Chapter 23
— The Two Boats Come Home
The morning the two boats came home, I stood on the quay in Vienna with Wesley beside me, and I watched the river for them the way I had watched it as a young woman, when Nelson and I had first dreamed of a fleet. The Wachau Queen came first, round the bend in the morning light, her white paint bright against the grey-green water, her funnel trailing a thin line of smoke. Behind her came the Vienna Star, a little slower, a little lower in the water, but steady, her brass shining where the crew had polished it for the journey. I felt tears come to my eyes, and I did not try to stop them, because these were not boats to me. They were the beginning of everything Nelson and I had built, the first two hulls we had bought with borrowed money and stubborn hope, the boats that had carried our name up and down the Danube for sixty years.
Fenella had kept her word. After I confronted her, she had agreed to return the boats, and she had kept them moored safely, and maintained, while the case was prepared. She had sent a crew with them, good river men who knew the Danube, and Wesley had gone to meet them upstream, to pilot the Wachau Queen himself for the last stretch, because he wanted to bring her home with his own hands on the wheel. I watched him now, standing on the bridge of the Queen as she came alongside, and I thought about how much he looked like Nelson at that age, steady and sure, with the river in his blood. He waved to me, and I waved back, and the crowd on the quay, a small crowd, mostly company people and a few old friends, applauded as the lines were thrown and made fast.
Zane was there, and Gwendolen, and Renata, who had come from the house to see the boats return. We stood together, saying little, because there was little that needed saying. The boats were home, and that fact spoke for itself. The sale had been undone, not by a court order, not yet, but by Fenella's decision to do the right thing, and by the truth of the papers. I went aboard the Wachau Queen first, climbing the gangway slowly, holding the rail, and I walked her deck from bow to stern, touching the wood, the brass, the paint, as if to make sure she was real. Below, in the saloon, the tables were still set as they had been, and the smell of polish and river air was the same as it had always been. In the engine room, the engines were clean and cared for, and I ran my hand along the casing and thought of all the entries in my logbook that belonged to this boat alone, forty years of honest work.
The Vienna Star was in the same good order. Her captain, a man Fenella had hired for the voyage, told me she had handled well on the way down from where she had been moored, and that her hull was sound, and her steering true. I thanked him, and I thanked the crews, and I told them that the Haversham Danube Line was grateful. They were river men, and they understood what the boats meant, and they nodded, and went about their work, coiling lines and checking moorings, as if this were an ordinary day. It was not an ordinary day. It was the day the fleet began to come back together, the day the theft began to be undone, in full view of Vienna, where anyone who cared to look could see it.
That evening, Wesley and I sat on the deck of the Wachau Queen as the sun went down over the river, and we talked about what the boats meant, and what would happen next. He told me he had already begun planning their restoration, the paint, the woodwork, the engines, all the careful work that would bring them back to full service. He told me he wanted the Queen to lead the anniversary fleet again, next year, with her name shining, and I told him that was a fine plan, and that Nelson would have liked it. We sat in silence for a while after that, listening to the water against the hull, and I thought about the long road from the night I went overboard to this evening, with my grandson beside me and my boats home. Landon had tried to sell the past, and the past had come sailing back up the Danube, white paint and brass, to prove him wrong.
Before we left, I went below once more, alone, and I stood in the small cabin where Nelson and I had once sat, planning the company, with charts spread across the table and coffee going cold. I put my hand on the table, and I said his name, quietly, and I told him the boats were home. I did not need an answer. The river gave me one, in the gentle movement of the hull beneath my feet, and the sound of the water, and the knowledge that what we had built together had survived my son's attempt to sell it. The two boats had come home. The hearing was still ahead, and the fight was not over, but that night, for the first time, I allowed myself to believe that we would win.