September Sky (American Journey Book 1) (3 page)

Chuck did not contest the divorce. Instead, he let Megan return to her parents and give Justin the kind of time and support he needed and craved. He jumped back into his work and parented the way he parented best – through emails, phone calls, and birthday cards that always seemed to arrive a few days late.

The arrangement worked well – at least for the career-driven reporter – until one rainy day in September 2013 when a text-messaging teenager drove his pickup into Megan's hybrid sedan as she entered an intersection. Megan's parents, who rode in the passenger seats, died instantly. The teen suffered minor cuts and walked away. Megan sustained mortal injuries. She lived just long enough to say goodbye to her college-bound son and plead that he live out his dreams.

Chuck looked away for a few seconds as he remembered the awkward reunion with Justin at the triple funeral and the weeks that followed, when Justin attempted to set aside his grief and get on with the business of earning a college degree.

He pondered the significance of that dark time as he returned his attention to the road and then to the touch-screen video display in his car's dash. An early seventies song, "Cat's in the Cradle" by Harry Chapin, began to stream through the speakers. Talk about timing, he thought. He continued the journey in silence until reaching San Pedro.

Chuck exited the freeway and drove eastward toward the waterfront. When he reached a red light at Harbor Boulevard, near the entrance to the World Cruise Center, he again turned toward his son and repeated his question using different words.

"Justin? Is this about me?"

Justin shook his head as he stared out the windshield.

"No, Dad. It's not about you. It's about a lot of things, but it's not about you."

"Care to elaborate?"

"Not now."

"Justin?"

The young man looked at his father.

"We'll talk on the boat."

CHAPTER 3: CHUCK

Off Baja California, Mexico – Monday, March 21, 2016

Chuck took in the sights and sounds from his table on the terraced sun deck, smiled, and shook his head. He couldn't believe how much cruise ships had changed in twenty-four years – or how much they had remained the same.

The ship he remembered boarding as a college junior in 1992 didn't have water slides or elevated hot tubs or a three-bedroom suite that overlooked the boat's biggest pool. It
did
have a full complement of screaming children, seniors in sun hats, and beautiful women, who paraded to and from a poolside bar in a variety of skimpy outfits.

"What's wrong?" Justin asked from across the table.

"Nothing's wrong," Chuck said. "I was just thinking about how some things have changed since I took a cruise in college and others have not."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean the ships are bigger and fancier, but the people who board them are pretty much the same. They all seem to be having a good time, though, which is all that matters."

"Yeah. I guess it is," Justin said. He returned to his umbrella drink, a multi-colored concoction with a long, forgettable name.

"Are you ever going to tell me what this is all about?" Chuck asked.

"You mean dropping out of school?"

"Yes. I mean dropping out of school. I also mean your general demeanor. You don't look happy, Justin. You look lost. You used to have a zest for life that I admired and envied. I don't see that anymore."

Justin smiled sadly.

"It's because I don't have it anymore. I haven't had it for a long time."

Chuck placed his can of beer on the table and looked at his son.

"What's going on? This can't be just about school."

"It's not," Justin said. "It's about accepting things as they are. It's about admitting that I'm just not as fired up about life as I used to be."

"I don't understand."

"You don't, but Caitlin did. Do you know how she broke up with me?"

"No. You haven't told me."

"Well, Dad, I'll tell you. She did it all at the breakfast table. She got out of bed one morning about two weeks ago, kissed me as I was studying for a test, and told me that she was leaving – not leaving for a class or her job or a day at the beach, but leaving. She said we had 'run our course' and walked out of the apartment. She didn't even come back to collect her belongings. She sent a friend to do that."

"I'm sorry, Justin."

Justin gazed wistfully at a thirtyish couple and their two children as they splashed and played in the pool. A moment later, he looked back at his father.

"You know what the worst part was?"

"What?" Chuck asked.

"She was right. We
had
run our course. Things hadn't been right with us for weeks."

