Scooter corkscrews his body in his seat, just enough to turn toward Marge.

“You’re the writer Adie Lou was telling me about, right?”

Marge’s eyes widen, and she smiles. “You called me a writer?”

“You’ve always been a writer,” I say. “You just need to write.”

“You should write that,” Scooter says, his hair ruffling in the wind.

“Write what?” Marge asks.

“What you just said,” he continues. “I bet you are filled with wisdom and advice, and have endless stories about how you and society have and haven’t changed over the time you’ve been alive.” He stops and considers what he wants to say, his eyes glowing in the fading sun. “If you just wrote about your life—essays about love, work, not discovering who you are until now—I think you might be onto something.” He stops again, and when he speaks, his voice is filled with emotion. “I loved my father. He built my business and taught me so much. But my mom and grandma taught me to be a good person. And their voices, lives and lessons—just like the voices of so many of our elders—were too often overlooked and undervalued.” He turns toward Marge. “That’s what you should write.”

“I think I might be too old,” Marge says.

“What about Frank McCourt?” Scooter asks. “He didn’t write Angela’s Ashes until he retired from teaching, right?”

The boat grows quiet with his question, before Marge shouts, “Dammit, you’re right!” She turns, leans over the boat and, without warning, spits off the side of the Adie Lou.

Everyone is staring at the septuagenarian, mouths open.

“What?” she asks innocently. “It’s good luck.”

Scooter laughs. “It is,” he says. Scooter leans over and spits off the boat.

Marge lets out a big whoop of a laugh, which echoes across the water. “Cheers!” she says, taking a big sip of her bubbly.

Scooter steers the Adie Lou down the channel, which meanders past cottages dotting the forested dunes along the river before emptying into Lake Michigan. I provide a history of the area as we go along, just like they do on the Star of Saugatuck, a historic, two-story paddlewheel boat, which is churning up water in front of us and heading to see the sunset just like we are.

I feel my phone trill in my pocket, and I pluck it free.

All good here, Evan texts. Everyone enjoying the music and picnic. Have fun!

Since the Adie Lou can hold only three people in the second seat, we drew numbers on who would get the sunset cruise. Marge didn’t draw a winning number, but another woman let her take her place, a surprise that brought tears to my eyes and made me realize how much our group had already bonded in the course of a day.