel at his presence. In this she was mistaken. Parsons, she now reflected-recalling that he had just carried the largest trunk she had ever seen out to the van-was undoubtedly a godsend to the aging servants. He seemed more than willing to do heavy lifting and to take on any task, no matter how arduous. And, she was forced to admit, he gave every sign of being sincerely devoted to her grandmother.
Sarah knew she had no real personal complaint to make of him. Long accustomed to her grandmother’s love of outrageous behavior, she decided that it was not her place to interfere. Ada had survived four husbands, and if she now wanted to have a fling with a man almost fifty years her junior, Sarah would not be the one to object.
Ada turned to the rest of the staff, which had gathered in the entry. “We’re off on our cruise!” she announced grandly, waving a kiss at them. Amid tossed confetti and their boisterous cheers of “Bon voyage,” and “Many happy returns!” she took Parsons’s arm and allowed him to lead the way to the van.
He hadn’t loaded the luggage very efficiently, Sarah thought with a frown, seeing that he had strapped the huge trunk to the long rack on the van’s roof. By simply removing a seat, he could have fit it inside. The wind resistance would have been lower, and she would have obtained better gas mileage. She was considering this problem when Parsons, after gently helping Ada into the front passenger seat, surprised Sarah by opening the sliding door to the side of the van and seating himself in the back.
No wonder he had left the seat in place! She felt herself blush at the thought of her grandmother marching up the Queen Mary’s gangplank with this virile-looking male in tow. And if Robert Parsons was sharing a room with Ada -but then, she quickly reminded herself, that was none of her business.
Ada ’s smile told her that her grandmother was waiting for a challenge, but Sarah merely started the van and began the drive to Long Beach.
She couldn’t help but feel herself an injured party, though. She had wanted to talk privately to her grandmother, perhaps even to confide in her about the dream she had had last night-a recurring, claustrophobic dream from her childhood, of being locked in a closet. That was certainly not possible now. She could picture Robert Parsons’s amusement over that.
“A little ridiculous to have Bella and the others throwing confetti,” she said aloud. “It isn’t really a cruise, after all.”
“I’m pretending it is,” Ada answered. “It’s the closest I can come to a cruise. You know I get seasick.”
“I know nothing of the sort. You’ve been on real cruises.”
“And got sick on the last one. Never again. I do love the ocean, I just don’t want to be feeling it pitch and roll as I blow out my candles. So this will be my cruise-perhaps my last one.”
“It’s not a cruise,” Sarah repeated obstinately.
“Technically, no.”
She might have left it at that, but when she glanced at the rearview mirror, she saw that Parsons was smiling. Smugly, she thought.
“Technically, it isn’t even a ship,” she added.
“No?” Ada said, turning to wink back at him.
Sarah felt her fingers tighten on the steering wheel. “No. It’s officially classified as a building now, not a ship. It’s permanently moored at that pier. It doesn’t move. It doesn’t go anywhere.”
“You don’t say,” Ada replied.
“It’s afloat,” Robert said. “It moves with the tide.”
Sarah fell silent.
After a moment, Ada said wistfully, “I saw her sail once, long ago. Back in the days when she did sail, when she was definitely a ship.”
“You saw your first husband off to war,” Robert said.
He sounded bitter, Sarah thought. Was he jealous of Ada ’s previous husbands? It seemed absurd. Perhaps it was only this first husband, she thought. Elliot. She was fairly sure he had been the first. Or was it Arthur?
Sarah knew little about any of Ada ’s husbands. Ada was someone who lived, by and large, in the present day, seldom discussing her past. And by the time Sarah had come to live with Ada, the last of Ada ’s four spouses had been dead for more than twenty years.
Sarah tried to remember the little she had been told. There had been an Elliot, an Arthur a Charles, and finally John Milington, Sr.-the father of the man who had adopted Sarah. Yes, that was the order. She remembered that Ada had married the first one when she was eighteen, and that he had died in World War II.
Bella had once let it slip that Ada had a son from that marriage, a son who so disliked Ada ’s third husband, mother and son had become estranged. Sarah frowned. Or was it a son by the second husband who disliked the third? Sarah could not remember. She couldn’t even recall Ada ’s eldest boy’s name. She did recall Bella’s warning never to mention this son to Ada. Not wanting to cause Ada pain, or to make trouble for the old housekeeper, Sarah had kept her silence.
She glanced at Ada, and saw that her grandmother was frowning. It was then that another implication of Robert’s remark came home to her.
“If you said good-bye to your first husband that day, he must have sailed on the Queen Mary when she was used as a troop ship, during the war.”
Ada nodded. “I never saw him again.”
“But being on the ship again-won’t it be sad for you?”
Ada smiled and shook her head. “No, Sarah dear. Not at all. I was never actually aboard the ship, of course. We said goodbye at the dock. And the ship doesn’t even look the same on the outside now. She was painted a dull gray then, and her portholes were blackened. She was called ‘the Grey Ghost’ during the war.”
“I read about that period of the ship’s history,” Sarah said. “The Queen Mary was able to cross the Atlantic in four or five days, which made her the fastest ship on the sea-capable of outrunning German submarines, if need be. She was even faster than German torpedoes.” She paused, frowned and added, “Faster than the ones used at the beginning of the war. There was a bounty on her. Hitler promised he would give a quarter of a million dollars and Germany ’s highest honors to the submarine captain who sank her.”
“My, you have read up on her,” Robert Parsons said.
Sarah responded as she always did under stress. She turned to numbers. “Yes. The ship made a great contribution to the Allied efforts. During the war, the Queen Mary carried over seven hundred-and-sixty-five
