The Mommy Wish

by Pamela Browning

  “What time is it? I almost fell asleep.”

  “’Bout nine o’clock.”

  “Time for bed.” She yawned and stretched. “Do you need my help getting Phoebe below?”

  He shook his head. “I’ll carry her. I’ve done it before.”

  Molly hesitated. “She’s a darling girl,” she said.

  “She is, isn’t she? Thanks for saying so.”

  “You’re—you’re lucky to have her.”

  He gazed fondly down at Phoebe, whose chest was rising and falling with each breath. “I know.”

  For a moment it seemed as if Molly were going to say something else, but she must have thought better of it.

  “Good night” was all she said, and then she was picking her way across the deck, avoiding the open hatches of the cabin below, reaching for the rigging so she wouldn’t fall if the boat lurched. The breeze ruffled her hair and whipped her shirt and pants tight against her body, delineating every curve.

  “Come on, Peanut,” he murmured to Phoebe, who mumbled something and slid her arms up around his neck. He didn’t carry her downstairs until he was sure that Molly had retired to her stateroom. He didn’t want to have to press past Queen Molly in the dim light of the cabin, maybe coming too close, perhaps touching her without meaning to. If he had occasion to touch Molly Kate McBryde again during this voyage, he was pretty damn sure he would mean it.

  Phoebe didn’t resist when he tucked her tightly into her bunk. When he went to his own V berth in the bow of the ship, he punched his pillows every which way, but he couldn’t get comfortable. Finally, he opened the hatch above him so that he could see Vega. That he had chosen this particular star to be Heather’s, given the way it sparkled so blue, was fitting. Blue had been Heather’s favorite color.

  Eric had almost dozed off, when he heard the music coming from the aft stateroom. Harp music, soft and sweet.

  Queen Molly’s Irish harp. And she could play it very well. It sounded like the music of the angels.

  He relaxed completely with that music echoing in his ears, imagining how Molly must look while playing her harp. She’d be sitting on the low bench beside the big bed in the master stateroom, the harp in her lap, her hair spilling across her lovely features. She’d be smiling gently. He’d be sprawled across the bed, perhaps fingering a silken sash that she wore around her waist. Every once in a while she’d glance over at him, a warm teasing light in her eyes. He’d smile back, and…

  Unfortunately, he realized in the last few moments before he fell asleep, this was only fantasy. There was no room for him in this picture. None. And he’d better stop imagining that there was.

  MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE

  TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:

  SHE’S HERE! MY NEW MOMMY! AT LEEST I’M WISHING THAT SHE’LL BE MY NEW MOM. SHE DIDNT MIND MY VACUME CLEANER AND SHE MADE A GOOD GRILLED CHEZE SAMWICH.

  LUV FROM YORE GOOD FRIEND,

  PHOEBE ANNE NORVALD

  P.S. I HOPE YOU LIKE THIS NEW VACUME CLEANER

  PICTURE ITS THE ONE I DREW TODAY.

  Chapter Three

  “I liked hearing you play your harp last night,” Eric said the next day.

  They had left the cove shortly after dawn and were taking turns at the wheel. They’d raised the mainsail and the genoa, and the wind was blowing steadily from the northeast, bringing a chill with it so that Molly was wearing her windbreaker.

  “I tried to play softly,” Molly said. “I didn’t want to disturb anyone.”

  “Hey, that was a compliment, not a criticism.”

  “I—well, thank you,” she said, realizing as she said it that it was already too late to avoid an awkward moment.

  “Where did you learn to play?”

  This was something she felt comfortable discussing, at least. “Grandpa insisted I take lessons. My brother plays the guitar—my sister, the piano.”

  “Emmett was a big part of your upbringing?”

  “Both my parents died when I was fairly young, Daddy first and then Mother. Grandpa took over the role of father in our lives when I was eight. He wasn’t so good at making us practice our instruments, though. He traveled on business too much for that. I need practice. I could practice right now, in fact.”

  She started to get up to go below, but Eric said, “Whoa, not so fast. Sit back down.” Then, amending it to a request after he saw her raised eyebrows, he said, “Please? I have something I want to talk over with you. About Phoebe.”

