Chapter 23
Suddenly Hitched—What a Trip!
Dear Trixie,
This is my last letter because we disembark tomorrow, and I needed to tell you how everything turned out.
I took your advice and told my daughter the truth that night in Helsinki. We were on the balcony watching the water, and I just said it. The whole story. The called-off wedding, the furious parents, the lawsuit threats, meeting her dad six months later.
She cried. Then she laughed. Then she said, “Mom, why didn’t you tell me this when I first called mine off? I’ve been feeling like such a failure.”
We talked for hours. About my engagement, hers, what it means to trust yourself when everyone else thinks you’re wrong.
She admitted she’s been terrified that calling it off meant she’d end up alone and that everyone would judge her.
I told her that being alone isn’t the worst thing that can happen. Marrying the wrong person is.
Here’s the best part.
Yesterday in Helsinki, she met someone. A guy from Colorado who’s traveling solo, also nursing a broken engagement.
They spent the whole day together exploring the fortress and old town, and she came back to the cabin glowing.
They exchanged phone numbers. I’m not saying he’s her next great love.
But watching her laugh with someone new, seeing her realize she has a whole future ahead of her, not just a past behind her? That was everything.
She thanked me this morning for booking this cruise with her. I had to tell her she booked it, not me. We both laughed until we cried.
Thank you, Trixie. For helping me show up the way she needed.
—Grateful in Tallinn
Dear Grateful,
I’m not crying. You’re crying. Okay, fine, we’re both crying, and I’m getting mascara on a perfectly innocent advice column.
This is exactly how it’s supposed to go. Messy, honest, imperfect, and ultimately good. You showed up. You told the truth. You let her see that you’re human and flawed and still figuring things out too.
Now she gets to go home knowing she’s not alone in this. She has a mother who understands. A mother who made hard choices and survived them. A mother who loves her enough to admit she doesn’t have all the answers.
Also? A cute guy from Colorado who’s also recovering from a broken engagement is basically the universe hanging a neon sign that reads, You’re going to be fine.
Better than fine. Whether he turns into something or not doesn’t matter.
What matters is that she’s open to it. That she’s laughing again.
That she knows her story isn’t over just because one chapter ended badly.
You did good, mama. Really good.
Safe travels home. And when she gets married someday, to someone who’s actually right for her, you’ll have one heck of a mother-of-the-bride toast ready.
—Trixie
P.S. If Colorado pans out, I expect an invitation. I’ll be the one by the dessert table, pretending I don’t know the whole story.
Hey there, mystery-loving readers!
We’ve officially wrapped up our Baltic capitals adventure aboard the Emerald Queen of the Seas, and I’m pleased to report that I survived Swedish cinnamon buns, Finnish saunas, a dogpile on a killer, and the discovery that my flirtatious Viking ghost was actually a dead accountant named Gerald. It’s been a whole thing.
I came for the castles and the pastries.
I stayed for the homicide investigation and the existential crisis of a romance novel book club.
Between velvet capes, oiled-up cover models, and fifty women debating the morality of fictional Vikings while one of them was quietly poisoning people, this cruise delivered more drama than the paperbacks themselves.
I also learned that sometimes the most helpful person in the room is the one you should watch closest.
Most importantly, I discovered that solving murders is significantly easier when you have Bess’ sharp instincts, Nettie’s reckless enthusiasm for tackling suspects, Marina’s willingness to join a literal dogpile, and Ransom reminding me that “detective” is not actually in my job description.
As we sail onward, I’m celebrating another solved case, zero new bodies, and the fact that Magnus Darkwater finally knows I know his real name was Gerald Winklebottom. (If you know, you know.)
If this is midlife, bring on the next murder.
XOXO, Trixie
Day 8: Tallinn, Estonia (Disembarkation)
Nobody warns you about disembarkation day. It lands somewhere between a graduation and being politely expelled from paradise.
The Emerald Queen is docked in Tallinn, and the morning is showing off about it.
Sunlight pours through the atrium’s glass ceiling, the water beyond the gangway sparkles in that crisp, dignified Baltic way, and the air holds strong coffee, sea brine, and the faint melancholy of other people’s vacations ending. Even the seagulls sound smug.
I won’t lie, after eight days of murder, oiled torsos, and one felony dogpile, a smug seagull feels about right.
Tallinn deserves better than a drive-by goodbye.
