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out before their heads ever hit the pillow.
    I’d be doing the same if not for the fact that Jake is still slaving away down in the engine room. There’s got to be a better fix for a ruptured cooling hose than stuffing it with clothes, right? I hope so.
    We’ve all had an impossible day, but with Jake’s having to save Carrie and then the boat, he is definitely our hero. The least I can do is stay up until he finishes.
    Besides, it’s an absolutely beautiful night out on the deck. So many stars. The heavens peaceful and calm. I’m reminded of my days as a churchgoer, and I say a few prayers of thanks.
    Then I lean back on the cushioned bench behind the helm, wrapped warmly in a fleece blanket, my eyes tracing one constellation after another. Orion, Lyra, Cassiopeia. When I come across the Big Dipper, I can’t help a bittersweet smile. “You know, sweetheart, technically the Big Dipper is not a constellation,” my father told me over and over when I was around eight or nine. He either didn’t know he was repeating himself or was worried that I’d forget. “It’s an
asterism,
” he’d explain, practically sounding out the word for me every time. “That means it’s only part of a larger constellation.”
    My father was the consummate backyard astronomer, and also a great talker and storyteller, and he was the one who took us to church every Sunday, not my mom, who was an ER nurse. On summer nights, with the cool grass beneath my bare feet, I would stand with him for hours as we took turns looking through his telescope. One of the legs on the tripod was broken at the hinge, and I remember how my father held it together with thick black tape from his basement workroom.
    “In a way,” he’d continue, “we’re all Big Dippers, part of something much bigger than ourselves. At least I hope that’s how you come to see yourself.”
    I think that’s why he liked looking at the stars so much. My father believed there was something out there, a higher power. Something much bigger than we are. Maybe I’m starting to believe that again myself.
    To this day, I still miss him so much, all the time. When people ask me why I became a cardiac surgeon, a field dominated by men, I always give the same answer. It’s one sentence that never needs further explanation.
    When I was sixteen, my father died of a heart attack.
    Chapter 18
    “THERE YOU ARE,” Jake says, almost sounding as if he’s back to normal.
    I’m so wrapped up in my father and the stars that I don’t hear his footsteps coming up from belowdecks. He’s standing behind the railing of the helm, smiling at me.
    “How’s it going?” I ask. “Any luck?”
    “Yes, finally. I was able to trim some of the hose from the fuel line and insert it where the cooling hose had ruptured. It was kind of like one of your bypass surgeries.”
    “A sailor
and
a surgeon. I’m impressed.”
    “Don’t be, Kat. At least, not yet. We’ll have to see if it holds. They’re radically different sizes.”
    “And if it doesn’t?”
    “Plan B.”
    “What’s that?”
    “SeaTow, Coast Guard, chopper? I was hoping you knew. You usually have a backup for everything.”
    “In the operating room, yes. Out here in the real world, sometimes no.”
    We both laugh as he walks around the helm to join me. In his hands are two glasses and a bottle of white wine. What a good idea that is.
    “I thought we could both use some of this,” he says. “For medicinal purposes.”
    “That’s the understatement of the year.”
    Jake sits on the bench opposite mine and removes a corkscrew from his pocket. He’s changed into some warmer clothes, a red crewneck sweater and a pair of faded jeans with some rips and a splattering of white paint that remind me of the kind you see back in Manhattan selling at some SoHo boutique for five hundred bucks.
    Of course, his pair is the real deal. Authentic. Just like Jake.
    As he opens the bottle and pours I catch a glimpse of the all-black label and