Chapter 3
Rylan Cameron
Call sign: Minnow
The Day Before Departure
Francis Rylan Cameron sat on the floor of the primary suite’s bathroom, drawing in his sketchbook as his mother applied cream
to her elbows and face. Rylan had his knees drawn up to his chest, one pencil in his hand and another between his teeth.
He was drawing Tia. She was underwater, hair splayed behind her, hand outstretched toward a school of powder-blue tangs.
Lila glanced down at the drawing. “It’s lovely, darling,” she said, and her hand, featherlight, rested for a moment on Rylan’s
head.
He leaned into it and kept working, pencil gliding over paper, an underwater world taking wispy shape beneath his touch.
It calmed him to draw like this, a hobby he had first taken up eight years ago when Francis purchased The Old Eileen. Tia encouraged him to get a coloring book so he could distract himself from seasickness, and it had worked. Now his sketchbook
was filled with renderings of his family, of fish and porpoises, of white sailboats and buried treasure, and, most recently,
the sister he’d been missing for the last nine months.
In this sketch, Tia was swimming ahead of him toward the blue tangs, not bothering to look back.
Running away.
Rylan pressed the pencil tip deeper into the page, his knuckles as tense and white as mountaintops.
Whenever he imagined his future, Tia was always in it, an image that had kept him steady a thousand times since he had watched
her jet take off to Connecticut last August. They would be going to Pepperdine together in the fall. Rylan had gotten into
five of the six schools he’d applied to, some of them Ivy Leagues, but Tia, applying to the same six in order to placate her
parents, had only been accepted to Pepperdine, so that was where they were going. They would live at their Malibu beach house
on the weekends, resume binging Criminal Minds, and go on long midnight drives when they couldn’t fall asleep. They were going to have their old lives back, but better.
Except now Tia had a taste for what it was like to live away from home. Had she forgotten everything good about their family
while she was gone?
The Camerons were worth staying for. Rylan had until their birthday to change her mind.
Lila let out a long whistle of a sigh. Rylan looked up at her, and she slid down beside him.
This was how things often went between Rylan and his mother. They were the quieter half of the family. The softer half. She
confided in him, and he confided in her. It felt safe between them, even if Rylan did feel an occasional wash of shame for
being seventeen and so attached to his mother.
“What’s wrong?” Rylan asked.
“Oh. Nothing at all. Just ruminating.” Lila glanced over at his sketchbook and nodded in approval. “You really are very good.”
Two sharp taps came at the bedroom door, and Lila reanimated like a flower in the sun. “Come in. We’re in the bathroom!”
Alejandro poked his head into the room, sleek black eyebrows quirked in a question. He was a tall man with an impressive head
of black curls. His goatee was nicely oiled, and his tank top showed off a colorful kraken tattoo that snaked from his left
shoulder to his wrist.
When the twins were small, Alejandro used to watch Finding Nemo with them, and whenever they had nightmares about the shark with the big smile, he would tuck them securely into bed and
promise if they were ever attacked by such a monster, he would volunteer to be the bait.
Rylan and Tia had given him the call sign Sharkbait.
“There is a whole world out there, you know,” Alejandro said, jerking a thumb behind him. “Sunsets and sailboats. But I see
you two have chosen to spend the evening on the floor of a head.”
Lila lifted one of her arms daintily, and the cook obliged her, pulling her to her feet. Her white cover-up streamed behind
her like a sail.
“Estás radiante,” Alejandro told her.
“Podría decir lo mismo de ti,” Lila replied in perfect Spanish. She kissed both his cheeks. “?Cómo va la cena?”
“Está listo.” Alejandro looked at Rylan. “Before you go eat, I have questions—” he lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper
“—about the cake.”
Rylan tucked his pencils into the spiral binding of his sketchbook. Tia hadn’t wanted a big party for graduation, which had
fallen on the same day as Rylan’s, last Saturday. When Francis had suggested either he or Lila fly to Connecticut while the
other stayed back in Florida, Tia had texted in the family chat not to bother.
So instead they would give gifts tonight at dinner and have cake and champagne to christen their voyage.
Understated and elegant, Lila had called the idea (two of her favorite words).
“It is multitiered, isn’t it?” Lila said, stacking her hands in the air to demonstrate the cake’s imagined height. “Did you
get all twelve layers? One for each year of school.”
“I did indeed,” Alejandro replied, seemingly amused. “I just need to decorate.”
Lila barreled on. “Yes, with your homemade buttercream frosting, of course. And you have those molded chocolates, shaped like
roses, I think. Or perhaps peonies?”
Alejandro chuckled, shaking his head. “Naturally. Do you have any input, Rylan?”
Rylan smiled up at the two of them. “Oh, I dunno. She likes . . . strawberries?”
Alejandro clapped his hands. “Perfecto! A twelve-layer cake with hand-whipped frosting, molded chocolate flowers, strawberries,
and we might as well sprinkle edible gold on top while we’re at it, yes?”
Lila tossed her head. “I don’t see why not.”
Alejandro shot Rylan a wink and headed for the door. “Go enjoy your first few courses, then. I’ll bring it up when you are
done.”
Rylan thumbed through his sketchbook and stopped on his best picture of Tia. He tore it loose and folded it with great care
until it could fit in the pocket of his board shorts.
“Let’s feast, my darling,” Lila said, clasping his upper arm and pulling him up and to the deck.
Francis and Tia were already at the table. Francis gestured grandly for Rylan to take his usual seat at his right side, between
him and Tia.
The table was set with a tablecloth, glass dishes, and napkins the color of the sea.
The four place settings had identical helpings of white wine lobster bisque, sugar-glazed carrots, roasted artichoke hearts, and a thick slice of almond sourdough.