  That was what made her want to stay. She sat.

  He kept his eyes on the horizon, where there was only one ship, a large freighter.

  “I was thinking that maybe Phoebe should have music lessons. If she’s left to herself, she’ll be trying to play Chopsticks on her make-believe vacuum cleaner.”

  “Playing a musical instrument takes a lot of practice. I’m not sure a seven-year-old is into that. I didn’t get serious about it until I was in my teens.”

  “How will I know if she’s ready?”

  Molly shrugged, not wanting to dismiss his question but unsure how to answer it. “Maybe you should ask a music teacher. I’m not exactly qualified to know, either as a musician or as an expert on children.”

  Eric’s eyebrows lifted. “You seem so comfortable with Phoebe.”

  “She’s—easy.” Molly didn’t know how else to describe Phoebe. It had taken a while to get past the quirky hair and mismatched socks, but she was an agreeable child who, so far, didn’t seem disposed to temper tantrums or other diva tactics.

  Eric chuckled. “You should see her when she gets her back up. It happens occasionally.”

  “Speaking of your daughter, she’s awfully quiet down there.” Earlier today Eric had assigned Phoebe a sheet of mathematics problems to do, and she had sat down at the table in the salon, bending over her paper and impervious to distractions.

  “She likes to finish whatever she starts so she can move on to the next thing. She likes science best.”

  “Dad! Where’s the pencil with the big eraser? I need it for my next message.”

  “Aren’t you out of bottles?”

  “No, I can use a soda bottle. If I drink the soda, I mean. Is that okay?”

  Eric leaned over the companionway. “Sure, drink the soda if you want. And check the chart room for the pencil,” he called down to her. A few minutes later he called, “Did you find it?”

  “Uh-huh. Thanks, Dad.”

  During this exchange, Molly focused on a gray smudge beyond the distant freighter. She stood up for a better look. “Is that a squall I see on the horizon?” she asked.

  Eric whipped out a pair of binoculars. “Could be.”

  “Let’s see what it does,” Molly said, keeping her eyes on the churning gray clouds. “It may stay to the east of us.”

  “Go down and break out the charts. I need to know—”

  “Eric,” Molly said with the utmost patience. “I don’t mind consulting the charts. In fact, I’d like to do it. Would you mind asking courteously instead of ordering me around?”

  Eric let out a long, exasperated sigh. “I thought we settled this yesterday. I can’t issue courteous requests when we’re sailing. There mostly isn’t time.”

  “There is now,” Molly said pointedly. “It’s not as if you’re telling me to throw a line to someone on the dock so they can pull us away from another boat as we’re docking, or as if someone has fallen overboard.” She tried to maintain a reasoning tone, which wasn’t easy considering her passionate opinion on the subject, nor did she add that she wanted to stop feeling defensive all the time.

  “What’s the matter, you two?” Phoebe asked, poking her head up on deck.

  “Nothing, Peanut,” Eric said hastily at the same time that Molly said, “Your father—”

  She stopped talking when she realized that she had no business dragging Phoebe into her argument with Eric.

  Phoebe grinned. “Giving you a hard time, is he? He can be like that. Dad, have you seen the pencil sharpen
er?”

  “In the forward stateroom next to the bed. And don’t make a mistake and stick your little finger in it instead of the pencil.”

  Phoebe giggled. “He always says that,” she told Molly. She disappeared below.

  Molly ducked her head and shot Eric a look. “Sorry,” she said.

  “So am I.” He hesitated. Then he grinned at her. “I’ll try to do better, okay? Now, are you going to check those charts or not?”

  “Aye aye, Captain,” Molly said, sending him a smart salute, and as she climbed down the ladder, Eric was laughing.

  “You see,” said Phoebe, settling down in the salon with her freshly sharpened pencil. “He’s not so bad.”

  “No, he’s not,” Molly said with some surprise as she spread out the charts. “He’s not at all.”

  She was beginning to think that maybe, just maybe, she might get along with Eric long enough to get Fiona to Fort Lauderdale as planned.

  AS IT TURNED OUT, the squall did head their way, and as soon as they realized that it wasn’t going to bypass them, Eric ordered the dropping of Fiona’s sails and headed for the closest inlet.

