The Dripping Photo on Her Hallway Wall

“Milo said he talked to you,” she said.

“He did.”

“Then you know.” She took a breath. “I’m going to pay you back. The whole twenty-eight hundred. I don’t care how long it takes. A hundred a month if that’s all we’ve got. I don’t want a gift, Rosalie. I’m forty-four years old and I don’t want to be a charity case on my in-laws’ cruise.”

I opened my mouth to say she didn’t have to, and then I shut it. Because I heard Milo in my head. You never have to mean it.

“Okay,” I said.

She blinked behind the glasses. I don’t think she expected that.

“Okay,” I said again. “A hundred a month. And I’ll take it. Because it’s yours to give, and you want to give it.”

She nodded once, hard. Then she said, “And I’m going to buy Claire a new dress.”

“You don’t…” I stopped myself again. “She’d like that.”

“I already looked. The shop on deck five has one in yellow. It’s sixty-four dollars.” She laughed a little, not very happily. “Of course it’s sixty-four dollars. Everything on this ship is sixty-four dollars.”

We stood there.

“I shouldn’t have pushed her,” she said. Her voice wobbled on the word pushed. “I don’t know what I was doing. I was so embarrassed, and everybody was standing there in their colors, and your mom said family first…”

“I said that,” I told her. “Not Mom. Me.”

She turned and looked at me.

“I said parents, then me and Claire,” I said. “I didn’t look where you were standing. I should have. I’m sorry, Christine. I’ve been not looking where you’re standing for a long time.”

She did not say anything. She took her sunglasses off and wiped her eyes with the back of her wrist, and put them back on.

“Well,” she finally said. “That’s a heck of a thing to say on a boat.”

It was the first time she had ever made me laugh on purpose.

The last night of a cruise, they have you put your big suitcases out in the hall before bed, and everybody is a little sad and a little sunburned and trying not to show it.

We did not eat in the big dining room that night. Dad said he wanted a cheeseburger and the sky. So we went up to the open-air grill at the stern, pushed two tables together under the string lights, and the wake ran out white behind us toward the dark.

Eight of us. Cheeseburgers and fries and the soft-serve machine. Perry went back four times. The ship’s band was playing somewhere below us, old Motown, and Mom kept tapping her foot.

Dad gave a toast. It was eleven words long. He said, “Fifty years. Good kids. Good grandkids. I don’t know what else.” Then he sat down and put his hand over his eyes, and Mom rubbed his back and everybody pretended to look at the ocean.

Claire was wearing the new yellow dress. Christine had given it to her that afternoon at the pool, in front of everybody. She had said, “I’m sorry, Claire. That was a stupid, mean thing to do, and I’m ashamed of it. You could have been hurt.” Her face was red the whole time.

Claire had hugged her. Claire hugs everybody. But she had also said, “Thank you. And don’t ever do that again,” and Christine had said, “I won’t,” and I believed her.