In the last chapter Ohmie and his parents leave Mme Benoir’s chateau for good, heading toward Rome by train. Learning of a confiscated Russian yacht, Ohmie’s father arranged to commandeer it to sail to the U.S. Ohmie tells the tale.

Here’s something funny. The authorities waited until the Russians had the boat fueled and outfitted for travel before taking it over. They knew whose it was all along. Six other yachts had been confiscated already. The boat captain had already alerted the Port Commander that they were bound for Cuba. My bet is that was what the authorities were waiting for. When the harbor pilot came aboard, he wasn’t the harbor pilot, and he brought trainees, who weren’t trainees. Hah!

Get off our boat, Mr. Ruskie! If you wanted to keep it, you shouldn’t have invaded Ukraine. They weren’t even allowed to pack. But they did eventually let Mrs. Ruskie aboard to pack personal meds and stuff. My bet was that she got all her jewelry and expensive clothes. Mom wouldn’t want that stuff anyway. Hot don’t need gaudy.

Just thinking about the cruise perked me up. I was definitely feeling better. Then again, maybe it was compounding the steroids. Whatever, I could walk again, and not like a one-legged dog, either.

Dad introduced us to the captain and crew. They were from Greece, but spoke French, at least the captain and one or two of the crew did. The captain spoke Greek, French, Spanish, and Italian, but not English. I didn’t blame him. English, unless spoken at home, would be a terrible language to learn. My bet was that his command of languages was what helped make him a captain. Auggie, I don’t know his regular name, was the second in command, second mate. Hah! I get the lingo, feelin’ it. Auggie spoke Greek and English. It seemed like he made most of the decisions running the boat.

That was one thing about Europe – the languages. About the same size as the states, they had about fifteen languages. The U.S. was basically one language. There were a lot of Spanish-speaking people, but English was everywhere. In Europe you might need three or four different languages in a single day of ground travel. Weird. Guess it made more sense when nobody traveled faster than a horse.

Mom gave me the nausea medicine just in case. Sure can’t hurt. Hah! Yes, it can. I didn’t take any more of it. Tinnitus and too sleepy. I was finally feeling better and I didn’t want to sleep it away. And the tinnitus was like living under buzzing bees, or mosquitos, only louder, more constant, and higher pitched. No mas!

The captain said that I might want to take them when we hit the Atlantic. He’d take us close enough to see the Rock of Gibraltar, and then… hang on. He liked to make that crossing in the daylight, one: because it was relatively narrow and you didn’t want to be anywhere near other ships, or boats. And two: people didn’t like to be thrown out of their beds. Or to throw up in their beds. It wasn’t always like that, but often enough.

This was the best time of my life. I was cruising on a luxury yacht with as much caviar as I wanted. I was with Mom and Dad, a dad that I finally got to know. And I knew that Mom and Dad loved each other and would make it without me around. An empty nest. I bet I knew what would be goin’ on. And it wouldn’t be a lotta bickering.

The week was going too fast. So fast, in fact, Dad had the captain slow down to a creep. It’s like we were treading water, nearly drifting. We hit the gulf stream and turned right. Hah! Starboard. We were going to dock at Newport News, Virginia. And get this – Grandma Vera, Dad’s mother, was going to pick us up in her Escalade. Grandpa Westlake was going to secure the house, make sure it was safe. I guess he was the one that taught Dad how to shoot. They didn’t know any details, but Dad got word to him to look things over, with his nine. Grandpa, of course, knew what business we were in.

Even drifting went too fast, but without actually turning around, which would probably be breaking the rules…. Well, we couldn’t actually drag an anchor, or run the props in reverse. Oh, well. I missed my own room and bed anyway. And I’d had all the caviar I wanted for the rest of my life, all four to six weeks of it.

Grandma actually hugged me. She really was nice about it too. Her perfume was a bit overwhelming, but that was okay.

Grandpa had burgers ready to grill. As soon as we got inside the house, he went to work on them. I went out back with him because Dad did. We were a team, after all.

“Hey Timmie!” He never did like the name Ohmie. “Hear you can make a violin sound like a fiddle.” He chuckled at me. Dad’s head said to go ahead and get it. It took a few minutes because I wasn’t too good on stairs. I saw Grandma frowning out of the corner of my eye. She wasn’t frowning in my eye. From the corner of my eye, I saw her frowning just a little bit. After tuning the violin and carefully negotiating the steps, it was time to eat. I got about half a burger down and showed them what a spoiled violin sounded like with my version of Orange Blossom Special.

Mom and Grandma came out to listen and watch. Since they came out, I added another minute or so to it. I think that after the Berlin deal, she forgave me my fiddling.