Cal Rowe came into the small ship office with his coat over one arm. He had been told the captain wanted to speak to him; Ada had asked the crew member to add that it was about the Moss Point stop. He did not have to discover the subject by being shut inside a room.
“Nia talked to you,” he said.
“She did. Please sit.”
He remained standing until Ada took the chair opposite. “She's angry with me. I expect you know that.”
“I know she said she is continuing to Westhaven. I want to hear what you intend at Moss Point.”
“To get off. My ticket says so.”
“And Nia?”
“I want her to come with me. My sister can collect us. Nia needs one night's sleep before she sees Miriam.”
Ada set her pen beside the open log. “Does Nia agree?”
“She said no when she was upset.”
“She said no to me afterward, in a separate room.”
Cal sat. For a few seconds he looked not at Ada but at a small diagram of the vessel pinned above her shoulder. “I didn't know you had a separate room for a family argument.”
“I use it to hear a passenger without someone speaking over her.”
“I wasn't there.”
“That's the point.”
He rubbed his thumb along the coat's folded seam. “Miriam has agreed to see her. I can't stop that by telling Nia one night at my sister's would help. She thinks I can.”
“What did you mean,” she asked, “when you said you would settle it at the gangway?”
Cal looked up. “That she would have to look at me before she walked past.”
“And if she walks past?”
“I won't push her down the ramp, Captain.”
A pair of footsteps slowed outside. Ada waited until they passed. “What will you do if she says no?”
“I'll ask her to hear me out. Did she tell you I threatened to push her?”
“No.”
“Did she tell you I said I would speak to her there?”
“Yes. She also said you would take her bag to your sister's car after she refused to go.”
Cal held her gaze, as if she had chosen the only sentence that could turn a father carrying luggage into a public dispute. “She packed for two nights in Westhaven. I carried it onto this ship. Do you want me to promise I'll never lift it again?”
“I want you to leave it with her when she asks you to.”
He looked down. “I can do that.” Ada wrote the answer. He had known what she meant.
“And if she says no while we're at the ramp?” Ada asked.
“I'll leave without her, if she insists.” The answer cost him something. He made it sound like a concession he ought to receive credit for.
Ada noted the changed words, including the condition. “I will make sure she can remain aboard without having to pass through an argument with you.”
“You can arrange that on your ship.” He reached into the inside pocket of the coat. Ada watched his hand, then the worn envelope he drew out. “Can you arrange for the truth to stay the same from one trip to the next?”
He laid a folded sheet on the table and turned it toward her. Ada knew the company letterhead before she saw the signatures. In 2018 she had held that very kind of stationery flat while Leonie wrote their answer to Cal's request. Miriam Rowe, the letter said, had remained aboard through Westhaven. At the bottom were Ada Vale and Leonie Marr. Ada's name was written with the quick downward stroke she used when a queue had formed at a desk.
The queue came back to her as she looked at it. Cal had waited at the Bellhaven terminal counter while a sailing notice rattled in the door behind him. He had asked for one thing he could take home: where Miriam had gone. Leonie had looked to Ada before taking out the stationery. Ada could have given him no document and let the operator answer later. She had imagined Miriam near Moss Point with a single case and Inez's car pulling away, and she had said, “Write that she continued.” Leonie wrote slowly enough for Ada to change her mind. Ada had not changed it. When Cal asked if they were certain, she had signed beneath Leonie's name.
The fold had gone pale. Ada had not seen Nia read it at home.
“You gave me that at Bellhaven,” Cal said. “Days after she left. I took it home and put it with everything I thought Nia might need someday.”
Ada did not touch the paper. She had not forgotten its words, but the crease through the center told her how often it could have been opened in eight years. “It is the answer we signed.”
“You and Leonie,” Cal said. “I asked for a destination. Do you remember that? The person at the counter told me the booking was private. I said I didn't need her new address. I wanted to know which shore she stepped onto. You went into an office together and came back with this.”