  “We’ll have to take the Intracoastal,” he shouted over the rising wind. “There’s no point in fighting this.”

  Molly zipped up the side curtains of the cockpit and braced herself for rough waters. Eric started Fiona’s engine before they began their transition into the calmer waters, and though he looked worried and was clearly listening for the diesel to begin making unusual noises, he didn’t seem to hear any.

  Once they had reached the inland waterway, Molly complimented him on his expert seamanship.

  “I know that inlet well,” he said.

  The way he said it made her swivel her head. “Why is that?”

  “Used to live near here,” he said, the words barely more than grunts.

  She narrowed her eyes, trying to figure out if she’d touched a nerve. “Was that when you were a boy?” she ventured.

  “After,” he replied succinctly. Then he excused himself to take care of a flapping halyard on deck. He worked quickly and efficiently, refusing to let the wind slow his progress.

  You seem to be one good sailor, Eric Norvald, Molly said silently. And you don’t give anything away, do you?

  She never would have dared to say anything of the sort to him. But she was beginning to see him as more than a boat bum. He was definitely a man of mystery. And not as unappealing as she had originally thought.

  THE INCLEMENT WEATHER decided to stick around for a while, keeping them confined mostly to the cabin and cockpit and under engine instead of sail.

  “One thing about the Intracoastal is good,” Phoebe said as Molly sudsed out some clothes in the galley sink. “If we’re on the Intracoastal, the television set will pick up signals better. Dad might even be able to watch Jeopardy! That means he’ll be in a better mood most of the time.”

  “You’re joking, right?”

  “Nuh-uh. You’ll see. I mean, if we can get Jeopardy! And if we always have Chunky Monkey ice cream on board. Otherwise, he’ll go on being Mr. Grumpy.”

  Molly let the water out of the sink. “Is that what you call your dad? Mr. Grumpy?” Privately, she found this amusing.

  “I don’t tell him I call him Mr. Grumpy. Just like I don’t tell you that he calls you Queen Molly—” Phoebe clapped a hand over her mouth. “I wasn’t supposed to say that.”

  “So Eric calls me Queen Molly? Great jumping Jehosaphat,” Molly muttered, not allowing a stronger epithet to escape her lips because of Phoebe’s big ears and tender age.

  “Great jumping who?”

  “Jehosaphat.”

  “Is that what you’re going to call my dad?” Phoebe appeared ready to burst into giggles.

  “Only if he’s lucky, because I could think of other names,” she said darkly. She carried the underwear she’d just washed to her stateroom.

  Phoebe followed. “Where are you going with those? Aren’t you going to hang them on deck?”

  “No, in the shower where they can drip dry.” She pushed aside the shower curtain and began to drape her clothes over the line that she’d rigged earlier. Molly wasn’t about to tell Phoebe that she didn’t want to hang her underwear where Eric could see it.

  “We always hang our wet laundry on deck. The wind dries it real fast,” Phoebe said, standing by the bed and running her hand over the glowing pale wood of Molly’s harp in its open case. The instrument was delicately painted with a design of intertwined thistles and shamrocks, intricate and elegant.

  Phoebe climbed up on the bed. “Molly, when are you going to play your harp?”

  “When I get some free time,” Molly said. She was still smarting at the news that Eric was calling her Queen Molly behind her back.

  “When is that?”

  Molly lifted the instrument and strummed the strings. Unlike many other string instruments, the Irish harp was meant to be played with the fingernails. Her fingernails had been too short, bitten to the quick; she’d been biting them ever since she’d started work at McBryde Industries. Now they were almost grown out enough to play, but so far she’d had no time for it. When she wasn’t taking over some cooking chore or another, she was cleaning the galley or coiling lines or helping Mr. Grumpy with the myriad tasks that went with sailing a boat like Fiona.

  “Maybe I’ll play for you tonight,” she told Phoebe.

  “Oh, awesome,” Phoebe said before running off to present her day’s schoolwork to Eric for his approval.

