Coxswain of the Crew

Teagan

Ella Tao-Emerson. Former small-town beauty queen, cockeyed optimist, low-key delulu.

“Teags!” her mom squealed out of nowhere.

Drop the low key. She was straight-up delulu.

You’d think six months was long enough to get used to the fact her dad was a wanted felon, but nope! Not so much.

She could feel her mom’s eyes on her—anxiously hopeful Teagan would join her in this celebratory sighting of a chain restaurant—so she tried to make one of those bright oooh, cool sounds, but an unexpected scratchy sting of tears morphed it into a lackluster hmmph.

What the hell? Teagan wasn’t a crier. Whenever she got upset after a training session or a bad race, her dad always cited one of his The Way of Tao philosophies: There’s no reason to despair. All problems have a solution—you just need to face it head on to see the way forward.

Not all of them legal, apparently. Or worth facing head on given the fact he’d vanished.

According to the search warrant (a freaking search warrant!), David Tao—California’s premier boutique hotel visionary, doting husband (gross), best dad/coach/parent ever—had been quietly defrauding his investors of millions and was currently on the run.

Not exactly the behavior of a hero. Not even in a Deadpool kind of way.

How was she supposed to come to terms with that? Was she as delusional as her mom? Her dad was the reason she rowed. Why colleges like Stanford, his alma mater, were keeping their eye on her. It was hard not to despair.

“Earth to Teagan.” Her mom’s hand waved in front of her face. “Did you see the Friendly’s?”

“What? Yes. Why?” Teagan snapped. “Have you been manifesting Fluffernutter Sundae energy?”

Her mom gave an overly jolly hoot of laughter. The kind that masked the hurt she felt when Teagan’s Toxic Teen Tone hit too sharp. “I see someone’s been Googling the menu,” she teased. Warily. “Would you like to get sundaes? We went there with your grandmother last time we were here.”

“What? When I was four?”

“Who stops liking sprinkles?”

“Who starts liking sprinkles?” Teagan knew she was being a brat. She tipped back her head and gave a silent wail of despair. God, she missed being on the water.

“There was a Starbucks about twenty minutes back.” Her mom gave her a desperate-to-please smile.

As easy as it was, punishing her mom because of what her dad did wasn’t fair. “How about we have DIY sundaes after I win my first regatta?”

“Deal.”

They both might be waiting longer than either of them liked to make good on it. Despite some forensic internet searches, she’d yet to find clear evidence of a rowing team on Easton Prep’s website.

Teagan’s mom had grown up in Eagle’s Cove and had always dreamed of going to Easton Prep, the school in the “castle.” Thanks to the education trust her dad had set up—one of the few things the FBI hadn’t confiscated—Teagan would be making her mom’s dream come true.

At a price. It had meant leaving California so they could live in the house her mom had inherited from her parents (so, free).

Ella had eBayed and Vinted pretty much everything that hadn’t been carted away in evidence vans, and even then, Teagan had overheard her telling a gas station cashier that it was barely enough to cover the motels and gas to get to Massachusetts.

“Mom.” They both heard the panic in her voice. “Easton Prep does have a girls’ rowing team, right?”

“I’m sure it does,” her mom said through a forced laugh. “It’s beside a lake.”

“That means they have geese, but not necessarily a rowing team.” She wiggled her phone between them. “I can’t find them on any of the top-ten rankings.”

“I guess we’ll find out soon enough.” Ella pointed at a sign listing the exit to Eagle’s Cove. “I’m getting some good vibes, Teagy-T.” She gave Teagan’s head a stroke, like she was a cat. “All the feely feels.”

Teagan returned her mom’s hand to the steering wheel. “Eyes on the road, please, Mother.”

“Hey, Teags. Despite what you think, I can do two things at once. Drive and be happy that we’re in the friendliest state in the West.”

“East,” they both autocorrected as Ella drifted into the next lane. A bunch of people honked at them as the SUV lurched back into the right lane.

An increasingly familiar silence filled the car. The kind that’s so loud you itch to play pop music at full volume to drown out your thoughts. Thoughts like, How am I going to survive life without my dad?

She missed him so much it literally hurt. True. She also wanted to tie him to a chair and demand honest answers to a thousand questions before handing him over to the Feds to face the music if he had really done everything they said he had.

Teagan pulled at her seat belt and hoicked herself around so she was facing her mom.

“Why aren’t you more pissed off, Mom? I thought you hated Eagle’s Cove. It’s not like you’re going to get aura points for pretending everything’s perfect.”

They both winced. It was fair to say heart-to-hearts weren’t really their thing.

