Free Desperado Dale (Scenic Route to Paradise) by Andrea Aarons Page B

continuing to
hold her forearm, he helped her as she sat abruptly in the captain’s chair.
Closing her eyes, she was overcome with fatigue. She heard Mac shuffling about
and then as the sun was blocked, she realized he had erected the sunshade
canopy. Dozing off for a minute or more, Merry shot her eyes open. Mac was
gone. Looking over her shoulder, Junior was not standing where he had been. She
faced the stern but even Zeff and Tino were no where in view.
    Down below in the galley, the men were seated
about the table. When Merry came through, they quit speaking and in the pause, an
excited Merry said, “Junior! I had the craziest dream and you were in it!” Mac
shook his head but Junior turned to look at her.
    “For reals! Come above decks and I’ll tell you
all about it… Grab those chips. I’m hungry,” she told him.
    Mac interrupted her plans by saying, “He’ll be
up as soon as you take your life vest off and stow it along with the others...
Step lively, my dear. Step lively.”
     

Chapter 13  Stowaway
    Anna took the hairpin right as per Dale’s
grandfather’s instruction. He was reading from Sylvia-the-Innkeeper’s map.
Gwyneth had fallen asleep. Bean was awake but quiet as she took notes for her
memorable family cookbook; at least, as a great-grandmother she intended it to
be unforgettably famous.
    The morning was young and Anna thought best and
with clarity early in the day. She began to rethink the events of the last few
days and then also, the last few months when their travel progressed slowly,
almost to a standstill in France . Nothing she had prepped for as a youngster or educated
adult, mother or Christian had readied her for the unprecedented situation she
found herself in. The stability Anna longed for had been left back in their row
home in Philadelphia , along with the unmade
bed.
    Ah! I was come back to the unmade bed...
    The morning that they had flown out to London , Anna’s alarm didn’t go
off. But that hadn’t unsettled her… No. Her sister had come over the night
before and taken the refrigerator items home with her including the half and
half, but even so Anna could live without cream in her morning java if
necessary. She had argued with Dale and Gwyneth was fussy with a slight fever and
yet, these memories held no regret in Anna’s mind.
    Knowing it was unreasonable and borderline
obsessive, Anna continued to fret over leaving the bed in disarray.
    The eldest of five siblings, at eight years old
Anna was the first to learn her chores and to understand the importance of
routine. Her parents, both first generation Greeks were frugal people of order
and consistency. Making her bed every morning was the first step in stabilizing
her day. She couldn’t remember a morning in the past two decades when she had
not made the bed before launching into the day.
    Why, even the morning I gave birth to Gwennie, I
made our bed before leaving for the birthing center , she recalled with an
upside-down smile.
    Like reading her Bible each morning and then
spending time in prayer, making the bed was a consecrated action ranking at the
level with moral duty in Anna’s mind.
    Dale had hustled her out the back door. The car
was packed; Gwennie was in her seat and she was clipping her own seat belt as Dale
threw the car into reverse when she remembered. The bed!
    Dale had said, ‘Don’t worry! It’s not the end
of the world!’ But he was wrong.
    After that, everything went to pot: Earthquakes,
missile attacks and absolutely useless credit cards.
    Now, months later as she wound her way through
the back roads of Kerkyra on an exceptionally warm morning with no aircon in
the rental car, Anna acknowledged that leaving the bed unmade was not the
trigger that had set all the other destabilizing events in motion. Initially,
each setback, news report and argument seemed to stem from her leaving the bed
in upheaval. She commiserated with Frodo from Tolkien’s trilogy who rushed out
the door forgetting his