Chapter 22
Tia Cameron
Call sign: Thimble
The anchor locker of The Old Eileen hummed with the pressure of the sea as Tia sat inside it, listening to the ship surge through the Atlantic. There was something
comforting in it. At least here, the sea sounded just as dangerous as she now knew it was.
At least here she could be away from Rylan.
Rylan . . .
There was no thing or person in the world who mattered to Tia more than Rylan. But he’d left MJ in that cave. He had left
her to die. Not even Rylan himself denied that the accident was his fault.
She leaned her head back against the rumbling wall. The movement of the ocean rattled through her body, between her ribs and
through her veins until it felt akin to blood flow.
Tia understood what it was like to be scared.
She had fumbled with her regulator and inhaled a lungful of salt water when she’d taken her open water test. She had run a red light in a friend’s Bugatti convertible when neither of them was licensed.
Or wearing seat belts. And she had stood at the black iron gates of St. Bernadette’s School for Girls, ripped from her twin and fearing that, when she returned home, her family would have moved on without her.
So she knew it, that sick feeling when it all slips out of your control and you’re left to make a momentary decision or be
destroyed.
What Tia didn’t understand was how Rylan could make the wrong choice over and over, if doing nothing and panicking was even
much of a choice at all. How could he have faltered the one time it counted, the one time a person’s life was on the line?
MJ’s life.
It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that Rylan had failed MJ, and it wasn’t fair that Tia would never talk to her again because
of him. MJ Tuckett was the closest thing to a mentor that Tia had ever had. She had only begun to show Tia the things she
now knew she wanted to learn. Knots and wind patterns and travel stories and stars. MJ always said she was one of the last
salt-blooded sailors, the last of a generation of seafarers reared on tall ships instead of engines.
She had been irreplaceable.
Now she was gone.
She drank in a couple of deep breaths, then stood, running her hand along the flaked anchor chain which sat like a human spine,
each chain link a vertebra stacked on the next.
If MJ were here and Tia were the one in the freezer, MJ would have done anything in her power to radio land and end this trip.
It was the right thing to do. Vacations didn’t continue when people died.
Tia opened the hatch of the anchor locker and poked her head out. Her hair was crisp with dried salt, and it flapped rather
than flowed in the wind.
Nico stood a few feet away, the clipboard they used for routine boat checks in his hands. He blinked in surprise at Tia.
“Miss Cameron. Hiding from something?”
My brother.
“Course not. Is the ship passing all your inspections, Mr. de la Vega?” She pasted on a smile.
He spun the clipboard between his fingers like a card trick. “Well, I haven’t checked the anchor locker yet.”
Tia was relatively certain boat checks never included the anchor locker, but he was playing with her, and she liked to play
along. “Don’t let me get in your way.” She smiled up at him again, very much in his way.
Nico crouched down, narrowing the gap between them.
“I’ve gotta get down there, miss. Are you going to step aside? Or should I . . . move you myself?” He reached out a hand and
rested it for just a second on her waist.
Tia wanted to feel flirtatious and coy, but her stomach was stone, and all she could think about was MJ. How could Nico stay
so light when MJ lay dead belowdecks?
Tia envisioned MJ struggling deep underwater. She pictured her clutching her chest, making the split-second decision to shed
her gear and swim for it. Clawing to the surface, desperate for air, only to never breathe again.
She retreated back into the locker, giving Nico the space to follow.
He did.
“Well?” Tia spread her arms, taking up half of the small, dark space. “Does this pass, Inspector?”
“Hmmm.” Nico did a slow rotation, one eyebrow articulated in an arch. He knocked on the walls and glanced at Tia to see if
he had made her laugh.
He hadn’t, but then she felt bad that she hadn’t. A handsome, playful guy distracting her sounded like the perfect thing in
her head. But she almost wished he would hold still. She wished he would ask if she was okay.
“It doesn’t feel right to just . . . keep going,” Tia said, hugging herself.
Nico touched her elbow. “Nothing feels right after a death.”
“A funeral does, right?” Tia had never really known someone who died before. Her paternal grandparents were dead long before
the twins were born, and Lila had kept them from her own parents. They must have died at some point, but Tia hadn’t heard
about it, and no one seemed sad, so it didn’t really count.
Nico tucked the clipboard under his arm. “You know, burials at sea were real common throughout history. They’d sew the deceased
in cloth and put the last stitch through their nose to make sure they were really dead. Then they’d weigh down the body with
cannonballs or rocks, and send it into the water as someone led a prayer and maybe a chantey.”
Tia imagined MJ’s body sinking into the sea, weighted with stones. “That’s probably something she would have wanted,” she
said. “She was old-fashioned.”
“I’m sure her family will have her buried at sea in some way,” Nico said. “But that’s not up to us.”