"OK. I get that much. You're depressed. Your social life took a hit. What I don't understand is why you are dropping out of school in the middle of your junior year. Why quit now?"

"I need a break. That's why," Justin said. "I need to think about where I want to go in life before I commit any more time or money to school."

"Don't you want to be a surgeon?"

"I don't know. I thought I did. Mom thought it was my calling, but I'm not so sure. When I look at doctors today, at least the ones who work for health-care organizations, I see a bunch of managed robots. I see people who put up with a lot for relatively little and don't have the time or latitude to develop meaningful relationships with their patients."

"The world's changed, Justin. Medicine's changed with it. What you want exists only in small towns and TV shows from the fifties."

"I know," Justin said. "That's why I have to take a break. I don't want to train to be a surgeon if my heart's not in it. I don't want to train to be anything unless I really believe in what I'm doing. I'll figure it out. I always do. I just need a few months to sort out my life and find a new purpose, that's all."

Chuck smiled and shook his head. His son had clearly inherited more from his mother than wavy blond hair and piercing blue eyes. He had picked up her good sense too.

"What?" Justin asked.

Chuck laughed.

"Here all this time I thought you were quitting school to do something crazy like join a religious cult or follow a pretty exchange student back to Latvia."

"My life's not that exciting, Dad. But it
is
complicated now."

"I know it is, Justin. If you need time to sort things out, then take it. I want you to be happy. There's more to life than a career. I'm afraid I found that out a little too late."

Justin sighed.

"It doesn't matter. You're here now, and I'm glad to have you here. Maybe we can put our heads together and solve all of our problems. How's your job search going?"

"It's not going at all," Chuck said. "I've decided to take a page from your playbook and see what's out there before jumping back into journalism."

"You don't want to report anymore?"

"I don't know. That's all I've done for twenty-three years. Maybe it's time to see what else I can do. I've never really considered other possibilities until now."

"Do you plan to stay in San Francisco?" Justin asked.

Chuck nodded.

"I'd like to stay. I've developed an affinity for fog and high rent. But unemployment checks won't pay the bills. If I don't find a job soon, I'll have to live in a shelter."

"You can always come down here. In case you haven't heard, I need a roommate."

Chuck laughed.

"I may just take you up on that."

Justin let his eyes wander as a couple of bikini-clad college girls casually strolled past the table. He returned his attention to Chuck in time to see him smile and shake his head.

"Now what?" Justin asked.

"It's nothing. I'm just enjoying watching my son be twenty-one."

"It's not a crime to girl watch."

Chuck laughed again.

"No, it's not. Not in a place like this, anyway."

"What do you want to do tonight?" Justin asked.

"Let's go ashore. Let's walk around Cabo and find some trouble."

Justin shook his head.

"We can't do that tonight. We won't even arrive there until noon tomorrow, at least according to the itinerary."

"Then let's find something to do on the boat," Chuck said. "Do you have any suggestions? There must be more to this ship than buffets, pools, and pick-up bars."

"There is."

Chuck turned around to face the person behind the voice. She sat at an adjacent table.

"I beg your pardon?" Chuck said.

"You don't need to beg for anything aboard this ship, Mister …"

"Townsend. Chuck Townsend. And you are?"

"Claire LeBoutillier," the woman said.

Chuck shaded his eyes with a hand and gave the eavesdropper a closer inspection. Wearing a white pantsuit, a wide-brimmed hat, huge sunglasses, and more jewelry than a gypsy fortune-teller, the elderly woman looked like a
Love Boat
extra – an extra who probably knew more about cruise ships and cruises than the crew itself.

"Have you been listening to our conversation?" Chuck asked.

"Of course. I hope you don't mind. At my age, you do what you can for amusement."

"Well, Ms. LeBoutillier, I hope we've amused you."

"You have. You've inspired me as well. It's refreshing to see two young men handle adversity as well as you seem to have."

Chuck laughed to himself at the reference. It had been a long time since anyone had called him a young man.

