Chapter 40
Tia Cameron
Call sign: Thimble
Tia waited until after midnight to go see Nico. Alejandro was covering the midnight-to-four-o’clock shift, which meant Nico
would be alone in his room. Tia slipped down the hall and knocked lightly on the door, trying to stay quiet in case her father
was awake in the primary suite after finishing his watch.
There was no answer, but that wasn’t about to stop her. It had been a dismal rest of the day with Rylan sullen and avoiding
her after what happened with the sailfish. Not that she was ready to see him either, after what she’d admitted to Nico. Francis
and Lila had kept their distance as well, leaving Tia to read a book, study the sails, and remember Nico’s hands on her bare
skin.
She knocked again before turning the handle and easing inside. Nico’s back was to her in bed, but when she touched his shoulder,
he startled.
“Tia? It’s the middle of the night.”
“Sure is. And you’re wide awake.” Tia sat on the edge of the bed and grinned at him. “Pining over me or something?”
He didn’t laugh, only shook his head. “I’m sorry. I’m really tired.”
She hid disappointment. “Oh. Then why aren’t you asleep?”
He propped his head up on his hand. “Thinking. Not that you’d know much about that.”
“Ha ha.” She snuggled up beside him, watching his face for a reaction. “Want to talk about what’s on your mind?”
Nico shifted away from her ever so slightly.
Her face grew hot. She got the message and sat up. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay. I’m the one who should be sorry. Really.” He summoned a smile and placed a hand over hers. “Let’s talk tomorrow,
okay?”
“Sure.” Tia pulled back and went to the door. “Till tomorrow, Siren.”
“Aye aye.”
She crept back into the hall and stood suspended by indecision. She sure as hell wasn’t tired; she’d been waiting up for hours.
Not that she would be able to sleep if she tried. Nico’s rejection, no matter how slight, had stung, and she despised the
feeling. She made her way up on deck, as was tradition when she couldn’t sleep. The hot, pent-up air belowdecks was too much
to stand—at least, that was what she told herself.
Tia wasn’t exactly in the mood to have a heart-to-heart with Alejandro, who was at the helm (he’d just tell Francis anything
she said anyway, and she’d decided not to confront her father about running away so he wouldn’t suspect SOS), but she figured watching the dark waves for a while would soothe her. There was no point stressing over Nico anyway. They’d
talk tomorrow.
Tomorrow . . . It was just past midnight now. That meant tomorrow was officially her and Rylan’s eighteenth birthday. They
should have been home in Florida days ago, wrapping presents and reclining in the sunroom. Instead they were here, imprisoned
on their own boat as they headed to some island.
Tia stopped midships and craned her neck to take in the stars, which never got old to her, especially this far out at sea.
The milky way spilled across the sky, flanked by studded lights in every direction.
A brilliant red one seized Tia’s attention.
It was huge and bright, floating just above The Old Eileen’s bowsprit.
Tia screwed her eyes shut and reopened them. It wasn’t a star at all. It was Lila Logan Cameron standing at the frontmost
part of the ship, a lit cigarette balanced between her fingers. What was she doing out of bed?
Tia made her way over to her mother and leaned on the rail beside her. Lila didn’t give any indication that she was surprised
by her daughter’s appearance.
“Isn’t that a maritime violation, Mom?” Didn’t you quit smoking two years ago?
Lila exhaled a ring of pearly smoke. “Who’s going to turn me in, lovey?”
Fair point.
“Can I try?”
Lila twirled the cigarette in her fingers, then handed it over without a fight.
Tia pretended she was a movie star like her mother as she took a drag. Smoking with Lila felt very different than smoking
with her classmates on Friday nights behind her dormitory. The smoke spread smooth and silklike through her.
“I’m surprised you’re up here,” Tia commented. It wasn’t like her mother to gaze admiringly at the sea. She was dressed in
a silk-thin robe with swaths of purple flowers blooming on the shoulders and hem. It clung to her body almost unnaturally,
and Tia could follow the glass-shard line of her collarbones beneath the tissue-paper fabric.
Tia put the cigarette to her lips again. It stuck to her mouth, glued with remnants of her mother’s designer lipstick. Smoke
blew through her, and she handed it back to Lila.
“This boat is a fragile thing,” Lila mused without warning or context, reclaiming the cigarette. “Fragile like a family.”
Tia frowned around at The Old Eileen. She felt it was the opposite, the only sturdy thing in the vicinity. It was quite literally the thing that was keeping their
family together. Even if it was by force.
“How do you mean, Mom?”
Lila’s hair swayed in tandem with the curling smoke. “It takes so much effort just to keep it afloat. I think without us here
it might simply dissolve.”
“Uh-huh . . .” Tia plucked the cigarette from Lila’s hand and dangled it from between her own teeth as she thought. Lila was
wrong. If the world came to an end, The Old Eileen might sit on top of it forever. The ship didn’t need the Camerons. Maybe nothing did.
