“Where would we even sail it?” I asked.

“Captain Walter, the Narcisse- how would it be for the Caribbean? Or the Mediterranean?” Emmy asked. Somehow she knew his name, because of course she did.

“It’d be fine either place,” he said, turning back to look where he was steering the boat. “She was built as a mine sweeper, and is open-ocean worthy. She does have a somewhat limited fuel tank, so crossing the Atlantic would require taking the Northern route up past Newfoundland and Iceland, then rounding the Iberian Peninsula. This would take a few months, so it isn’t something you’d do very often, but it would certainly be possible.”

“Em, if we sailed in the Mediterranean Sea we could base out of Southern France, right? That way we could visit your family, or maybe they could use the yacht when they want, too,” Angela suggested.

“But if we keep it in the Caribbean, we could sail it to Cartagena and visit your family,” Emmy countered.

“And if you kept it here in these waters, you could see orcas,” Captain Walter said, pointing off the port bow.

Of course we stood up to look at the group of black and white bodies breaking the surface about two hundred yards from the ship. We watched them until they vanished into the distance, even though they really weren’t much to see. A bit like the humpbacks, really.

Just as we were about to settle down again Captain Walter pointed off to the starboard. “Dolphins over there, coming in. They’ll probably play in our bow wake. If you go up to the prow you’ll get a really good, close-up view,” he said.

Of course we hustled to the front of the boat, Angela making a quick side trip to grab her camera. We weren’t the only ones up front, though. Anne and her husband were there with their two boys, who had binoculars held to their eyes.

One of the boys pointed and said, “Look, Angela! Dolphins!”

“Yes, we saw them from the captain’s lounge,” she replied. “I want to take pictures,” she said, holding up her camera with the big new lens Emmy had bought for her.

Anne gave me a bit of a dirty look, but I ignored it and focused on the dolphins. They did just what Captain Walter had predicted, swimming around the front of the boat, occasionally lifting up out of the water as they played.

“Perhaps we should keep our yacht here in Alaska,” Emmy said with a smile, amused by Angela’s childlike enthusiasm.

That afternoon the clouds rolled in and it started to rain, becoming progressively harder as the day went on. By the time we got to the promised quiet cove it was hard to even see the shore, and nobody wanted to kayak, fish, or anything like that. I overheard one of the other passengers say that maybe we should have gone to Juneau after all, and I had to agree.

We all found ourselves in the salon, playing backgammon, finishing the puzzle, or just chatting. We had a couple of hours until dinner to just relax and do whatever we wanted to while away the time. Angela and I found ourselves in the same big, comfy chair while Emmy fetched her guitar.

“Were you serious earlier?” Angela asked, cuddled up to my side with a glass of wine. “About buying a yacht?”

“Um, well, yeah,” I said, kissing the top of her head. “I mean, if you really want it, we can buy a yacht. Like I said about the townhouse, it’s really not that different. We bought that because Emmy wanted it, that’s all. It’s not like we don’t have the money, and if it’s what you really want, I’d like you to have it.”

“I’ve never really asked,” Angela said, her voice suddenly uncertain. “But how much money do you even have? I know it’s a lot. You bought James’ Porsche like it was nothing, and that was nearly two million dollars…”

“It’s hard to say, really,” I said. “It’s not like people imagine. We don’t have fifty million or whatever in our checking account. It’s all wrapped up in investments, and their values change all the time.”

“What does that mean? I understand what you’re saying, but…”

“I guess what I’m trying to say is that pinning down an exact, or even sorta rough figure is hard. But if I had to come up with a number, I’d say we’re worth somewhere in the four hundred million range right now,” I hedged. “But that’s just a rough estimate.”

Angela turned to face me in the chair. “Are you kidding?” she asked, stunned.

“Now you see why Emmy and I don’t care how much your new camera lenses cost. Whatever it was didn’t matter to us as much as your, um, happiness does.”

“Those lenses… Those aren’t what make me happy, Lee,” Angela said, returning to her snuggling. “You and Emmy do. Sure, it’s nice that you bought them for me, and they’re great, but they aren’t what really matter.”

