“Oh my gosh!” said Fiona, relief flooding her. “I’m so sorry. I thought, I thought it was bad news.”

“No, very good news indeed,” said Mr. Pennypacker primly.

He passed the sales contract to her and she nearly fainted when she saw the figure. This was another year’s survival for them!

“Read it through before you sign,” he warned.

“I don’t have to,” said Fiona. “We need the money.”

“Yes, I’d say you do,” said Mr. Pennypacker.

When she’d signed it, he sighed. “I’m going to waive my fee as well. There was not a lot that Martha would let me do for her during her life and I take satisfaction in being able to look after her estate for you, as I believe she might have been grateful for, if she knew. And the boat, well, it gives me a turn, frankly, to see it sold. That boat was everything to Martha. Seeing it go is, well, like seeing the last of her go. I cannot view it purely as a business transaction, you understand. What it is to you, a source of revenue, is not what it is to me. Nor for that matter what it was to her.”

“Yes,” said Fiona. “Martha’s boat. Al’s book. He says in the book that she loved her boat and wouldn’t marry him because of fishing. Because she preferred that life to him. That she loved it more than him.”

“Well, perhaps,” said Mr. Pennypacker. “She certainly loved it more than she did either of us. I like to think she didn’t love Al Farber and anyhow had better taste than to marry a wastrel like him. I like to think if she were to accept anyone’s proposal it would have been mine but she didn’t. She wasn’t interested in marrying anyone. She said everyone needs two things in life—a family and a purpose—and her boat was those two things to her and she needed nothing else. So it seems strange to think of her boat being sold. It was…so much her. Her family and her purpose. Well, I mustn’t be sentimental. Omnia temporaria sunt as they say.”

Fiona was quiet. Mr. Pennypacker looked pained now as he held the sales contract tightly in his hands. And she realized that she had known two men who knew and loved and mourned her aunt when none of the four of them had, despite inheriting nearly everything she had owned. It must be strange for Al and Mr. Pennypacker.

“I’m sorry,” she said finally. It was all she could think of to say.