Laura Constantine pulled into the driveway of her small, post-war house north of Ballard in Seattle after a long day in her Pioneer Square office. She let the last thirty seconds of the guilty pleasure Taylor Swift song play before shutting down the engine of her dusty gold Corolla exactly in time. She could afford a newer car now that her company was flourishing, but the trusty old Corolla had put in years of service and still didn’t complain.

The house had been her mother’s, purchased after a painful divorce from her father. Laura had been in college. She remembered her mother taking her to a campus coffee shop and tearfully apologizing over a half eaten scone. For the divorce. For the way they had treated her. Laura had told her she had hoped it would happen sooner. He had moved back to Montana after the divorce. Three years ago, her mother passed away. There was no deeply set emotion in the house. She hadn’t grown up there. It was the cornerstone of her mother’s new found independence, and then it wasn’t.

She unlocked her front door. It was fitted with a long, brass reinforcement plate around the handle and deadbolt. The hinges and a long strike plate were driven true into the surrounding studs with long screws. She had spent a day with a locksmith to make sure it would be impossible to kick in. She sat down on her couch and glanced at her packing list, squared neatly on her marble coffee table. She exhaled slowly. She hated packing.

It was even harder to pack for a cruise. Laura had never been on a cruise, and didn’t really understand them. Or boats in general, for that matter. A luxury voyage for the super wealthy was a step even further.

When her old roommate from the University of Washington had called her for a favor, she considered it carefully. She hadn’t spoken to Helen in a few years. Their careers had picked up. They had drifted apart, sometimes literally, as Helen took postings on cruise lines.

Now she was the captain of the Cecaelia, a new and controversial ship. She had read the news coverage. Some were upset about the excess, and how it typified the gentrification running roughshod over Seattle. Others were outraged over its nuclear power plant, the first of its kind. The christening had been picketed by environmental protesters with signs and megaphones. Laura knew this wasn’t entirely true. Her research told her that America had fielded a nuclear powered cruise ship in the 1960s, the Savannah, as a demonstration. But, history and accuracy wasn’t always the strong suit of the media or protestors.

She shrugged out of her blazer. It was late August in Seattle. It was still borderline too hot for a blazer, at just over seventy degrees during the day. But, it concealed her Glock 19 in a shoulder holster nicely. She removed her holster and set her Glock down on the table with a reassuring clunk. A nearly identical sidearm had served her for years in the FBI. When she left, she got her concealed carry permit and bought her own. The same muscle memory. The same training, with no wasted effort.

She poured herself a glass of white wine from a stoppered bottle in her fridge, and then willed herself to look at the list again. Shirts, pants, sweaters, it started. Near the bottom was healthy sense of skepticism.

An hour later, her suitcase was latched closed. It was a matte finish aluminum case. It was expensive, but she loved the clean lines and sense of industrial authority it projected. Outside, the sun was setting on the Puget Sound. The Cecaelia was bathed in long golden rays, only a few miles away.

—-------

Helen Chen-Morris walked into her kitchen, dressed in her Blue Peter cruise lines captain uniform. Her shirt and pants were bright white and starched. Her black shoes were polished to a mirror. Her shoulders were covered in gold epaulets, and her hair was pulled into a tight ponytail. A neat silver badge below her right collar showed her rank and name.

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She pulled her favorite travel mug from the cabinet. It was battered with age and dishwasher cycles. She filled it with the last of the carafe in her drip coffee maker, and added half and half from a carton in the fridge. The fridge door was covered in a haphazard assortment of drawings. Mostly rainbows and whales. They were splashing in water drawn in scalloped waves of blue crayon. It was seven in the morning, and her kids were already well awake.

Her daughter, Iris, was perched on a tall stool at the kitchen island. She was poking at a bowl of half eaten cereal and humming to herself. Her husband Alex was sitting next to her, bleary eyed and in sweatpants. He was not a morning person. The summer break away from school didn’t help either. No momentum to get everyone out the door.

Alex perked up at the sight of Helen, and a smile spread across his stubble-covered face. A half finished mug of coffee sat in front of him. He had dark brown hair, dark framed glasses, and dimples. Helen loved his dimples. He was wiry, and seemed to run on an internal coiled up spring of energy. After about noon.

Alex said, “you’re going to send us pictures if you find any whales, right?”

Iris chimed in, “you said you would! Do you think you’ll see Orcas? Maybe humpback whales? Ooh, or maybe both?”

“I promised, remember. I even brought my spotting scope so I can see them better. I figured out how to hold my phone up to it to get pictures.”

Iris suppressed a squeal and balled her hands. “I would love pictures, Mom. The Orcas are calving! Did you know that they play together? The babies actually play.”

“Definitely. It’s a promise. I’ll send them to dad, and you can look at them together.”

Iris continued, breathless. “Mom. Mom. Did you know that Orcas are actually a dolphin? They are the largest species in the dolphin family. You can tell they’re a dolphin because they have a melon.”

Helen blinked. It was still a little too early for dolphin facts. “A melon?”

Alex laughed. “We’ve been talking all about melons. It’s a fatty deposit on their foreheads. It makes them dome shaped.”

Helen smiled. The corners of her eyes crinkled. Alex loved the way her smile took up her entire face.

Alex was a stay at home dad. He liked to joke that he was one of ‘literally dozens.’ People loved to ask him and Helen how she could be away on a ship with children. He loved to remind them that they didn’t ask the same of male captains, of which there were plenty. He was a software developer, with a part time job working from home for a small company. He often worked late into the evening, headphones cranked, after the kids were asleep. Sometimes he had no time during the day, while they ran him ragged

Their daughter Iris was eight years old. Early on, they noticed she was a different child. She talked late. She listened to the same song over and over. When she started first grade, her teacher recommended her for an autism screening. Alex was incredulous. She and him were like two peas in a pod. When she was diagnosed, he was surprised. Didn’t everyone sort their food by color? Didn’t everyone make decision trees about conversations, charting all their possible outcomes? The more he read, and the more he learned about Iris, the more he learned about himself. He sought out a diagnosis two years later.

He was sometimes self conscious about their differences. Helen loved his quirks. In a way, it was what drew them together. He was hilariously blunt, and she loved that he saw things other people often didn’t. They had met at a college party. She was trying a new perfume, and she wasn’t sure she liked it. Alex had walked up to her. He had said, without skipping a beat, “your perfume smells like musty oranges. You should buy a different one.”

Their daughter Sophia padded into the room, and plunked herself on the couch. In an instant, she was fully horizontal, holding a tablet covered in rubber bumpers.

Helen grabbed her purse from next to the door. “Okay guys. I’m off to the ship. I love you. I’ll FaceTime you every night when you get tucked in. Can you please promise me you will listen to dad?”

“We will. We always do, Mom.” Sophia said from the couch, without turning her head. Alex smirked at Helen. Helen kissed the kids on the forehead, gave Alex a longer, lingering kiss, and walked out the door.

She looked back at their house. It was a small, brick house in Magnolia. It was close to the docks. It was neat and square, with a brown grass lawn and a small hedge near the sidewalk. A disused water play table full of toys sat askew in the mouth of their side yard, and a sprinkler head was draped across the fence. She stepped into her car, and made her way to work.