“What was it like with me gone?” Tia asked, passing the cigarette.
“Hmm.” Lila tapped it on the railing, and ash drifted like snow. “Rather . . . tranquil.”
Tia grunted. “The three of you got weirdly close. Like, it’s dysfunctional. But close. Like you could all finally connect
when I was gone.” Tia wanted her mother to shake her head and say That’s preposterous, lovey! We could never be a family without you.
Lila held in a breath for a long time before blowing out a lopsided ring. “My family was supposed to have four, you know.
Two parents. Two children.”
Tia tilted her head. Lila didn’t often speak about Tia’s grandparents, let alone the sister she never had. “I remember.”
Tia used to write letters to her aunt, to the little baby that never grew up. It had disturbed her as a six-year-old when
she learned that her mother was missing her twin. Tia couldn’t imagine until recently what it was like to miss Rylan.
“I sometimes thought my sister would have made us complete,” Lila said. “But mostly, I think we were meant to be three.”
What was that supposed to mean? Tia leaned more on the railing. Was Lila likening Tia to her dead twin? We were meant to be three.
Is that what you think of me? Tia almost asked. Am I the thing that should have died?
Tia hadn’t considered that leaving behind her family would be ineffective, that they might not even care. She wanted to damage
them in the ways she felt they damaged her. She had wanted Rylan to jump on the opportunity to leave their parents behind,
wondering desperately where they went wrong. It was supposed to be revenge for a lifetime of being told she was too loud.
Too angry. Too many feelings. Not the right dreams. Her every emotion was frowned upon. Her reactions were dramatic. Lila
and Francis had given up on Tia long before Tia ever gave up on them. That was what Rylan—who Lila always doted on, who Francis always hoped would claim the world—would never understand.
“Didn’t you hate your parents?” Tia asked instead, an arm’s length between her and her mother.
Lila’s dark eyes seemed to gloss. “Doesn’t everyone?”
Maybe that was true. Tia wasn’t the only one who hated Francis, though. Tia leaned forward. “Mom . . . does Dad have . . .
enemies? Like business guys who hate him or something?”
Lila shook her head, which looked less like an answer and more like preening, her hair falling loose from its bun like cobwebs.
She turned to Tia. “Can you believe where we are at this very moment?”
Tia slitted her eyes. “What?”
“We’re sharing a Marlboro on a sailboat on the Atlantic in June. You, on the eve of your eighteenth birthday.”
Tia snatched back what was apparently a Marlboro. “So?”
“So revel in that. Someday you’ll be married and tired and working and sad, and you’ll realize you will never be almost-eighteen smoking
with your mother at the bow of a boat again. My beautiful girl, always in such a rush. Always longing for the next thing.”
“You’re always longing for a past thing,” Tia pointed out, but Lila seemed beyond her now, arms outstretched as if she could
marbleize and become The Old Eileen’s figurehead.
“Revel with me.”
Tia tried. What would it be like to exist in her mother’s pearlescent bubble of life? Were things really as beautiful to Lila
Logan as she seemed to believe they were? Tia breathed in until her lungs were ready to pop, and she let her arms lift like
wings.
Then she dropped them, feeling as stupid as her mother looked.
“Okay, can we put a pin in reveling now?”
Lila’s eyes were still shut, dark lashes flush against the pink of her cheeks. Why was she wearing mascara this late anyway?
No one else was even awake on the boat except Alejandro.
“I could be anyone in moments like this,” Lila breathed. “Anyone in the world. Anyone in history.”
She sounds almost like . . . me.
Tia held out the cigarette. “You done with this?” she asked her mom.
The orange embers had burned it to a nub.
“I have more,” Lila said in answer.
Tia picked a spot in the water and aimed the cigarette at it. It fell, a tiny light spinning out of control in the dark. She
squinted in the area where it had landed. Was she imagining things? Or was there something in the water? Something much, much
bigger than a cigarette.
“Hey, Mom . . .” Tia tugged on Lila’s silk sleeve. “Mom, do you see that?”
She pointed, and the two of them squinted down. Something paler than the sea protruded from its surface, slicing it in half
as it swam.
A fin.
“Oh my God!” Tia scream-whispered in delight at the same time as Lila mouthed the same thing and clutched her chest.
It was a shark. Who knew what kind of shark it was, but the longer Tia looked, the more she could make out the massive silhouette
moving alongside The Old Eileen.
How cool is this, she thought. Rylan would love this.
The creature stayed alongside them for several minutes before sliding out of view. Lila released a breath and retreated from
the rail, leaving Tia behind.
Tia tried to estimate how big the shark had been. Nine feet? Ten? She hoped she would see it again in the morning, but in
the midst of her excitement, she confronted another feeling, percolating at the very back of her mind.
It almost seemed like the shark was following them.