Page 57 of No One Aboard
The women looked at him, and he was sure he’d been wrong to speak, but Madden nodded. Listening.
“My kid brother...” Jerry lifted his head, and his heart sank.
He was there. Steven Baugh, frozen forever at twenty-nine years old. He lived at the margins of the salon standing over the galley freezer. Blond hair dripping wet. Eyes gaping. This time Jerry didn’t look away from his brother’s bloated skin and blue lips. Hecouldn’tlook away.
“I was older by a year, but he was braver. By a long shot. He never bothered with anything less than what he wanted. And what he wanted was adventure.”
Damn it, nowhewas doing the rosy-lensed thing. Jerry racked his brain for his little brother’s flaws, which used to be so easy to recall. “He was a bit of a stoner. He was always knocking stuff over and not always cleaning it up. He couldn’t have dark moments. Only wanted to talk about the good stuff. The fun stuff. But he was unflappable. Worked as a raft guide, an outdoor camp counselor, a sailor. Anything to keep the momentum going and spend his life outside.”
Jerry blinked hard. Steve remained there staring. “And he died for it. It was in a storm like this, I think. So maybe... I guess I do believe in ghosts. His ghost. Maybe this hurricane is both of them tryna’ get our attention.”
Lainey crossed the room and hugged him too. Jerry tried to protest, but she was already there, arms around his neck. Her shaved head blocked his view, and when she pulled away, Steve was gone.
“It’s all righ’,” Jerry told her, patting her shoulder awkwardly. Tears welled behind his eyes. “It’s all righ’,” he repeated, willing them to evaporate.
They didn’t. Jerry stood hurriedly. It was one thing to see Brenna Madden cry and quite another to let her see him cry. “I need to get more beer,” he said.
Lainey glanced at the case which still held well over a dozen cans, but she didn’t say anything, and Jerry headed into the hallway.
“Good Lord,” he muttered once he had shut the watertight door. The tears threatened to fall, so he kept walking, like he could outrun them. He found himself in the crew cabin, the one with the three beds, two stacked on top of each other and the third alone. He was about to collapse on it when he realized someone was already there.
The ugly old cat crouched on the pillow. He was awake, his paws digging at the pillowcase at an intense pace. No, not digging—kneading. How did he even get over here? Lainey must have rescued him fromSheila 2.0before the hurricane.
The kneading was a sign of love, or so Sheila had insisted when her awful fluffy cat had done the same to Jerry. Nursing kittens did it to their mothers to get milk flowing and to show affection.Making biscuitsSheila called it. The stupid thing was kneading a pillow, though, not a person.
Jerry’s throat felt thick. Who used to lie in this bed? Hadthe cat loved them? Did he miss them? How many times had the creature come to this room and kneaded the pillow in the hopes that his person would return?
How many times had Jerry hoped the same thing for his dead little brother?
This time there was nothing he could do to stop the deluge. Jerry broke down and fell onto the bed. The cat regarded him with alarm, then slowly, cautiously crept closer. He didn’t shove it away. He gathered the animal in his arms and wept in a way he hadn’t done for decades.
He wept for Steve’s crooked smile and sun-bleached hair. He wept for Madden’s wife and their hideous, happy home in Cherrywood. And he wept for the cat and its people who’d vanished fromThe Old Eileenand left it there alone.
Chapter 28
Rylan Cameron
Call sign: Minnow
Day 6 at Sea
It was just after four in the morning when Pirate woke Rylan up by kneading his paws on his shoulder and purring like a tractor. Rylan’s heart broke for the cat, and he shifted to include him underneath his sheets. He hadn’t been sleeping well anyway, for fear of dreaming up swollen, waterlogged bodies dripping salt water in the corner of his bedroom.
So instead he lay there, trying not to think about what Francis had said at breakfast. He wished that Tia hadn’t pushed their father, that Francis hadn’t revealed there would be a surprise destination. Rylan would have preferred to find out when they got there instead of wondering for the rest of the trip where they could be headed and why.
Pirate also seemed uneasy. The cat curled on his chest, and Rylan couldn’t shake the feeling that Pirate knew something the humans didn’t. Everyone said that the cat didn’t understand MJ was gone, that he was waiting patiently for her return, but Rylan suspected the opposite was true. Pirate had been pawing at the freezer in the galley, and now he stared down the door.
As if someone was waiting on the other side.
Tia’s watch alarm beeped. Why would she have had an alarm set at this hour? Rylan watched her. Even though the watch was pressed against her face as she slept, it still took her a solid sixty seconds to groan and switch it off. She dragged herself to an upright position, hair sticking at strange angles.
“Did I wake you?” she whispered loudly.
“Did you think you could somehownotwake me after all that?” Rylan replied, knuckle rubbing between Pirate’s ears.
Tia sighed. “I was trying not to.”
“Technically Pirate woke me. Why are you getting up?”
