I should have gone after her right then. I know that. I told myself it would only make it worse. That was half true. The other half was that I did not know what to say, and I am a woman who always knows what to say, and I did not like the feeling.
The family portrait was my idea too.
The cruise line has photographers all over the ship. Most of them work in front of painted backdrops in the hallways, but on the sea days they set up outside by the pool for anyone who books a session. I had booked a slot for Monday morning, nine o’clock, the second sea day, before the deck got crowded.
I had told everyone what to wear. I am not proud of that. I sent a group text in February with colors. Mom in white for her anniversary. Dad in a white shirt and khaki shorts. Navy for me and Nolan. Claire wanted yellow, and she bought the sundress herself with money from her summer job at the fairgrounds office. Fifty-eight dollars.
Christine’s color was blue. She wore it. Nobody said a word about how she looked in it, including me.
The photographer was a cheerful young man with a ponytail and a big camera, and he asked who was in the first pose. I did not even think. I said, “Parents first. Then my parents with me and Claire, then everybody.”
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I did not look at where Christine was standing when I said it. I found out later she was standing right behind me, holding everyone’s towels.
So the photographer posed us at the edge of the shallow end with the blue water behind us. Mom and Dad in the middle. Me on Mom’s side in my navy linen dress, my hair doing what light brown curls do in salt air, which is whatever they please. Claire on Dad’s side, closest to the water.
“Smile,” the photographer said. “Big ones. Okay. Three.”
That was when Christine set the towels down on a chair.
After Milo pulled Claire out and the lifeguard went back to his chair, there was a long, strange moment where nobody knew what to do.
Nolan came back from the towel stand at a jog, his arms full of towels. He took one look at Claire dripping on the deck and one look at me, and did the smartest thing a husband can do. He put a towel around his daughter and said nothing at all.
Nolan is an electrician for the rural co-op. He has spent twenty-two years walking into situations where one wrong move gets somebody hurt, and he has learned that the first job is to make sure nobody is hurt. The second job can wait.
Claire stood there in her towel with her yellow dress stuck to her legs and water running off her elbows and puddling on the deck boards. She was still laughing in little hiccups.
The photographer cleared his throat. “We can reschedule,” he said kindly. “No charge. Tomorrow, maybe?”
Tomorrow was St. Thomas, and after that we were in port almost every day. The one sea day left, he was booked solid. I knew that, because I had tried for that day first.
I looked at my mother. She was standing very straight, holding Dad’s arm, and her face had that careful look it gets at funerals, when she is deciding not to cry in front of people.