“What does really matter?” Emmy asked as she sat down in the chair next to ours.

“You do, and Lee does,” Angela said, making Emmy smile.

Emmy took the guitar from its case and quickly checked the tuning before strumming a few notes.

“Em, I love it when you play the classics. Play Fandanguillo for me,” Angela said.

“I would be happy to play that for you,” Emmy replied, picking the notes as she started the song.

“It is not too loud, is it?” Emmy asked after a little bit, directing her question at the room in general. Pretty much everybody sort of said no, it was fine, and sounded great, so she continued on.

“This, this is what matters,” Angela said. “You holding me, while we listen to Emmy play. The three of us on this little vacation. This matters so much.”

I nuzzled her hair, breathing in her scent. Angela, Emmy and I all used the same shower gel and shampoo, and yet somehow Emmy’s hair smelled different than Angela’s, and presumably mine, too. Emmy and Angela were so different, but that difference made them both very special to me in completely different ways. Angela was right, I thought. This right here is what matters.

During dinner Jack and Emmy decided to postpone the filming since the rain had gotten so heavy that it was hard to even hold a conversation there in the dining area, much less film a musical performance.

We ‘retired to our cabin’ for the rest of the evening, but we really didn’t do anything but cuddle together and talk until we all drifted off to sleep.

When I woke the next morning the rain had tapered off to a really light drizzle- more of a gently falling mist than a real rain. To my surprise when I settled at the rail with my morning coffee, there were a few other passengers already up and moving, kayaking around the sheltered cove.

They weren’t the kind of kayaks you see people shooting whitewater rapids on, but rather big yellow plastic two-seaters designed for just this sort of thing. I thought about hitting up a crew member for a kayak of my own so I could get some exercise that way, but eventually decided against it. If everything dried up later I could work out with my resistance bands up on the top deck again, and if it didn’t, well, hey- it was a vacation, after all.

Hank joined me at the rail, the two of us watching in companionable silence while the other passengers paddled around the cove. Eventually my coffee cup ran dry, so I lifted it up in a gesture toward Hank.

“Gonna get another cup- need a refill?” I asked.

“I’ll go in with you,” he said, checking his own cup and finding it low.

After we got our coffee situation sorted out we made our way back to the rail to watch as the kayakers all returned to the Narcisse after working up an appetite for breakfast.

“You gonna grab breakfast now, or wait for your wives?” Hank asked.

“Emmy is not a morning person. She usually sleeps in late, but Angela hits the gym early. I’m surprised she’s still not up.”

“Jo keeps telling me that we’re on vacation, so there’s no need to set an alarm clock,” Hank agreed. “She’s missed breakfast twice now since we set sail.”

I chuckled at that, since it mirrored what I’d been thinking. “I’ve always been an early riser, and now I just can’t help it. Emmy, though, when she gets working on her music with the boys, they used to stay up really late. Angela finally put her foot down on that, though, so now the rule is that they have to stop at midnight.”

“Angela told Emmy she couldn’t stay up late?” Hank asked, surprise in his voice.

“I think it was more along the lines of asking Emmy to not stay up past midnight because it was bad for her health, but yeah. That was Angela’s doing,” I admitted as we walked to the dining area to get our breakfast.

Hank was quiet as we sat down and gave our orders to the steward, but then said, “I find it fascinating that Angela would tell Emmy what to do. That’s not really how I read the dynamic at all.”

“What do you mean?”

“In pretty much every typical binary relationship, one partner tends to be more dominant, right? Even if they think of themselves as equals, it is still usually the case that one or the other makes the bulk of the decisions, or shoulders most of the responsibility. It’s not a husband/wife thing, it’s simple human nature,” he explained. “With the three of you, I’d picked you as the… let’s call it ‘primary’ partner, Emmy as the ‘secondary’, and Angela as the ‘tertiary.’ Not to say that one of you is more important than the others,” he quickly said to head off my objections. “That’s just the way I saw the ranking of… well, I hate the word ‘dominance’, but that’s probably what most would call it. Mostly you lead, and the other two follow. After that, Angela typically follows Emmy’s lead.”