Ada remembered hearing Cal through the office door while Leonie wrote. He had raised his voice once, on Nia's name. She had been afraid of what he might do when he found Miriam. She had signed.
“I remember the counter,” she said.
“I remember waiting for you to come back. I thought two officers checking a route took time.” He flattened the fold with one finger. “Nia was home. She asked why I didn't call her from the terminal. I told her I would bring an answer.”
Cal said, “Leonie stood beside Miriam then. She's standing beside Nia now. You see why I don't think she brings you a clean account.”
Ada met his eyes. “I signed it too.”
“You were the captain. Perhaps you accepted your officer's report.”
Ada looked at Leonie's signature above her own. It would be easy to describe the order of the handwriting as the order of authority. Leonie had arranged the car and written the sentence. Ada had made it a company answer. “She didn't report that Miriam sailed on. We both knew she had left.”
Cal watched her more closely. “So Leonie didn't persuade you?”
“She argued for giving you the wrong port. I agreed and directed the wording.”
“Why?”
Ada thought of Miriam at the Moss Point ramp, holding the handle of her case with both hands because one had shaken when she asked if Cal would be told. “Miriam said she feared being followed. I believed her. I could have refused to answer you or told you that I could not disclose her route. I chose this instead.”
“You could have told me I couldn't have it,” he said. “I would have argued. I would have gone home with no answer. You preferred to send me to a city she wasn't in.”
“Yes.”
He did not raise his voice. Ada found herself wishing he would, so she could stop attending to the plain sequence he had given her. The wish lasted only a second. His anger was not a reason to make Nia's next choice for her.
Cal slid the sheet closer. “That would be a different answer. Your company might listen if you said she gave you the destination and you trusted her. I would have listened then. Nia might now.”
“Would you tell Nia I hadn't known?” Ada asked.
Cal's eyes flicked to the paper. “I'd tell her what you said.”
“Even if you believed it was false?”
“She has already had a false answer from you. Perhaps you can decide which answer costs her less.”
Ada found herself arranging a sentence that left out knew. She laid the pen across the log.
There were schedules beyond this crossing with her name on them. A review could take them away.
“I knew what it said.”
“That isn't what I asked you to say.”
“I know.” Ada pushed the sheet back toward him. She did not want her hand resting on it as if it were an agreement between them.
“Then where did Miriam get off?” he asked.
“This conversation is about what happens tonight,” Ada said. The evasion was audible to them both. She closed the log, not to end the question but to keep herself from answering it as a footnote in Cal's account of Nia. “You have a right to ask me about that document. I will give a complete account through the proper process. I won't use an incomplete answer here to decide Nia's present ticket.”
“You can admit the lie but not give me the port?”
“I have admitted that I knew what I signed. It was false.”
Cal looked down at the sheet. “Then why should she trust you?”
Ada looked at the worn edge of the envelope.
“She doesn't have to trust me about 2018 to have her answer heard tonight.”
He folded the document along its old crease. “Leonie has kept a way to reach Miriam all this time. Did she tell you that?”
“I know.”
“Then you can see why I want Nia away from both of you for one night.”
“Tell Nia what you're afraid of,” Ada said. “You still need her yes.”
“What happens when we dock?”
“You disembark on your booking. Nia has said she will continue. We are preparing the stop with that answer. If she changes it, I will hear it from her.”
Cal's mouth tightened. “If you want her to hear your old answer from someone else, you have a few hours.”
He put the envelope away and stood. Ada rose too. She asked him to leave Nia's belongings alone and not to approach her at the ramp. He said he had heard her. He did not promise more.
After he left, Ada remained beside the table. Cal had tried to make Leonie's part larger and Ada's smaller; his offer was as tempting as it was untrue. Ada wrote down that he had shown his personal copy, the relevant words he had said, and her own acknowledgment. Then she asked Ellis to find Leonie.