The Old Town is a thirteenth-century fairy tale of turrets, red rooftops, and cobblestones older than most countries, while the rest of Estonia is so digital the entire nation practically runs on Wi-Fi.
Medieval on the outside, genius on the inside.
If a city could be a romance novel hero, Tallinn would have its own book club.
The atrium, however, is not dignified. It’s a ballet of luggage wheels and mild hysteria.
Passengers cluster in small emotional knots, hugging too long, promising to text, swearing this cruise was “life-changing,” which it absolutely was if you count witnessing a Viking ice sculpture homicide as personal growth.
Suitcases roll across the marble with that hollow plastic rattle that always sounds vaguely accusatory.
A man in a Panama hat is loudly insisting he never touched the minibar.
A woman sails past with her phone pressed to her ear, informing someone named Deborah that she’s booking another cruise immediately, before the glow wears off.
Someone has misplaced their airport transfer voucher and is blaming all of Estonia.
Wes stands near the gangway in full captain regalia, white jacket, gold buttons, posture so straight you could hang a door on it, shaking hands and accepting compliments, never mind that the man presided over yet another floating crime scene.
Ransom stands beside me, running that slow, lethal scan over the crowd, cobalt eyes tracking every rolling suitcase as if one of them might make a run for it.
My husband is a full serving of dark suit and darker intentions this morning, jet-black hair, silver dusting his temples, jaw set at an angle sharp enough to make my pulse stumble.
He wears vigilance the way other men wear cologne, and I’d bottle it if I could.
I married this man on purpose. Given the chance, I’d do it again by lunch.
And I stand between the two of them, watching our glamorous, chaotic little floating village dismantle itself piece by piece, thinking that for eight whole days this atrium held secrets, scandal, and approximately twenty cardboard Vikings.
Now it holds nothing but goodbyes and one man’s minibar alibi.
Nettie leans in close to me, her oversized sunglasses already perched dramatically on her nose even though we’re very much indoors and the atrium lighting is flattering to absolutely no one.
“Well,” she announces, nodding at the departing masses and taking full credit for them, “that’s that. Eight days. A couple dozen cardboard Vikings. At least three real ones with aggressively oiled abs. One homicide. I’d call that wildly productive.”
Bess exhales the way only a retired schoolteacher can, a single breath containing both disapproval and decades of experience.
“It was not productive.” She adjusts the strap on her sensible handbag.
“It was exhausting. And for the record, Nettie, cardboard men and hired cover models do not constitute cultural immersion.”
“They absolutely do,” Nettie insists. “I learned things.”
“You learned nothing.”
“I learned twelve things, and none of them are appropriate for the atrium.”
“Now that I believe.”
“So.” Nettie tosses up her hands. “What’s the plan? Do we have time to explore the city before we sail?”
“We have four hours,” Bess informs her. “Which is not enough time for you to get arrested.” She shrugs my way because we both know four hours is plenty of time for exactly that. I’ve seen Nettie manage it in under three minutes.
“I wasn’t planning on getting arrested,” Nettie counters.
“You never plan on it. It just happens,” Bess fires back. “The way weather happens.”
“That’s not a personality flaw, Bessie girl. That’s a lifestyle.”
Bess ignores her and produces a folded paper from her handbag, because Bess Chatterley does not wander a foreign city.
She conquers it alphabetically. “As it happens, I have a list,” she says.
“There’s a pharmacy on Town Hall Square that’s been operating since 1422.
The oldest in Europe. They used to sell powdered unicorn horn and burnt hedgehog as medicine. Now they sell marzipan.”
“Do they still carry the unicorn powder?” Nettie asks.
“It’s a museum, Nettie.”
“That’s not a no.”
“After that,” Bess continues, “I want to walk St. Catherine’s Passage.
It’s a little medieval lane where artisans still work their trades.
Glassblowers, potters, quilters. And if there’s time, lunch at one of those candlelit taverns in the Old Town, the ones serving elk soup and honey beer with the staff dressed straight out of the fifteenth century.
” She refolds her list with a crisp snap.
“Anyone civilized is welcome to join me.”
“I’m in,” Ransom says without hesitating, which for him qualifies as wild enthusiasm.
“So am I,” I say. “I plan to eat marzipan inside a pharmacy. For medicinal purposes.”
Strictly medicinal.