“I know.” Tia shuddered. Instead of drifting into the bottomless ocean, MJ was sitting, bunched up, at the bottom of their
freezer. She deserved something of dignity at least. “Maybe we could do the other stuff, though? The prayer? Or a chantey?”
She looked to see Nico’s reaction. He was nodding along.
“I can grab my guitar,” he offered.
Tia smiled a little. “Yeah. You know a song we could do?”
“I got an idea. Be right back.”
He bounded up the ladder to the deck, leaving Tia to sit again on the cold anchor-locker floor.
She had never given much thought to an existence after death, or really death in general, but MJ had believed so strongly in heaven it must be true.
At least for her. She had talked about angels like they were overworked elementary schoolteachers and God like he lived just down the street.
She was with them now, Tia decided, in whatever way she could be.
Nico reappeared in the mouth of the hatch, dreadnought guitar slung over his shoulder. He climbed down and sat shoulder to
shoulder with Tia, who let herself lean into him.
Nico positioned the guitar on his lap. “The man who wrote this was leaving for the navy. 1950-something.”
“Ohh, a history lesson,” said Tia, half teasing.
Nico smiled. “It’s called ‘Grey Funnel Line.’”
And he began to play.
The fingering was simple. Bittersweet. Nico sang in a threadbare voice as the strums filled the tiny locker till it burst.
Tia saw MJ Tuckett standing at the silver wheel of a ship. She heard Pirate purring as MJ found his favorite spot beneath
his chin. She felt the current of water that carried MJ like a sea creature.
Tia hadn’t known her as well as she would have liked or as long as she would have wanted, but she had known her, and she was
grateful for that. She realized her cheeks were wet as Nico’s chantey came to its end, the final notes twining as long and
low as wind.
“Thank you, MJ,” Tia whispered. She drew herself up with a breath that swept through her entire body and looked over at Nico.
His eyes were shut, lashes beaded with tears. Tia couldn’t help her surprise. Nico and MJ couldn’t have spoken more than once
or twice. They hardly knew each other. She placed a hand on Nico’s shoulder, and he blinked so fast that the tears vanished.
Like she’d imagined them.
“It’s a great song,” he said.
“What now?” asked Tia.
“That’s up to you, I think.”
Tia thought, keenly aware of how hollow the locker felt without the sounds of the guitar. “Get off this boat. And then . . .”
And then the last thing Tia had promised to do with her family would be done. The trip would be over. She’d leave. She had
a wide-open world waiting for her. She was going somewhere far—Iceland, maybe. Or Alaska. She would get a job on a boat like
Nico had done and work her way up to be a captain like MJ. Maybe she’d circumnavigate, maybe she’d swim with whale sharks,
maybe she’d make a whole new family, and the Camerons would be an old story she’d tell during storms.
She’d make MJ proud.
“Then this is over,” she finished.
“All of it?” Nico asked. He slung his guitar back over one shoulder but made no move to push away Tia’s hand. He leaned one
of his tattooed arms against the wall above Tia’s head so that his body made a crescent shape above her.
“Is there something you don’t want to be over, Nico?”
He lowered his face to hers.
The overhead door opened and blinded them both. Nico retracted his arm, and Tia craned her head to see the silhouette of the
person climbing down into the locker.
Rylan.
“Oh,” Rylan said when he saw them.
The anchor locker was barely comfortable with two people and a guitar inside. With three of them, it seemed like a coffin.
“Sorry . . . didn’t mean to interrupt something.” Rylan smiled at Nico. His eyes were red.
“Hey, Rylan,” Nico said smoothly. “Here to join?”
Tia shifted. Selfishly, she was glad she’d gotten a moment to mourn without him.
Now she just felt uncomfortable.
Rylan squatted in front of them. “What were you guys talking about?”
“Boat inspections,” Tia said, as Nico answered, “Life.”
“Life and boat inspections . . .” Rylan repeated.
“What is life if not one giant boat inspection?” Nico tried at a joke.
“Why’d you come here, Ry?” Tia turned to her brother, trying to sound gentle.
“Looking for you,” he admitted. Rylan was taller than both Tia and Nico, but now, folded up like a tent pole, he seemed tiny.
“Were you playing music?”
“Yeah,” Nico said. “For MJ. We figured she’d have liked a good chantey.”
“Can I hear?” Rylan asked. He looked so sad that Tia nearly felt guilty for being cold toward him.
“We can do one more, I guess,” she said. Rylan’s fear might have cost MJ her life, and she wasn’t sure she would ever forget
that. But he was her twin. He was her best friend. He was the only one who had been there since the beginning, even when Tia’s
parents turned away.
“Encore it is, then,” Nico said, and he returned the dreadnought guitar to his lap to play.