Her mom took a minute to answer. “I think if you look for positive things, you’re more likely to see them.

” She flicked on the turn signal, letting her gaze skid across Teagan’s face before glancing back at traffic in the exit lane, muttering “Masshole” at a tricked-out pickup truck that wouldn’t let her in.

Masshole. Good one. She’d have to remember that. Easier to pronounce than Massachusettsan.

Once they’d taken the exit, her mom’s perky smile reappeared. “Ready to be surprised?”

“What?” A bolt of adrenaline shot through her. “Is Dad here? Is he hiding at the house?”

Her mom’s smile vanished. Of course he wasn’t.

Why did she keep putting her foot in it?

She should’ve said yes when her mom suggested they go to the Mustard Museum.

It would’ve been torture, but there might’ve been hot dogs, and it would’ve been a less painful way to acknowledge that Teagan knew none of this was her mom’s fault.

Both of their worlds had revolved around David Tao.

And he’d disappeared from both of their lives.

Teagan didn’t know how many imaginary scenarios she’d put him in since that day.

Abducted by aliens? Living rough in Yosemite?

Or, and this one sucked the most, was he living large on a private island with a secret family who loved him every bit as much as they did?

Not knowing was what hurt the most.

They were on a two-lane road winding through a thick woodland now, the trees showing a few hints that it would be fall soon. Even though the speed limit was sixty, the speedometer was barely hitting forty-five. Was Ella enjoying the view or delaying the inevitable?

Teagan rolled down her window. The car smelled like drive-through food and burnt sage.

She discreetly gave her pits a sniff. And maybe a little bit of her.

She’d been wearing her favorite sweats since they’d left California.

She stuck her face into the wind like a dog, willing the sun on her face and the briny tang of the sea to clear her brain.

She would die if there wasn’t a rowing team.

Not knowing where her dad was, or if he’d done all those things was bad enough. But rowing? It was her lifeblood. The one thing she’d need to keep her head above water. Literally and figuratively.

She sat back with a huff and stuck her arm out the window, cupping her hand so she could catch the wind the way her oars caught the water.

Catch, drive it forward, tilt the palm, release.

Catch, drive, finish, recover. Catch, drive, finish, recover.

The familiar cadence was a reminder that she knew how to focus.

How to push through pain. Physical pain anyway.

But this? Emotional Armageddon when the one parent sitting next to you wasn’t the one you relied on in a crisis?

For as long as she could remember, Teagan’s philosophy had been The Way of Tao.

Her father’s moral and ethical guide to life.

Sure, he’d made it up, so he’d set the parameters.

But she’d bought it. Just like she’d believed their lives were pretty perfect right up until FBI agents marched through their house taking just about everything. They’d left her medals. Whoop-de-doo!

Maybe in a different universe her mom was right. If she looked at it as a new beginning rather than the end of everything, nothing but possibility lay ahead.

“Are there any people here?” Teagan asked. “Or is it just trees?”

“Oh, there aren’t just people,” Ella said, clearly delighted at this new chance to sprinkle fairy dust on their situation. “There is also,” she drew out the words as they rounded a corner, then triumphantly announced, “a fudge shop!”

“You don’t like fudge.”

“No one actually likes fudge,” Ella allowed.

“But I like that it exists. And there’s the Crab Shack.

” She slowed as they drove past the hand-painted, sun-faded green and white clapboard restaurant.

Jim’s Crab Shack. “I used to work there.” Her eyes developed a sudden gloss. “They have the best crab cakes.”

Something told Teagan her mom wasn’t fighting tears of culinary rapture. There was something more. Yet another secret her parents had kept from her? She knew she should say something nice but what came out instead was a deadpan, “Mother. That is a heinous understanding of what ‘cake’ is.”

“Don’t call me Mother,” Ella play-pouted. “It makes me feel old.”

“You are old,” Teagan teased back.

Her mom turned on to yet another tree-lined street, this one standing out from the others with its dappling of pastel-colored Victorian houses. Her heart skipped a beat. Maybe living at her grandparents’ house wouldn’t be all bad.

She was about to say, “At least we’re not living in that one,” as they approached a dilapidated house when her mother pulled the car into the driveway.

It might’ve been nice. Twenty-five years ago. Or a hundred. She’d been too young to remember the last time they were here. But right now, it was giving serious haunted house vibes.

Her mom put the car into park, gave Teagan a here-goes-nothing shrug and grin as she unclipped her seat belt. “Welcome home, sweetie!”

“Thanks, Mom.” They had just reached the ninth circle of hell.