At eight, wearing the blue gown, I walked into the ballroom on the officer’s arm. His name was Daniel, and he had served as Frank’s second officer for nine years. The band was playing our wedding song. Near the dance floor stood a gray-haired woman holding a single silver balloon, and my knees nearly gave out. It was my younger sister, Ruth. We had not spoken in eighteen years.

Our quarrel began after Mama’s funeral, when Ruth sold our childhood home without asking me. I called her greedy. She called me cold. Neither of us ever picked up the phone again. Frank had hated that silence. In his final months, he wrote to Ruth secretly, told her he was dying, and bought her a ticket. She boarded at our last port of call that morning, and the crew kept her hidden until evening.

Ruth told me she had sold the house because she was drowning in her husband’s medical debt and was too ashamed to tell anyone. Frank had known. He’d quietly helped her years ago and promised to keep her secret until she was ready. She had read his letter to her a hundred times, she said. It ended with one line: She is braver than she thinks. Make sure she isn’t alone. We held each other in the middle of the dance floor and cried until the band played the song again.

That night, Ruth and I carried the forty-four balloons through the ship and gave one to every child we passed, one for every year Frank gave me. Daniel laughed and carried the last few for us. The next spring, Ruth and I booked the same voyage again, and we have sailed together every anniversary since. A sailor married a mermaid who was afraid to leave dry land. In the end, he taught her she could.