I gave him the information, enthusiasm building. “I was supposed to have a roommate, but she didn’t show up, so I’ll just pay for the room she booked.”
“Whenever you talk to her, tell her I said thanks. And give her a kiss from me.” He pressed a soft kiss to my lips. “Like that. Or this.” He gripped my waist and gave me a deeper kiss.
My legs wobbled. Other parts sprang to life. This wasn’t the time or place if he had to be somewhere else soon. I gave him a tiny wave. “See you later.”
“I’ll take that as a promise.” His voice was husky. Gil flashed me his sexiest smile and sauntered away.
I watched him step inside the nearest glass elevator, nearly filled with people. He stood near the glass and stared out at me while the elevator rose.
Once he was gone from sight, I released a breath and turned. My classmates had been watching. They closed in on me.
“Man, there’s some really hot stuff going on between you two,” Randy said, his smile extra-wide.
“Yeah, tell us all about it,” Jane urged.
“Come on,” Sue said.
Tetter did not say a thing but leaned forward, waiting for my answer.
“I told you we’ve known each other awhile. But I’d rather not get into any other details. Look, the shops are open. Let’s go shopping. Ladies? Randy?” I pointed toward the open doors, attractive giftware and clothing on display in the windows.
“Okay, but you need to give us more of the scoop later,” Jane said.
Getting the women involved in shopping was easy—except for Tetter. Randy stepped into the shop next to ours with exquisite men’s sports coats in its showroom window. In the View of the Sea shop, Jane and Sue gathered glittery tops and velvet skirts to try on. Tetter fingered a few items. She did not look at even one price tag. Her mood was so disinterested, her thoughts seeming so distant, that I worried about her. I needed to discover her problem. But the time and place needed to be right. First, I needed her to trust me as she had all of those years when we were close friends. Surely our friendship continued.
“That color would look great on you,” I said.
She stood in front of a turquoise cashmere sweater. “Oh, I wasn’t looking at that.” She shifted away from the rack.
“Don’t you like to shop?”
“No. Maybe sometimes.” She peered around the store as though discovering it held women’s apparel. “I don’t see anything I want.”
My opening. “What
do
you want, Tetter?”
She pulled back, eyes narrowed.
“I don’t want to pry,” I said, voice low so I wouldn’t antagonize her. “But if you’re having difficulties, I would love to help.”
Her gaze darted toward the exit. Did she want to run away from me? Or maybe she was looking for someone out there.
“Why do you think I’m having problems?” she asked, not facing me.
Because Jane told me. That enticement first made me consider coming on this ship.
“You were always smiling and laughing,” I said. “I’d never seen a happier person than you were.”
“You were happy, too, Cealie. But things change.”
A horrible thought occurred. A terminal illness? “Are you sick?”
“No.” Her word was tiny, her voice low.
Was she telling me the truth? She looked much paler than she did way back then. “Tetter, if you need someone to talk to—about anything—I would love to try to help. Or I could just listen.”
Chin quivering, she turned her face away and shook her head.
Had I made her cry? The only thing I knew for certain about her since our school years was that she was married, supposedly happily. Possibly she had money problems? Or the worst challenge—a child with severe difficulties.
Jane and Sue came carrying plastic shopping bags bearing a ship’s large anchor.
“We bought some great things.” Jane lifted a dress bag.
“We’re leaving this store,” Tetter said, possibly ready to get away and stop me from bugging her. Her eyes appeared misty.
Randy approached, his smile encompassing our group. “Y’all should see what’s outside. Let’s go to the Lido Deck. The scenery’s great.”
“We must have reached College Fjord,” Jane said.
“Make sure you wear your jacket.” Randy helped Tetter slip into hers. She glanced at his arm wrapping around her and frowned, then rushed ahead of us with many other people waiting for the elevators.
“We’ll go faster if we take the stairs,” Tetter said.
“As long as we don’t have to climb too many. I’m getting kind of old, you know,” Jane said, and most of laughed because we were all the same age.
I willed myself not to glance at the stairwell landing below. Even so, I envisioned Jonathan Mill’s crumpled body. What caused his death? It wouldn’t do any good for me to ask other people who worked on the ship if the doctor didn’t know yet. Still, I would feel much better once I was certain nobody I knew was involved.
