The Return of Jonah Gray Read Online Free PDF

fact that I liked the job and was good at it, or because I was determined to prove my parents wrong. I had expected the negative reaction from my father who, as an accountant, took an adversarial view of the institution. But I had always expected my mother to be more supportive—if only because of the social promise held out by the auditing group’s lopsided male-to-female ratio.
    Plus, she’d always been a numbers person. Even before I was learning the same concepts in school, she would tutor me in math, using examples from real life.
    â€œSuppose you wanted to buy a hundred pairs of shoes,” I remembered her saying, “but the first store only has six in your size. What percent would you still need?”
    â€œWhy would I need a hundred pairs of shoes?” I had wondered. The absurdity of the idea was probably why I remembered the example years later.
    â€œOh princess, every girl eventually does.”
    â€œI don’t,” I had said.
    I remember her sighing. “Let’s just say that the price was right.”
    The most meaningful numbers in my mother’s life had long been those on price tags. When I was growing up, my mother would discuss returns nearly as frequently as my CPA father, but to her a return meant that something hadn’t fit right when she got it home.
    â€œHow can you be so sure that it wasn’t your job that drove him away?” she now asked.
    â€œBecause I was the one who broke up with him. Because nothing was easy with Gene,” I said.
    â€œAnd you think your father was always a peach? Remember when he brought home that crazy boat?”
    â€œThe sailboat? The Catalina? Of course I do.”
    â€œAnd none of us knew how to sail.”
    â€œI learned,” I reminded her.
    â€œYou were the only one. I couldn’t wait to be rid of that thing. You remember that boat?”
    â€œI loved that boat.”
    It was called a Catalina 22 because it was twenty-two feet long. I could still hear my father explaining that. It was a little sailboat, not suited for much more than day-tripping around the Bay. My father had bought it during the summer I was fourteen, coming home and announcing the purchase to my mother, my brother Kurt and me. My mother hadn’t received the news well. She preferred to be the one who made our family’s splashy, spontaneous purchases. She reminded us that she was prone to seasickness. Why, she could barely stomach lying on a float in the pool.
    Only once had the four of us ventured out on the boat together, and after that, it was just my dad and me. I was always up for a sail. I liked the bluster of the wind, even when it was too biting for comfort. I liked the spray that kicked up as the boat galloped over wakes. I liked the nuanced adjustments we’d make as soon as the wind shifted direction.
    But that following winter had been a rough one at home. That was the winter my mother took a breather from the rest of us, holing up for a week in the family condo in Tahoe. Maybe the Catalina was one of the things she took issue with. Maybe my father simply knew what it would take to bring her back home. I don’t know when he sold it, only that the Catalina was gone by the time the following spring turned to summer. And when Blake was born, not long after, the subject of a replacement sailboat was effectively tabled.
    I had always planned to buy one of my own. It was the reason I had saved my babysitting profits throughout high school and on into college. I imagined myself living out of the little cabin as I sailed up and down the west coast, stopping off at small, natural harbors to camp along the shoreline. I would rent a small apartment near the marina in San Rafael—or in the town of Tiburon if I was really lucky. And while other people spent their weekends pressed up against city crowds, I’d shove off and sail away.
    Don’t get me wrong. I know I wasn’t the first person to land far afield