With Every Breath (Sea Swept #2) (18 page)

“No way,” she scoffs, and holds it out of his reach.

“Hannah, be nice to your brother,” the mother snaps.

“But Ben started it!” the girl says. The boy sticks his tongue out at her, and waggles his eyebrows.

“Hannah,” their dad says warningly. “Give the hat back.”

She scowls and pouts, but finally throws the hat on the floor. Her parents make her pick it up and hand it back to Ben before they give their tickets to the embarkation officer. When they’re all checked in, they walk down the hallway to our little alcove.

“Welcome aboard,” West says to the four of them. “Want to get your picture taken with Star Heart?”

“Yes!” Ben says, his eyes lighting up.

“No way,” his sister says. “I’m not posing with a loser mascot costume.”

Inside Kippy, I frown. The mother sighs, then grips Hannah’s arm and pulls her aside. She whispers, but they’re two steps away from me, so I can hear. Sometimes people forget that Kippy’s not an inanimate object.

“Hannah, this trip is for your brother. Are you going to behave, or do you want to stay in the cabin the whole time?”
 

There’s a moment of stony silence, but then Hannah sighs and mumbles an apology. The family arranges itself around me, with the kids on either side under my arms.

“Welcome aboard, Hannah and Ben!” I say, as West snaps a photo.
 

The girl steps on my toe, hard.

~ ~ ~

Later that day, I’m roaming the ship passing out fliers that offer one-on-one portrait sessions when I run out of ship maps—passengers always seem to lose theirs, so I try to keep a stash on me. I head to the atrium, where the Purser’s Desk always has replacements.

As I approach the desk I bite back a grimace, because Letta is working this afternoon. She and I usually just ignore each other, but ever since West and I became an official couple she’s taken to glaring at me outright whenever I cross her field of vision. Yesterday as we passed each other in the I-95 I swear she tried to trip me.

Letta’s helping a passenger, so I hope I can just grab the maps and go, but as I reach for the stack on the counter she slaps a hand on top.

“Those are for passengers,” she says, her accent icy. “Not lost employees.”

“That’s why I’m getting them,” I tell her. “Passengers keep asking me for a map.”

She slides the stack off the counter, away from me, and onto a shelf behind her. “Just direct them to where they need to go. It’s Star Heart’s mantra to be helpful, remember.” She smiles at her customer, a balding guy who is holding a shore excursion brochure.

“What time does the ruin hike start?” he asks. I’m irritated with Letta, but not about to make West look bad by having one of his photographers smack a purser in front of a passenger, so I wait until the guy has finished his questions and wandered off.

“Letta, can I just get a couple dozen maps? Please,” I add through gritted teeth.

“You’ll have to ask your manager to requisition them for you,” she says, and turns away.

Sweet Jesus, how spiteful can she be? It’s not like I broke her and West up, but Camelia told me that once, when he and Letta were dating, Letta saw him laughing with an attractive bartender and bribed a cook to slip super-hot peppers in the girl’s oatmeal. I’ve been sticking to bagels lately.

I spot Paolo across the atrium and dart over, pulling him out of sight of Letta’s station. “Hey, would you mind grabbing some ship maps for me? Letta’s being …”

“Say no more,” he says, his teeth flashing white in his bronzed face as he grins. Letta’s dislike of me has become ship gossip, and most of my co-photographers find it entertaining. He saunters up to the desk, collects the maps, and returns to where I’m hiding in the Promenade. “Here you go.” He hands them over with a flourish, making me laugh.

“You’re the best, thanks,” I say, and get back to work.

Up on the Lido deck, I hand out maps and brochures, and have just finished taking a few group photos of a bachelorette party when I spot Hannah again. She’s calling for her mom to watch her cannonball off the diving board, but her parents are distracted with putting sunscreen on Ben, and don’t notice. When she does splash into the pool, the impact sends droplets onto her family, including her dad’s e-reader, and she winds up with a scolding instead of admiration.

Hannah huffs off towards the doors leading to the Lido deck buffet, and I follow, knowing from her expression that she’s about to take her anger out on something. I watch her wander around the cafeteria, but instead of glancing towards the food, she traipses through the rows of tables. There are passengers coming and going, and my view is partially blocked, but by the time Hannah emerges from a row of tables and heads out the door to the side deck, she’s carrying a women’s purse that she definitely didn’t have before.

My stomach sinks. Great. She’s acting out by turning to petty larceny, and I should call over a security guard to report her. The girl is trouble, but … I can’t help but see myself in her. Sofia and I had a great relationship in high school and through my college years until she died, but when we were younger, not so much. I once took scissors to Sofia’s favorite sweater because of some slight I don’t even remember.

I’m betting Hannah needs a therapist big time, because it’s clear her parents are more focused on her brother. Which is understandable: even though it appears he’s in remission or something, the family has probably spent a lot of sleepless nights worrying and crying and praying he’d get through the latest hospital visit. But kids don’t always understand that less attention doesn’t mean they’re not as loved.
 

I don’t know them, don’t know anything about them except for my guesses, but I feel like I know every part of their lives. My sister was older than me, and there was never a time when my family didn’t revolve around her. It took me a long time, and a good counselor, to help me figure out how to deal with that growing up. I should have kept seeing that counselor through high school and college, but things got busy and I stopped going.

I’m not a therapist, am not sure I can even be one anymore … but I’m here, and I see her, see how much pain she’s in. How can I ignore her, knowing what she’s going through?