We took one flight of stairs and shoved through a door into frigid air.
“It’s gorgeous,” Jane said, flinging her arms wide.
I had taken this trip before, and found nothing compared to the panoramic view of glaciers between snow-draped mountains. Still, the scene stole my breath. Our group squeezed into a spot where we could see. Around us, people raved about the magnificent scenery and snapped pictures. The salt-scented wind coated my face with icy droplets.
I peered into water near the ship. When would a casket holding a body leave? The man who had died wouldn’t be sent out to sea. He’d be kept in a cold holding place for now. His family was surely mourning and hating to wait to retrieve him from the ship’s belly.
“A nature guide will be speaking to you,” a man announced over speakers. “He will point out sights of interest.”
I strained to hear since many passengers were talking to each other. Randy garnered my interest. I watched him nudge closer to Tetter.
“Those white dots in the distant water are icebergs that calved off glaciers,” the guide said. “You can see Harvard Glacier and Yale Glacier, which have begun to retreat.”
Randy gazed at Tetter.
She stared at the water.
“You will note,” the guide said, “that this fjord in the northern sector of Prince William Sound contains five tidewater glaciers that terminate in the water, five large valley glaciers, and dozens of smaller ones, most named after East Coast colleges.”
“Hmp,” Jane said, “why not name some after other colleges, like those in the South?”
“I agree,” Sue said. It was the first time she spoke to any of us in a while.
I glanced around. More people came up the stairs. Others left one side of the deck and moved to the other, pointing toward sights.
“The explorers who found the glaciers included a Harvard and an Amherst professor,” the guide mentioned. “It’s said that they took great delight in ignoring Princeton.”
I tuned him out and watched what interested me much more than glaciers. Gil sat at a table near the outdoor pool, drinking coffee with a man whose back was to me.
“I’ll be right back,” I told my classmates.
Gil spied me coming and smiled. Rising as I neared, he gave me a brief kiss on the lips. “Sit with us.” He pulled out a chair. “Cealie, this is my uncle, Dr. Errol Thurman.”
The doctor stood. “Gil told me about you, Ms. Gunther. It’s so nice to meet you.”
“Please call me Cealie.” I accepted his handshake.
He grabbed the pager off his belt and studied it. “I’m sorry I won’t be able to stay. I’m needed back at work.”
“Doc,” I said, not missing an opportunity, “I met the man who died. Do you have any suspicions about what caused his death?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t yet. His death was so distressing. I hope we will learn its cause soon.” He placed a hand on Gil’s shoulder. Their resemblance was striking. The same strong cheekbones, same broad forehead and gray eyes. “It’s so good to get to see you, Gil.”
“Let me know when you have a few free minutes again,” Gil said, and his uncle nodded.
“You look so much like him,” I told Gil, watching the doctor stride away.
“Some people think he’s my father.”
“No wonder you came onboard to see him.” I squeezed Gil’s wide hand.
“Let’s go where we can see glaciers,” he said with a grin. “And then you might feel so cold, you’ll need someone to warm you up.”
His attention warmed me inside, much like a steaming mug of cocoa with melting marshmallows. I led him toward a rail on the side of the ship opposite from where my classmates stood. People snuggled together from the cold. I nudged into a small spot. Gil stood behind me, able to see the view over my head.
“Breathtaking,” he said, possibly spying glaciers for the first time.
“This was the epicenter of the Good Friday Earthquake in 1964,” the guide announced. “It was the most powerful earthquake in U.S. history.”
“Impressive.” Gil kissed my ear, creating small earthquakes below my belly.
But a concern gnawed at me. I turned to face him as much as I could with so little space between us. “I’m worried about Sue.”
He kissed my lips. “Who?”
“Sue—my aunt—uncle, my tall attractive classmate. All of my life until two years after our high school graduation, she was my Uncle Stu.”
Gil cocked an eyebrow. “Interesting.”
“I’d like for you to ask your uncle something.”
He smirked. “You aren’t thinking of having any changes done, are you? ’Cause I like you exactly the way you are.” He nudged closer.
