Walter looks wounded. Emilie can tell he wants to argue, to explain that they haven’t moved, but the child knows better. He will not cross his mother, not even when he’s justified. He nods his head and blinks back a film of tears instead.
Emilie could intervene on his behalf. She ought to. But she doesn’t want to alert the passengers to what is happening. All across the reading room she can see items shifting on the tables. A neatly stacked deck of cards spills out like an accordion across the polished wood surface of an end table. A book slides a few inches from the elbow of its owner. She wouldn’t feel this movement at all if she weren’t standing. She wouldn’t see it if she weren’t paying attention.
And then it’s over as quickly as it began. The floor beneath her levels out and her balance shifts in response. Nothing else moves on the tables. And beneath them she can once again see the faint, glassy reflection of the ocean’s surface between strips of cloud. Emilie lays her hand flat on her breastbone, right beneath the clavicle, and takes a deep, calming breath.
For an entire decade Emilie has been left on her own to handle crises. She has long since fallen away from the habit of turning to a man to fix things. She must find the landlord when the pipes burst in her apartment. She must pay the bills. She must read the maps and translate directions when she travels. At first this was a strange burden to bear, an uncomfortable load for a woman who always had a father and then a husband to look after her. But as time has gone on Emilie has grown into this way of living. She has learned to enjoy it. To be proud of herself. So she is alarmed and not a little angry at the thought that fills her mind like a blaring alarm: she has to find Max.
Her feet propel her out of the reading room even as her mind objects. Max betrayed her. She is furious with him. She vowed last night that she would never speak to him again. And Emilie hates this last bit of truth: when it comes to lovers, anger and passion are the same emotion. A kiss is all that separates the two.
Emilie slips into the corridor. There are no emergency alarms blaring. No flickering lights. No sense that danger is near or has recently passed. But she wants an answer nonetheless. She finds Max squatting outside the radio room, head buried in his hands, breathing as though he has just sprinted one hundred yards only to run smack into a brick wall. He’s sweating. Trembling. And she can see his pulse hammering staccato in his throat.
“Max?” Emilie kneels next to him, sets her palm lightly on his shoulder. His shirt is damp. “What just happened?”
When he lifts his face Emilie can see the results of another long, hard night in his bloodshot eyes. His voice is ragged when he answers. “I need water. A lot of it.”
She’s down the corridor and darting around the gangway stairs toward the kitchen before she even stops to consider what she’s doing. Too late now. If he needs water she’ll get him water, and then she will get her answers. Emilie hasn’t spoken to Xaver since the incident yesterday afternoon, so she is irritated to feel the flush of heat in her cheeks when she knocks the kitchen door open with the heel of her hand. Xaver looks at her with trepidation, and then at the door as though expecting Max to follow her in.
“No,” he says, holding up one finger. “Not that again.”
For one brief moment she is tempted to crack a joke about him not being man enough to handle her, but she decides against it. “I need a pitcher of water. A glass. And a bottle of aspirin wouldn’t hurt either—” She can tell Xaver is about to make some smart-ass retort, so she interrupts him. “It’s not for me.”
His surname might be German, but Emilie has long suspected that Xaver possesses a good bit of French blood. He’s dark-haired but light-skinned, slender, and his eyes have that hooded, seductive look the French are so notorious for. Not to mention the fact that he is better in the kitchen than anyone she has ever known.
“I don’t recall,” he says, waving an arm in exasperation, “that taking orders from you is part of my job description.”
Emilie steps around him and lifts a pitcher from the drying rack. She fills it with water from the sink. She picks a glass tumbler—the largest she can find—and reaches up on her tiptoes to retrieve the aspirin from the top shelf in the cabinet. And all the while Xaver glares at her, arms crossed.
“You are too comfortable in my kitchen.”
“You love me.”
“I tolerate you.” There is no animosity in his voice. “Bring it back when you’re done. I just lost a pitcher during that near miss. Slid right off the counter and shattered on the floor.”
“You saw that?”
“Didn’t everyone?”
“No. Thankfully. But I’m going to find out what happened.”
Xaver eyes the pitcher tucked into the crook of her arm. “I wouldn’t have guessed water would make a good means of bribery.”
“Call it a peace offering.”
“Oh,” he says. “Max.” And then, “Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”
Max is exactly where she left him, but he’s no longer panting. He lifts his face when she stops beside him.