Baked Alaska (2 page)

“Don’t be a snob, Mom.”

Sadie didn’t look up from the gelatinous bread pudding she was poking with the serving spoon. “Bread pudding should not jiggle. If this is any indication of the food I can expect on this cruise, it’s going to be a very long week.”

“It’s the first buffet,” Breanna said as she spooned some berry cobbler onto her plate. “Don’t judge the food so harshly from just one meal.”

The cobbler looked okay, so Sadie took a small amount, then followed her daughter down the buffet line.

“You never get a second chance to make a first impression,” Sadie said, narrowing her eyes at what was supposed to be cheesecake but looked like stiff pudding. She settled for a cherry turnover that looked exactly like the ones Arby’s sold for a dollar. “On that cruise I took with Gayle in January, the food was awful.”

Sadie had always loved cruises, but just over a year ago, she had undergone some traumatic experiences associated with water, so the inexpensive, three-day Baja cruise with Gayle had been a test to see if Sadie could handle being in a floating hotel. The cruise convinced her she was okay
on
the water, just not
in
it.

The food on that ship, however, had been very low quality. It was a cheap cruise, though, so perhaps that was to be expected. Now she was on another cruise—a longer, more expensive one—with a different cruise line, and the first foray into the menus had shaken her confidence. Good bread pudding should be dense, flavorful, and topped with a creamy caramel sauce—like her cousin Kara’s recipe which Sadie had made for years and years. It wasn’t difficult to make good bread pudding. If the ship’s cooks couldn’t do right by a basic dessert, what would their beef Wellington be like?

They finished the dessert segment of the buffet and made their way to the salad bar—dessert first whenever possible.

“If you don’t mind my saying so, you seem a little uptight,” Breanna said once they finished dishing up and were winding their way through the dining room in hopes of finding an empty table. “Is everything okay? Have you already found a dead body you’re afraid to tell me about?”

Sadie scowled at her daughter’s back. “I’ll have you know I haven’t seen a dead body for eight months, if you don’t count Brother Harper from church, but he was eighty-seven and properly laid out in his coffin when I saw him at the viewing. It was a lovely service.”

“Eight months—that’s got to be some kind of record, right?”

“Oh, stop it,” Sadie said, wishing she had a free hand so she could playfully slap her daughter’s arm. “I think that phase of my life is over.” She scanned table after table filled with people already eating. “Is there not even one empty table in this entire dining room?”

“There are some back there,” Breanna said, nodding toward the back of the ship. “Just calm down.”

They made their way past their fellow passengers and finally slid into their seats, officially staking their claim at a table for four near a window that looked out over the Seattle pier. The ship wouldn’t sail for another two hours.

“Seriously, though,” Breanna said once they were seated, “are you okay?”

Sadie took a breath and decided to spill it. “I’m worried about this trip.”

Breanna unwrapped her silverware from her napkin, placed the cloth in her lap, then raised her brown eyes to meet Sadie’s blue ones. Both of Sadie’s children were adopted, and not for the first time Sadie thought that Breanna’s birth mother must have been very beautiful.

“
You’re
worried? This whole trip was your idea.”

“I know, but I guess the worry didn’t hit me until I realized Pete and Shawn would be on the transfer bus together. They were on that bus for half an hour, then in line for another hour. What if they decide they hate each other by the time they get here? Then we’re stuck together for seven really lousy days.”

“Shawn and Pete have spent time together before,” Breanna said. “I’m the one who hardly knows your boyfriend.”

“Oh, don’t call him that,” Sadie said, feeling her cheeks heat up. “It sounds so...young.” Sadie had recently turned fifty-eight years old. Young was feeling further and further away as she tried to wrap her head around her impending AARP membership.

Breanna laughed and stabbed a bite of her salad with one hand while tucking her long, straight, brown hair behind her ear with the other. “I’d call him your fiancé, but he hasn’t made it official yet, though I don’t know what he’s waiting for.”

Sadie took a bite of her own salad to stall before she answered. The truth was that she and Pete had talked about marriage often during the last few months as Pete’s retirement grew closer and the threat Sadie had been running from felt more and more distant—she’d been safely living back in Garrison, Colorado, since December and nothing had happened. But, even so, Sadie had always stopped the wedding discussions when they got to the point of timing and specifics.

Breanna had been engaged for more than a year now, and the happy couple had finally set the date for October nineteenth. Sadie was loath to take any attention away from her daughter’s special celebration of a joined life.

Pete understood Sadie’s reasons to delay their own vows, but two and a half years was a really long courtship. This cruise therefore, had multiple purposes: to celebrate Pete’s retirement from the police department, to allow Sadie’s children to get to know him better, and to allow Sadie to catch up with Breanna’s wedding plans. Seeing as how Breanna lived in London and Sadie lived in Colorado, mother and daughter hadn’t had a lot of time to talk things over.

“So?”

Sadie looked up, her fork halfway to her mouth. “What?”

“I asked if Pete was going to make an honest woman of you or not?”

“Breanna Lynn!” Sadie said, lowering her fork as her cheeks heated up again. “Are you implying that my relationship with Pete Cunningham is anything less than respectable?”

Breanna’s grin widened, and she pointed her fork across the table. “Bazinga.”

“Bazinga? What does that mean?”

Breanna laughed again and took another bite.

It must be European humor.

