Page 72 of No One Aboard
But Francis didn’t say that, and Tia had resumed her fit, so the conversation never happened.
After a while, Lila disengaged with her daughter. Better to be breezy and unaffected, a sail rather than an anchor when the storm rolled in.
Meanwhile, there was not a soul on earth more endearing than her son. He was a beautiful boy, thick-lashed and slender. He flushed easily, his skin baby pink and petal-soft. He saidhis first word a full two months after Tia, but he was crawling and exploring weeks before her. Whenever Lila passed by, he would lift his arms above his head, exposing the full-moon of his tummy until she bent to scoop him up. His sister seemed to hoard the ability to make sound, so when Rylan cried it was silent. When he had a tantrum (which was rare), it was with his mouth sealed and wounded eyes so large he looked like one of Lori Logan’s dolls.
They spent every moment together. Lila arranged for daily afternoon teas, dressing Rylan in green suspenders and pressed dress shirts, while Lila matched him in mint florals. She designed the sunroom (which she liked to think of as herson-room) to be a space for the two of them to set up their ceramic tea set and be waited on by Alejandro. Francis and Tia didn’t understand. On the rare occasions they joined teatime, Tia would spill on the cream tablecloth. Francis would glance at his watch and ask Alejandro to mix sake in his tea. The two of them dominated conversation, arguing and raising voices.
Things were better with Lila and Rylan alone.
Lila marveled at her son. Even when everything that made him enchanting revealed him to be guarded.Overly cautious, a child psychiatrist told Lila.He seems to be responding to his sister’s forcefulness with wariness.He’sher opposite. Try getting them in different preschool classrooms. He might find himself more without her.
It was true. Lila had learned from the beginning that Rylan did betterawayfrom Tia.
Last summer had been the breaking point. Tia’s rash behavior destabilized Rylan. How was he supposed to know who he was when he had his sister tugging him one way and his father the other?
Simple.
He needed someone safe and soothing in between.
It had been Lila, murmuring into her husband’s ear, whodecided it was time for Tia to be sent away. There was little more they could personally do for her. Tia didn’t permit any sort of parenting anyway, and that was just fine with Lila. Rylan needed all the parenting. He was receptive to it too. With Rylan, Lila got results.
And so did Francis.
He had told her about the tests long before he proposed them to their son. Francis had always been obsessed with rites of passage, the process of coming of age. His own family had obliterated their life savings to give him the chance to get his life together on an all-boys sailing trip across the Atlantic. He once told Lila that passage had changed him forever. Francis’s shipmates, however, had been the wayward sons of anesthesiologists and architects. They were boys who took chances for granted.
Francis would let his entire yachting empire sink into the sea before he let Rylan do the same.
Just don’t give up on him, Lila had petitioned Francis.Promise me that no matter how many times he fails, you won’t give up on our son.
Francis promised.
And Lila turned a blind eye.
Meanwhile, as Tia’s wrath zeroed in on Francis, Rylan clung ever tighter to Lila. Lila was the soft one, the safe one. From a vantage point of gentleness and motherliness, there wasn’t a single string she couldn’t find and pull.
Lila’s phone trilled to inform her it was time to flip onto her stomach. She oiled herself down with more sunscreen and switched from supine to prone. The sunlight was an anesthetic. She hadn’t been this loose, this liquid, in ages.
Francis had so many ideas for how to handle their lives. Their son. But in the end, it was always Lila who coaxed out her desired outcome, who planted seeds with whispers. This trip would end no differently. It wasn’t just the sunshine thateased her in the midst of this boat with her brazen daughter and her secretive husband.
She had a new idea, one she had murmured not to Francis but to Alejandro. Once spoken, it was no longer an idea but a plan. All she had to do now was luxuriate for a few more days until her lover put it into action.
So Lila set another timer to bake the back half of her body and closed her eyes to bask.
Chapter 35
Rylan Cameron
Call sign: Minnow
Day 9 at Sea
Rylan and Tia sat hip to hip on the salon couch shoveling oatmeal thick with peanut butter into their mouths as they watched TV. Tia was in a good mood, probably feeling secure thanks to the escape plan she’d hatched. It was easy for Tia. All she wanted was an exciting, simple life with a few close people. She wasn’t afraid of leaving behind her parents. She reveled in it.
Rylan would never be like that. He stirred his oatmeal (or as Alejandro had always called it,boatmeal) and ate a spoonful of the oaty, peanut buttery cement.
“Are you going to miss stuff like this? Like oatmeal and TV?”
Tia used her finger to finish off the swipes of peanut butter left in the bottom of her bowl. “You mean when we run? Oatmeal and TV exist outside the Cameron family, you know.”
