Justin Cronin - Mary and O’Neil

She found the boys at the snack bar, eating grilled cheese sandwiches and French fries off paper plates. Mia sat across from them, holding her book up with one hand, like an old painting of a woman reading in a park. Jane Eyre, a copy from the library, its plain covers wrapped in crinkling cellophane; she read voraciously but without discrimination, everything from pulp romances to The New Yorker to Sam’s books on baseball.

Kay sat down between the boys and helped herself to one of Sam’s fries. “Has Jack come out yet?”

“The professor said to tell you he is still winning.” Mia tucked a long marker in the pages of her book and closed the covers. “He did not want to disturb you.”

The fries were greasy and covered with salt: delicious. “How’s the book?”

Mia frowned. “Very sad. But I think it is helping with my English.”

“I haven’t read that since college. I haven’t really read anything since the boys.”

Mia shrugged and gave a neutral smile. “The professor thought I would like it.”

Kay ordered a club sandwich and iced tea, but the boys were too fidgety to wait, and she ate alone while Mia took them back to the condo to watch a movie on cable. Noah was not too old to take a nap, but she knew that Sam would keep him up. In any event, it was enough just to get them out of the sun for a while. It was their first vacation since she’d been sick, their first real vacation ever, not counting trips to friends’ houses or Jack’s parents’ in St. Louis -why not let them do as they liked?

She paid for lunch with the number of their condo, and returned to the casino. Jack was sitting at the bar, eating a hamburger. He told her he was up fifteen.

It took her a moment. “Fifteen thousand?”

“There are people in here who’d think that was nothing.” He bit into a pickle and wiped his hands. Sixteen hours at the table; he didn’t look tired at all. “See that room back there? Poker, the real stuff. I saw a guy lose twenty big ones on a single hand.”

Big ones-he’d never talked this way. “They don’t live on a college teacher’s salary. Jesus, Jack. Fifteen thousand dollars.” So much money, out of nowhere. She couldn’t believe it. “We can pay off all the cards, and the van too.”

“Don’t forget Uncle Sam.”

“Okay, just the van, then.” She laughed at herself. “Just the van. What am I saying?”

She stayed with him while he finished lunch, telling stories about the hands he had played and won, and then walked with him back to the blackjack table.

“Is this such a good idea? Playing more?”

He thought for a moment and nodded. “I think I’m all right,” he said. The dealer had changed; this time it was a young woman with cornrows, just a year or two older than Mia. She broke the seal on a fresh deck.

“Actually, I haven’t had this much fun in a long time. I feel like I could play all day. What are the boys up to?”

“They want to go sailing. Mia made a promise, I’m afraid.”

He rubbed a hand over his face. She knew how much he wanted to play, to ride this lucky streak. “You want to sit in a few hands? I can take them.”

“No, play if you want. Just be sensible. When you’re too tired, quit.” She kissed him one more time and squeezed his hand. The van was two years old; they’d bought it just before she’d gotten sick, after the old Volvo his parents had given them had finally died. How many payments left? All gone in a stroke, the slate wiped clean. “Fifteen thousand dollars, Jack. I can’t believe it. We can really use this luck.”

His hand found her waist, and he pulled her toward him. “This puts me sort of in the mood,” he said into her ear.

She accepted the embrace but then pried herself loose, suddenly embarrassed. She wrinkled her nose. “You need a shower,” she laughed.

The cruise ship was still anchored off the beach. A gate had been lowered at the bow, and a fleet of inflatable dinghies ferried passengers back and forth from the beach across the blue, blue waters of the bay. The sun was so hot it made her shiver.

She signed the rental agreement perfunctorily, barely bothering to read what it said. She hadn’t sailed for years, not since she was a girl at camp, but thought she would remember how. In any event, there was almost no wind. A young man wearing tennis whites and a huge wristwatch helped her rig, while Mia put Noah into a life jacket. Windward, leeward, tack, gibe: the words were all still there, unused for decades, like old bicycles hanging from the rafters of a cold garage.

“You know how to do it?” Stitched on his shirt pocket was his name, Thomas. His accent was southern; he had just graduated from college, she supposed, and was taking a year off to fool around in the sunshine.

“I think so.” She looked the boat over and nodded uneasily. “Well, the truth is it’s been a while.”

He smiled encouragingly at her. Besides taking care of the boats, he was also the diving instructor, he’d explained. “It’ll come back to you.” He directed her gaze across the water at an outcropping of dark stones, marked with a steel tower. “Just don’t go past those rocks. Nothing dangerous, it’s just open sea after that.”

Kay and the boys arranged themselves in the boat, and Mia and Thomas helped them push off. The crunch of sand along the hull, and then they were afloat; in the stern Kay pulled the little cord that dropped the rudder into place.

“Bon voyage!” Mia called from the beach. “Happy sailing!”

A mild breeze lifted them into the bay. Kay negotiated the tiller and mainsheet, clamping the line in her teeth as she adjusted the sail, then tying it fast to its cleat. She peeked quickly over her shoulder; the beach streamed away.

“So this is sailing,” she said to the boys. “What do you think?”

“Will we see any dolphins?” Noah asked.

“I don’t know, honey.” Tiller, mainsheet, rudder, centerboard. What had she gotten them into? She breathed deeply, steadying herself. “There’ll be lots of fish to look at.”

“Dolphins are mammals that live in the sea,” the boy intoned. “They nurse their young, and breathe air, like humans. Dolphins can stay submerged, under the water, for five minutes or longer, and have been known to dive as deep as eight hundred feet.”

“That’s right, honey. Did you read that in a book?”

“Creatures of the Deep.” It was a gift from the boy’s uncle, Kay’s brother, O’Neil. Noah had carried it with him on the plane.

“God,” Sam groaned. “You are so weird.”

“Your brother is not weird,” Kay corrected. “He’s different.”

Sam rolled his eyes. “God, you are so different.”

They skimmed past the cruise ship, its stern high above them, and the name, Windward Princess, painted in black. A vortex of churning water trailed behind it, holding it in place. Once beyond it Kay set the boat to tack, pointing close to the wind, and explained to the boys what would happen.

“Hard a-lee!”

The boom swung above their heads, catching with a firm snap as the sail filled once more with air. A clean tack; she felt a swell of pride. They were running parallel to the beach now, in the shadow of the ship, which stood between them and the shore. On the decks above people were watching them, leaning out over the rails. Some of them waved.

“Go closer,” Sam pleaded.

She pointed the bow tight to the wind; the boat heeled in reply. It was all coming came back to her, the play of the wind and the sail and the hull, how all of it was connected by unseen lines of force. The boys scrambled up beside her as she pulled the mainsheet taught. Above them the side of the great ship loomed, a wall of white steel a hundred feet high. One of the inflatable dinghies zoomed past, and they banged into the chop, spray flying over them like jewels of water.