"Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself." – Rumi, 13th C. Persian poet [ONC 2021 prompt #30]

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Zelda Crowe doesn't really start living until her sixtieth birthday when a mysterious package arrives at her doorstep. Bearing no postage or return address, the small box wrapped in brown kraft paper does contain an exquisite Art Deco brooch shaped like a lotus flower. While it could just be another lavish birthday present from one of her old-money neighbors, the accompanying cryptic message hints of mortal danger for Zelda's rail tycoon husband Ogden, who was last heard from while securing new business ventures in rural China.

Fresh out of medical school he attended only to avoid the trenches of the Great War, Dr. Santiago Caruso can neither stand the sight of blood nor high-society snobbery. In order to clear his family's debts, Santiago reluctantly agrees to overcome both aversions when he answers an advert to become the personal physician to the Crowe family's matriarch, arriving mere moments after Zelda's baffling parcel.

With her young attendant in tow and against her adult daughter's wishes, Zelda promptly leaves her Long Island Sound mansion, boards a transatlantic oceanliner, and heads East. Armed with three steamer trunks and decades of knowledge gained while obediently remaining in her husband's shadow, Zelda is finally able to take charge and maybe save Ogden in the process. But the journey becomes just as important as the destination when the unlikely duo find themselves in the middle of a shocking murder scene on the high seas. Zelda and Santiago will have to uncover the killer before docking in Plymouth just seven days later, or risk being put on trial by the King's Magistrates and delay getting to Ogden, still unaccounted for two continents away.