They each had champagne flutes with generous pours that glinted in the sun when Lila lifted hers in a toast.
“To our first full-family meal since . . . goodness . . . since August! Cheers, loves.”
Francis clinked her glass and showed off all his teeth. “To the Camerons.”
“Yeah, to us,” Tia said, and she looked right at Rylan.
They toasted and drank.
“Rylan, tell Tia about the dives we have planned,” Francis said, plunging a spoon into his bisque.
Rylan perked up. They had six dives planned so far, each of them more exciting than the last. “The first one will be in a
couple days. It’s off of this private cay with all these caves and rock formations. There might be tunnels we can swim through.”
“Cool,” Tia said around a mouthful of bread.
There was another dive in a marine sanctuary off the coast of Georgia, and another they might be able to find that was famous
for nurse sharks. Rylan explained them all before realizing his family had finished with their food and moved on to second
or third glasses of champagne all while he hadn’t yet picked up his soup spoon.
“We have something special for dessert,” Lila said to Tia. “I hope you’ve saved room.”
Tia patted her stomach. “I got a whole wing set aside for dessert, Mom.”
Lila rose from her chair. “I’ll fetch Alejandro.”
Rylan reached into his pocket. “I have a, uh, small present for you.” He handed Tia the folded sketch.
“Aw, Ry . . .”
Tia smoothed it out on her lap, and Rylan watched for her reaction.
He had sketched it based off a selfie Tia had texted him while she was at school.
She was wearing her uniform, tie undone, collar unbuttoned, her hair loose around her shoulders.
She had an eyebrow poised and an unlit cigarette dangling from her lips.
It was a gorgeous photo, and even more stunning in the cinematic style of the sketch. Tia looked edgy but attractive, like
a movie star.
Like Lila.
Francis leaned over to get a better view of the drawing. “Is that you? What are you smoking?”
Tia flipped around the drawing so Francis could look her black-and-white self right in the face. “Cocaine. In a gum wrapper.”
Rylan drowned a snicker with a mouthful of champagne. The last thing they needed was to antagonize Francis before the voyage
even began.
Their father held up a finger but was interrupted by Lila breezing back to the table, Alejandro moving glacially behind her
as he carried a massive, trembling cake.
“Oh, you started presents without me!” Lila looked wounded until Tia’s jaw dropped at the sight of the cake.
“Holy shit, Alejandro.”
Rylan stood to help him, but Alejandro had already slid his masterpiece onto the chart house.
“Sopresa!” he announced, dusting his hands together. “Twelve-layered genoise sponge cake with handmade meringue buttercream
frosting, chocolate roses, edible gold, and strawberries.”
The twins applauded, and Alejandro held up both hands in false modesty before he gave an extravagant bow.
“Enjoy it while you can,” Francis advised as Rylan abandoned his dinner and cut himself a large slice with extra strawberries. “Once we’re at sea, we won’t be able to make meals as fancy as this.”
Alejandro’s mouth quirked. “We? I did not realize I had a sous-chef.”
Lila giggled and placed a hand on Alejandro’s kraken tattoo. “Trust me, Ale, you do not want my husband anywhere near a kitchen.”
Francis nodded grimly. “Or, God forbid . . . a cake.” And he reached suddenly into the frosted skyscraper of a dessert and
grabbed a fistful.
Lila shrieked, but his attack wasn’t meant for her.
Rylan ducked as the chunk of cake soared past him. He grabbed an empty plate to use as a shield, but then Tia was beside him,
her own slice brandished above her head like the gloved fist of an army general. She sent it dangerously close to her father’s
face, and war was officially declared.
Lila took cover behind Alejandro, who chuckled good-naturedly as Francis and Tia tore his creation to shreds. Rylan would
have apologized to him if he’d had the time, but whenever he dared glance away from the battlefield, he ended up with cake
in his hair.
“Alejandro spent days on that cake!” Lila shouted.
“Oh, I’m so sorry, Mom.” Tia stuck her hand into what remained of the twelve layers. “We should have saved some for you.”
Lila’s pupils constricted under the brim of her beautiful white sun hat. “Taliea Indigo Cameron . . .”
Tia charged, Rylan just behind her.
Rather than flee as her children bore down on her, Lila quickly shed her hat and sheer cover-up.
She looked like a dandelion seed with its fluff blown off as the twins rammed into her and rubbed frosting onto her skin like it was tanning lotion.
Francis whisked the hat and cover-up out of harm’s way, probably guessing his wife would rather have those be rescued than herself.
Rylan couldn’t stop grinning. Lila’s screams had reached an operatic pitch that would have been envied by Christine Daaé.
But she was also laughing, hysterically, like everyone else.
Tia and Rylan released their mother, who attempted to give them a dire that-was-a-mistake expression, though it was difficult
to take her seriously with gold flakes and frosting smeared on her bikini.
“Francis, get me the hose.”
Tia grabbed Rylan’s arm, breathless. “Go, go, go!”
They flew down the companionway just as Francis armed their mother and she aimed the water their way.
Rylan shut the hatch behind them, and they staggered into the salon, giggling like little kids.
“We definitely won.” Tia flicked crumbs off her sunglasses.
“We retreated,” Rylan pointed out. He was short of breath, feeling almost giddy.
This is what you’re thinking of leaving behind, he thought, watching his sister. So it didn’t feel at all impulsive when he reached for her hand and said, “Stay.”
Tia squeezed his hand. She looked even older and fiercer than Rylan had remembered her.
She shook her head, and his heart sank just beneath his ribs.
“Stay with me,” she countered.
But he couldn’t, not if she left, because there was something Tia didn’t understand about their family. The Camerons were
not a thing that could be left behind.