  When Molly joined Eric in the cockpit, she sat down on one of the long benches flanking the ship’s wheel where Eric stood to steer the boat. Each side of the waterway was lined with sumptuous homes, and palmetto trees had begun to be part of the scenery. Molly closed her eyes and let the sun hit her full in the face. It felt so good, that sun. She didn’t regret coming on this trip, not one bit.

  “Hey, Molly, what have you heard from Emmett lately?” Eric asked.

  She opened her eyes. “Not much. I need to call him, find out what’s going on at the clinic.”

  “He’s a nice old fellow. We got along great.”

  “Grandpa gets along with everyone.”

  “A guy like that, it’s not surprising.”

  When Molly had talked with Emmett on her cell phone the morning after she came aboard Fiona, he’d spoken of Eric in glowing terms. “Eric’s to be trusted completely,” he’d told her. “I grew fond of him on those many long evenings spent on Fiona when I was in North Carolina, and I like the fellow. I don’t want you giving him any trouble at all, at all.”

  “And am I giving him any? Aren’t I doing my best to get along with him?” Molly had replied, thinking it was a good thing that Emmett didn’t know how close she’d come to firing Eric.

  “You’d better,” Emmett had huffed, and that had been the end of the conversation.

  Emmett wasn’t feeling well. He didn’t want any flack from his granddaughter, that was for sure.

  Now, she realized, Eric was making an effort to be agreeable. “Grandpa liked you, too,” she said.

  Eric gave her a sly look. “Better than you do, no doubt,” he said.

  “I think I’ll check the food supplies and see what we can throw together for dinner,” she said hastily. She didn’t intend to be baited, and she didn’t care to engage in a conversation that could get out of hand.

  As it turned out, dinner was tuna sandwiches and a garbanzo salad, both of which Molly managed to figure out how to make on her own. Afterward, Phoebe got out the chess pieces and board, insisting that Eric continue teaching her how to play. At first he resisted, but finally he gave in. Molly, feeling distinctly left out of this close-knit little family, went to see if her clothes that she’d hung in the shower earlier were dry. She put the dry ones away, swept out her stateroom and tried to call Grandpa Emmett, only to find that her cell phone was out of range. By the time she returned to the salon carrying her harp, Eric was winding up the chess lesson.
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br />   “Wow, Dad, you sure know a lot about chess,” Phoebe said as she gathered up rooks and pawns, kings and queens, and stashed them carefully in their box.

  “Which is why I’m the smartest guy in the universe, right?”

  “You might be the smartest guy on Earth, but I don’t know about Jupiter, Pluto and all the other planets,” Phoebe said seriously.

  “Hey, give me a break here,” Eric said pleadingly. “I’m your dad.”

  Phoebe pretended to consider this. “All right, you can be the smartest guy in our whole solar system—but I’m not sure about the universe.”

  “Kids,” Eric said as he turned to Molly. “You do everything you can for them, but you get no respect.”

  Determined to remain noncommittal, Molly sat down across from them and began to tune her harp. “I’m not taking sides,” she warned. “It wouldn’t be right.”

  “You’d be on my side if you did,” Phoebe said. “After all, we’re the only girls. What’s that hanging out of your pocket, Molly?”

  Molly looked down blankly at the bit of pink nylon protruding from the side pocket of her jeans. She plucked at it and held it up, then felt her cheeks starting to color.

  “Um, it’s—”

  Eric was staring, a slow smile spreading across his face, igniting his eyes devilishly. She felt like an idiot, because the pink thing was a thong that had dried before the other underclothes that she had hung in the shower.

  “I think,” Eric said succinctly, “that’s something private. Something that you and I, Phoebe, aren’t supposed to see.”

  “Oh,” Phoebe said, interested—until Eric suggested ice cream.

  Bundling the wisp of pink into a tight wad in her fist, Molly got up and slunk back into her stateroom, not as embarrassed about her gaffe as she might have been if Eric hadn’t been so tactful. He could have laughed, or he could have made a bawdy comment, but he hadn’t. He deserved points for that.

  She lingered in her stateroom to straighten the clothes in the few drawers, turn the bed down for later, even to brush her teeth unnecessarily—passing as much time as possible in an attempt to make sure that her cheeks were no longer red with embarrassment when she went back to the salon.