"Thank you," Chuck said. "I think we'll handle our problems just fine."

"I'm sure you will. As for the matter at hand, there
is
more to this ship than buffets, pools, and bars. There is a free lecture series that runs every night this week."

"What are the lectures about?"

"The topics vary," Claire said. "There's a lecture on investing on Tuesday and another on sex after sixty on Thursday. I'm looking forward to that one."

Chuck laughed.

"I'll bet you are. How about this evening? What's on tap tonight?"

"Why, time travel, of course. Professor Geoffrey Bell will talk about blasts to the past. He's considered quite an expert on the subject."

Chuck studied Claire's face for a moment – to make sure she wasn't putting him on – and then slowly redirected his attention to his son. He appeared lost in his thoughts as he stared blankly toward the back of the boat.

"What do you think, Justin? Shall we educate ourselves on time travel?"

Justin nodded slightly and then turned to face his father.

"Why not? After a month like this, I could use a little escape."

CHAPTER 4: CHUCK

As lecture halls go, the Morris Auditorium on Deck 12 of the
Pacific Star 2
was small. With fewer than 150 seats, narrow aisles, and a low ceiling, it was smaller than the theaters in most shopping-mall multiplexes. In this case, however, small was good. Chuck had no difficulty hearing the wit and wisdom of a college professor who believed that time travel was possible.

Chuck studied the lecturer as he sat between Justin and his new best friend Claire LeBoutillier in the middle of the second row. With unruly blond hair, wild eyes, and the enthusiasm of a kid on Christmas morning, Geoffrey Bell looked more like Gene Wilder's Willy Wonka than a serious fifty-two-year-old academic with a doctorate in physics from Oxford. But he was as persuasive and compelling as any speaker Chuck had ever heard.

"Just out of curiosity, how many of you have seen
Back to the Future
?" Bell asked as he walked across a small stage. "Let's see a show of hands."

More then eighty percent of the hundred or so people in attendance raised a hand. Most of those who didn't appeared to be under twenty years of age.

"That's what I thought," Bell said. "Let me ask another question. How many of you believe it is possible to travel back in time in a DeLorean?"

Two college girls in the front row raised their hands, prompting widespread laughter. Chuck didn't know whether the ladies were optimists, attention seekers, or failures of public education, but he suspected that they were just the foils the professor was looking for.

Bell smiled.

"It's nice to see that Hollywood can still sway the undecided," Bell said. "I like that. The world needs more open minds. Even so, I can hardly fault those of you who didn't raise a hand. You are right to be skeptical. People don't just hop into fast cars and drive to the 1950s."

Chuck settled into his cushioned seat.

"That's not to say that time travel is solely the product of fiction," Bell continued. "Though it is true that scientists demonstrated years ago that a single photon cannot travel faster than the speed of light – thus 'proving' that time travel is impossible – it is also true that our understanding of physics and the world around us is still very limited. There are powers that we are only now beginning to grasp, including supernatural powers that may someday do for modern science what electricity did for previous generations."

Chuck glanced at Justin and then at Claire and saw that Bell had made at least two fans. Both smiled and nodded whenever the lecturer extended his arms or raised his voice.

Chuck found Bell no less engaging, but he didn't buy into his message. As a reporter, Charles Townsend put his faith in facts and science – not conjecture. He guessed that the professor would probably end his fifty-minute talk with a pitch for a book.

He guessed wrong. When Bell finished his program twenty minutes later, he fielded about a dozen questions and then asked two assistants to distribute 5-by-7-inch note cards and pencils to members of the audience. The cards did not tout a book but instead asked three questions that seemed better suited for a college midterm than a cruise-ship lecture.

"As you can see, I have a few questions of my own this evening," Bell said. "I ask only for your thorough and honest replies. Participation, of course, is voluntary. You can drop the cards in the box by the door on your way out. Thank you again for attending tonight's lecture. I look forward to seeing all of you during the remainder of the cruise. Have a pleasant evening."