“The best.” Luke rubbed the dog’s nose. “See this blaze of white on his nose and forehead?”

JT nodded.

“I had a dog with those very same marks when I was a boy, and he turned out to be the fiercest of guard dogs.”

Gloriana gave him a skeptical look. “I have my doubts that that big-nosed ball of fur could ever be fierce. He might love something to death, but I doubt he’ll ever be mean.”

JT giggled as the dog continued to wiggle and lick his face. “I figured out a name for him.” He maneuvered the dog and held him up. “I think we should call him Calico Jack. Papa told me he was a pirate in the Caribbean Sea.”

“Calico Jack?” Gloriana tried the name on for size. “Seems kind of long. I suppose we could just call him Jack for short.”

The puppy yipped, and JT nodded. “He likes that.”

“Then Jack it is.” Luke scratched the pup behind the ears. “Now, it might be wise to take him to his doghouse. We don’t want him making another mess.”

“No, indeed, because you get to clean up all the rest of his messes.” Gloriana smiled at JT and Jack. It was good to see her brother so happy.

Chapter 15

With the harbor closed down for the winter, Gloriana missed her father more than ever. Winter layup had always been a time for making repairs and working on the boat, but it also meant Papa was home every evening. When she was a little girl, Papa and his friends would sometimes sit around the house, plotting and planning while Mama supplied hot coffee and baked goods. Often a bottle of something would make the rounds and get added to the coffee, but the men were never drunk nor out of control. Not in the Womack house.

Gloriana had never known a single one of her father’s friends or crew to be anything but gracious and polite to her mother and herself. They might tease her on occasion—tease them both about their looks or kindness. One of her father’s dearest friends, Sam Jorgenson, used to ask Gloriana to put her little finger in his coffee to make it sweeter. She used to do it too and laugh with delight. Of course, she’d only been a child then, and the world seemed as if it would go on in perfect order forever.

But then Sam had been lost at sea when his ship had been caught in a storm. It was the first time she’d seen her father cry. Over the years, others were lost, and now Papa was among their numbers. The loss bonded the tiny town of Duluth, as it did most fishing or shipping towns. They needed the lake and couldn’t walk away from it, even if it cost them their lives.