“I can’t say you’re totally wrong,” I admitted as our plates were set down in front of us. “But I don’t think you’re completely right, either. Yeah, I’m the classic ‘dad’ of the family in a lot of ways, but Angela is the mom, more than Emmy is. Angela is much more domestic, much more… Well, I don’t know if ‘caring’ is the right word, exactly…”

“She’s the one that makes sure everyone has their jackets, in case it gets cold?” Hank suggested.

“Yeah, like that,” I agreed. “So when she tells me that I need to be home early because we have something planned, I come home early. Like when she told Emmy that staying up too late in the studio wasn’t good for her, Emmy listened and respected what Angela had to say.”

“So if you’re the father figure and Angela is the mother figure, where does that leave Emmy?” Hank asked, curious.

“Her role is harder to fit into stereotypes,” I said, thinking about it. “She’s the famous one, the one on magazine covers and on TV, right? I think, from an objective standpoint, Angela and I do what we do to enable Emmy as much as anything. We take on whatever needs to be done so that she has the freedom to do her music. In that respect, she’s probably the… well, the most important one in the relationship, as far as a lot of things are concerned.”

“I guess that makes sense,” Hank mused. “She’s the main source of income, after all.”

“What? No,” I said. “Angela brings home more than Emmy does, and I earn, like, a hundred times as much as that.”

“Emmy’s got to be making a ton of money,” Hank objected. “She’s everywhere on the radio, and billboards…”

“Emmy gives every single penny she earns- and this is gross, not net- to charity,” I said, interrupting. “Actually, her music and everything cost us a lot of money, since we’ve shelled out for three full studio setups, buy all her instruments and gear out of our pocket, and so on. No, her music is a monetary negative for us.”

“Really? Everything she earns goes to charity?” Hank asked, surprised.

“Every penny that she brings in goes straight to a bunch of charities, mostly refugee aid,” I confirmed. “From the very start of her music career. We’ve given a lot of money to Doctors Without Borders, for example. Over twenty-five million dollars, last I added it up.”

“That’s very admirable,” Hank said.

“Emmy did an in-studio at the local rock radio station in Sitka the night before we got on the Narcisse,” I said. “She made them sign a contract that every penny of the proceeds go to the Tlingit and Haida education fund. That’s just the kind of thing that she does.”

Hank took a while to think about this while enjoying his stack of pancakes. Eventually he said, “I really can’t say that I would ever have expected all this. The three of you are… unexpected.”

“Like the Spanish Inquisition,” I agreed.

That day our destination was a long inlet, almost like a fjord, with a glacier at the end that calved into the water. The last few miles before reaching the glacier was almost like sailing through a glass of ice water. The surface was covered in little bitty icebergs, most of them no bigger than the size of a beer cooler, but a few large enough for a seal or two to rest on.

“The Narcisse was built as a mine sweeper,” Captain Walter assured us all. “It can take a lot bigger hit than any of this ice can do.” Almost as if to prove it, we motored into the inlet at full speed, simply plowing the chunks of ice aside with a lot of clunking and thunking against the hull, but as promised, no damage.

As in Glacier Bay, the crew fished a decent-sized chunk of ice out to make dessert and ice cubes for our drinks. We spent well over an hour maybe a hundred yards away from the wall of ice, listening to it creak and crack as chunks fell into the water.

The ship’s naturalist explained that this was the most southerly calving glacier in Alaska, and that during the summer season full-sized cruise ships came all the way up into the narrow bay.

“They actually have to make a three-point turn using that side spur over there to exit,” she said, pointing off to a small opening in the northern wall of the fjord. “Honestly, it’s impressive to see those things do it, even if I hate the idea they come up into here at all,” she admitted.

Emmy and I watched as Angela climbed down the ladder and grabbed a small ice chunk from the water, bringing it back up proudly.

“I wish I could keep this as a souvenir,” she said, showing off the clear blue pice of ice the size of a grapefruit.

“I’m sure it’ll be O.K. in your duffel bag,” I teased.

“Mine is kinda full. I’ll just put it in yours, how about that?”

“Sure, there should be room,” I said, wrapping an arm around her waist and giving her a kiss.