Great Circle

by Maggie Shipstead

Mrs. Lloyd Feiffer, Matilda, wife of the ship’s new American owner, stood on a platform edged with blue-and-white bunting, a bottle of Scotch tucked under her arm. “Shouldn’t it be champagne?” she had asked her husband. “Not in Glasgow,” he’d said.

I owe him my life, Lloyd had said many times. Your life can’t be a debt, she’d countered once, or then it’s not really yours, and nothing has been saved.

“Where do you think he went?” “I don’t know.” “I think I would be more sad if I knew where he went.” Wallace nods. Better only to wonder what he’d chosen instead of them. “I know what you mean.”