“Isn’t this whole cruise about you making an announcement to Shawn and me?”

“No,” Sadie said, shaking her head. Is that what they thought? “It’s a family vacation...with Pete, and my chance to get caught up on your wedding plans.”

“Oh,” Breanna said with a shrug of one shoulder, showing how unconcerned she was about the information. “Shawn and I both like Pete, so I don’t know why you’re worried.”

Sadie considered how best to proceed as she and Breanna took a few more bites of their meals but decided she may as well lay all her concerns on the table. “I’m also a little worried about Shawn.”

Bre kept her eyes on her food, a sure indication that she knew something, and Sadie’s stomach fell. As much as Sadie hated being left out, if Shawn were in
serious
trouble, he wouldn’t only talk to Breanna about it, right? One thing was for certain, if Sadie hoped to get information from Breanna, she couldn’t push too hard or her daughter would clam up. She wasn’t one to be casual with other people’s confidences. “Does he seem okay to you?” Sadie asked innocently.

“Well, you know, he’s finishing up school this summer and...it’s not the best time to get a job and, well...it’s a big transition.”

While Shawn had walked with his graduating class just last month, he still had two online classes he needed to finish up over the summer in order to complete his degree in criminal justice.

But it was obvious to Sadie that school and the inevitable transition that followed wasn’t
it
. “Why wouldn’t he talk to me about that?”

Breanna still wouldn’t meet her mother’s eyes. “Um, well, have you asked him what’s wrong?”

“Of course I have. He’s assured me everything is fine, but he only calls me back about half the time these days. I can just feel this...vagueness from him.”

“Maybe don’t worry about it, then,” Breanna said, attempting a smile as she finally made eye contact. “When he’s ready, he’ll tell you.”

“So he
is
having trouble that he doesn’t want to talk to me about.”

“Mom,” Bre said, but the roar of a lion cut her off. Breanna rummaged in her bag and pulled out her phone. She’d majored in zoology and currently worked as a docent at the London Zoo, so of course her text message tone was a lion’s roar. Because they were in port, there was still cell service, but once they headed out to sea, cell phones would only be useful to check the time and to take pictures.

“They’re checked in,” she said while typing a response.

“Shawn and Pete?” Sadie asked, sitting up straighter and instantly dropping her concerns in favor of an appropriate welcome for her two favorite men. “Where are they?”

“Shawn says they just had their ‘Welcome Aboard’ photo taken.”

“Together?” Sadie said, a tender lump in her throat at the thought of Pete and Shawn superimposed in front of their boat, the
Celebration.

Breanna smiled at her and sent the text message. “They’re on their way up. Shawn said to save him some bacon.”

“Even if it’s undercooked?”

When Pete found them, Sadie jumped up for a hello kiss and hug. It had only been a week since he’d dropped her off at the Denver airport so she could fly up to visit some friends in Portland before the cruise, but she’d missed him. Only when she pulled back from the embrace did she realize he was alone. “Where’s Shawn?”

“He said he’d catch up. I think he saw someone he knew.”

“Really?” Sadie asked with heavy skepticism in her voice as all her concerns came rushing back. What were the chances of him knowing someone other than Pete, Breanna, and herself on this cruise?

“He told me to go ahead and he’d be right behind me.” They all looked behind Pete, but there was no 260-pound Polynesian man with an Afro bringing up the rear.

“You go get yourself some food—avoid the bread pudding, though—and I’ll find my boy,” Sadie said to Pete. She hadn’t seen Shawn since Christmas—almost six months—which was far too long to go without one of his signature bear hugs. She knew she’d feel better once she saw him in person.

“Okay. He was one level down, in front of the elevators when I last saw him. Hurry back.” He gave her a wink, and she felt all jiggly inside for a moment.

Sadie made her way out of the dining room and down the set of stairs just outside the entrance to the buffet. Unlike deck twelve, deck eleven was primarily a cabin deck, though a sign indicated that the security office was forward on the starboard side and the bridge was forward on the port side of the ship. Although there were several people waiting for an elevator when Sadie arrived, Shawn was not one of them. If she didn’t find him soon, she’d call his phone, but she liked the idea of finding him on her own.

She headed to the port side and glanced down the long narrow hallway lined with turquoise doors that led to the passenger cabins. There was a younger couple coming out of a room, but no Shawn. She crossed in front of the elevators to the starboard side, glanced right, and then left, relieved when a familiar set of shoulders and six inches of picked-out curls caught her eye. She smiled to herself and headed toward Shawn’s towering form when she realized he was talking to someone. And he didn’t look happy about it.

Sadie slowed her steps and observed the scene with a little more interest. The woman Shawn was talking to was a light-skinned black woman with hundreds of long thin braids pulled back into a bulky ponytail. Some of the braids were dyed hot pink. She wore a black cotton sundress and was very engaged in whatever it was she was explaining to Shawn, who had his arms crossed over his chest and a scowl on his face.

The woman was gesturing with her hands, but the expression on her face was somewhat pleading, as though she was trying to convince Shawn of something. As Sadie got closer, she realized the woman was older than Shawn. She was thickly built and at least six feet tall. The two of them completely blocked the hallway.

Sadie stopped about twenty feet from them, not wanting to be rude and interrupt, but not inclined to back away either. Why was Shawn upset? Who was this woman?