The morning the two boats came home for good, I was on the quay at dawn, wrapped in my coat against the river chill, watching the mist rise off the Danube. The Wachau Queen and the Vienna Star had been sailed back to Vienna days earlier, but today was different. Today they were coming home not as disputed property, not as evidence in a hearing, but as ours again, restored to the fleet in full, their names returned to the company's register where they belonged.
Wesley stood beside me, his hands in his pockets, his eyes on the bend of the river where the boats would appear. "They will look smaller than you remember," he warned me, smiling. "Everything does, after a scare." I told him that nothing about those boats would ever look small to me again, and he nodded, because he understood.
The Wachau Queen came first, rounding the bend with the slow dignity of an old lady who knows she is loved. Her paint was fresh, her brass polished, her flags flying, and as she drew closer I could see the crew on her decks, waving. The Vienna Star followed close behind, her white hull gleaming in the early sun, her windows catching the light like a row of bright eyes. My throat tightened, and I did not try to hide it. These boats had carried honeymooners and schoolchildren, wedding parties and old friends. They had carried Nelson and me on our first voyage together, when the company was young and the river seemed endless. To see them sailing toward me again felt like watching a part of my own life return from the dead.
The quay was crowded by the time they moored. Staff I had known for decades stood shoulder to shoulder with new faces, and there were passengers too, people who had heard the story and come simply to watch. When the gangway of the Wachau Queen touched the quay, a cheer went up, ragged at first and then full-throated, and I felt Wesley's hand on my shoulder, steadying me.
I went aboard the Wachau Queen first. The decks smelled of fresh paint and varnish, and the brass fittings gleamed. I ran my hand along the rail where Nelson used to stand, watching the river, and I could almost hear his voice telling me to stop fussing and enjoy the morning. Below decks, the cabins were clean and bright, the woodwork polished, the engines humming with a sound I knew as well as my own heartbeat. Every repair on that boat was real, every bolt and board accounted for. There were no phantom repairs here, no invoices for work that never happened. Only honest work, done by honest hands, and recorded in my logbook the way it always had been.
On the Vienna Star, I found the same care. The saloon had been restored to its old elegance, the chairs reupholstered, the windows washed until the river shone through them like a painting. I stood at the wheel for a moment, my hands resting on the polished wood, and I thought of all the captains who had stood there before me, guiding this boat through the Wachau Valley in sun and fog, in summer crowds and winter quiet.
When I came back down to the quay, the company's staff were waiting, and I spoke to them plainly. I told them the boats were ours again, that their jobs were safe, that the company would honour every booking and every promise it had made. I told them that the fleet was whole once more, and that the work of rebuilding would be shared by all of us. They applauded, and some of them wept, and I did not blame them.
In the afternoon, Wesley and I walked to the harbour office to sign the papers that returned the two boats to the company's register. The room was small and plain, with a window looking out over the water, and the official behind the desk stamped each page with great care, as if he understood that these were not ordinary papers. I signed my name beside the names of the Wachau Queen and the Vienna Star, and Wesley signed beneath mine, and for a moment I sat there with the pen in my hand, thinking of how close we had come to losing them for good. Outside, the river moved past in its steady, unhurried way, and I thought of the painters who had already begun work on the boats, touching up the gold lettering of their names on the bows so that every passenger who boarded would see them clearly. A boat without her name is a stranger, and these two would be strangers no longer. When we left the office, the sun was warm on the quay, and the crews were loading fresh linen and provisions aboard, readying the boats for their first passengers.
Later, as the sun climbed higher and the mist burned away, Wesley and I stood on the quay and watched the two boats at their moorings, side by side, their reflections trembling in the water. "They look right," Wesley said. "They look like they belong." I agreed. The fleet was restored, and with it something else I had feared was lost for good: the feeling that this company was a family, and that its boats were not assets on a page but living things, loved and tended, carrying the river's people home. Tomorrow they would sail again, with passengers aboard and the Wachau Valley ahead of them. Today, it was enough to stand on the quay and watch them rest, safe at last, in the place where they belonged.
Chapter 40
— Wesley Takes the Helm