“What a cute couple,” a young woman said. Wearing the ship’s mauve and sea green colors, she gripped a large camera. “May I take your picture?”
“Sure,” Gil said. He wrapped his arms around me and kissed. A long deep kiss.
“Great. You’ll be able to see your picture displayed on the Promenade Deck.
Gil waved her off, his tongue still down my throat.
I gasped and broke away. “You want the world to see a picture of us like that?”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know.” I placed a palm against his chest to keep him from closing in. “But I need your help.”
“For what?”
“I told you. Ask your uncle a question or two.” I glanced at people crammed on either side of us. “I’d better wait to talk about it.”
He noticed what caused my hesitation. “Then let’s go down.”
I peered out at snow-capped mountains and crystalline glaciers with what seemed tiny bits of them broken into the sea. The announcer was naming marine life visible in the distance—sea lions and whales, I heard mentioned.
“You don’t want to miss this,” I told Gil. “We’ll only be in this fjord a little while longer.”
He glanced out to sea. “It is pretty, but we’ll see more glaciers on this trip. And I’ve already seen these a few times.” He urged me ahead toward the elevators. One was already there and empty. We took it down.
“I didn’t know you’d ever been here before,” I said.
“You never asked.”
“Who did you come with?”
“Do you really want to know?”
“Yes.” I reconsidered. “No, I don’t.”
“I can tell you if that’s what you really want.”
I shook my head, backing toward the corner away from him. We rode without speaking. The elevator dinged, and its door opened. Gil pressed a button for a different deck. The door shut, and we descended.
The first deck he’d gone for held his stateroom. By the time we’d reached it, he’d certainly realized my mood had changed. Any sensual feelings I’d had faded.
The door opened. “After you,” he said.
We stepped onto the deck with shops and the library and bars. He pointed toward a seating area in an open-air lounge. The waiter inside it glanced at Gil, who shook his head. “Or did you want something to drink?” he asked me.
“Maybe later, after I find out who you came on all these trips with.” I sat back from the small round table and clasped my hands together.
“I can tell you.”
I sighed and admitted my thoughts. “Okay, I’m the one who decided we didn’t need to tell each other everything we’d ever done. We weren’t kids needing all of that information.”
He nodded. “And I believe you said that especially our former love lives didn’t matter. We’re adults. Mature. Maybe wiser. So you wanted whatever we have together to be at the moment, nothing brought up from before, nothing promised for the future.”
I pinched my palm. I did not plan to lie now. It just ached so much inside my chest, I wanted to direct my pain to some other part of my body.
“But,” Gil said, “we can change your rules if you’d like.”
“No way. Okay, let’s forget about who you traveled with before—” I was ready to say
before you met me
. But maybe he had met someone
in-between
the times we’d gotten together and gone places with her since. If that were the case, I did not want to know.
“Let’s get back to what concerns me the most right now,” I said. “Jonathan Mill, the man who died. I’m afraid Sue might be…I don’t know what to think.”
Gil shook his head. “Sometimes you’re rather difficult to read. Tell me about the dead man’s connection to Sue.”
“She met him while she and I were on the Lido Deck during our safety drill. They were close together and acting flirtatious.”
“So you think they got together after that?” Gil’s smirk annoyed me.
“Sue wasn’t in her room when I tried to get hold of her. She told us she was getting a massage, but the spa wasn’t supposed to be open yet.”
“And…?” His smile was most aggravating, which was fine with me. I did not want to be enticed by him again. “What do you think happened?”
“Do you think they could have—?”
“Had sex?” His smile was huge. “How far did they go with Sue’s operation?”
“I don’t know. I only know what I told you.” I hated to admit the rest but needed to tell someone. And no matter who he might have come to Alaska with, I considered him my best friend. “Sue was late meeting the rest of us for dinner last night, and by the time our dessert was served, people were yelling in the hall. That man was dead at the bottom of the stairwell.”
Gil gazed at a distant place, taking in everything I told him. He might have joked before, but he would never take death lightly.
I squirmed, waiting. He was wise. His judgment would be impartial, much better than mine where a member of my family was concerned. Sue was family.