I hesitate, then follow Hannah without alerting anyone. She hasn’t gone far, and is rooting through the woman’s purse on a bench only a couple dozen feet down from the cafeteria door. As I approach, she flips open a pack of Tic-Tacs and shoves one into her mouth.

“Hi, Hannah,” I say, and she starts guiltily.

“Who are you?” Hannah asks. She frowns. “And how do you know my name?”

“I’m the girl who was in the loser mascot costume. Remember? You stepped on my toe.”

Hannah’s gaze drops to the deck floor.

“Sorry,” she mumbles. “It was an accident.”

“Was taking that purse an accident too?” I ask calmly. I’m on the balls of my feet, ready in case Hannah decides to dash away, but though her face turns scarlet and her whole body freezes, she doesn’t move to run.

“Am I in trouble?” she asks after a moment. Her knuckles are white on the strap of the purse.

“That depends. Are you going to return it?”

She stands. “Yes. I’ll give it back, I promise.”

“Let’s do it together,” I tell her firmly. “Right now.” I make her march back inside, where she approaches a table of sunburned middle-aged ladies. She offers up the purse, then glances at me.

“Um, you lost this,” she tells one of the women. It’s not technically a lie, so I don’t gainsay it with the whole truth. The women thank Hannah profusely for “finding” the purse, and Hannah has the grace to blush before we return outside to the bench.

I sit down and wonder what the hell I’m supposed to say now.

“Are you going to tell my parents?” Hannah asks. “I won’t do it again, I swear.”

I hesitate.

“How about you sit and talk to me a while, and we’ll consider it our secret. Okay?”

Hannah considers for a moment, looking suspicious, but eventually shrugs.

“Okay.” She sits next to me.
 

“Why did you take the purse, Hannah?” I ask. She shrugs again and doesn’t answer. I’ve got her attention now, but I don’t have any idea how to draw her out. “Was it to get back at your brother?” I guess.

Hannah’s gaze flies up to mine. Then she drops it and shakes her head, but it’s a guilty shake, as if she’s ashamed of herself. I don’t push, and for a moment we sit there in the sun, the ocean breeze toying with the ends of Hannah’s sandy hair as passengers traipse by en route to the buffet and the pool.
 

“So?” Hannah finally says, shooting me a fierce glance.

“I just wanted to say that I know how you feel,” I tell her.

At that her little fists bunch.

“No you don’t. No one does.” Her voice gets loud. “No one even cares.”

“That’s not true,” I counter. “Your family loves you.”

Hannah’s eyes fill with tears, though they don’t spill over. She turns to scowl at the ocean in front of us, stretching to the horizon. “They love Ben more.”

My heart breaks for her. “They love you so much, Hannah. You know how I know? My sister and I were a lot like you two. She was sick, and I used to think the same thing—”

“Your sister was sick like Ben?” Hannah asks.

“Probably not the exact same,” I say.

“He has neuroblastoma.” She pronounces it precisely, her eyes questioning, gauging whether she needs to explain, but she doesn’t; I know it affects the nervous system.

“My sister had acute lymphocytic leukemia,” I tell her.

“Oh. That’s in the bone marrow, right?”

My throat tightens, and I nod. Most people could go their entire lives not distinguishing between types of cancer, but this young girl knew them. Like I did. We were both healthy, but had spent years around doctors and their scary-sounding diagnoses.

“I was going to say that even though it sometimes seemed like they loved Sofia more, eventually I realized that wasn’t true, that they loved me just as much. And—”

“Is Sofia a stupid brat like Ben?”

The harsh words take me aback, until I remember the journals I wrote when I was little. They were filled with accounts of petty fights with Sofia that to my childish self felt like World War Three, every time. I know that Hannah’s anger towards her brother masks a lot of hurt and worry, all warring with resentment about feeling like she’s being constantly relegated to second place because of Ben’s illness.

“She could be,” I say evenly, trying to think of the right thing to say. I’m out of my depth here, despite my background. “But—”

“Where is she now?” Hannah interrupts again. I freeze, because there are such obvious parallels between us that I don’t want her to know Sofia died.

But Hannah reads my face, and by the way her skin pales I can see she knows it anyway. Her hands fly up to cover her mouth in horror, and suddenly she’s shaking, her previous attitude evaporating. Underneath is stark fear.

“I don’t want Ben to die,” she whimpers, and tears roll down her face.

“Of course you don’t,” I say, and draw her under my arm. Hannah turns and buries her face in my shoulder, and starts to sob.

Oh God, I remember this. The helplessness, the anguish. Going from raging resentment to broken, shamed tears in the space of three seconds. If it’s hard being a sibling anytime, it’s even more so when one sibling has the trump card of being sick. I loved Sofia with all my heart, but we still got in epic fights, particularly when I was younger. Add to all that complicated stuff the guilt that goes with being the healthy child, and it’s a mess.

A mess that despite my familiarity with it, I’m not qualified to handle. I have no idea what to say, and that cuts at me. What am I doing, delaying grad school to take photos on a cruise ship?
 

I pat Hannah’s arm as she cries, and do the best I can.

~ ~ ~

That evening I relay the incident to West over dinner. We’re allowed in the passenger dining areas as long as it’s not super-busy, so we’ve skipped the crew mess in favor of a taco bar on the Promenade.

“Yas, if Hannah steals another passenger’s stuff again, you could get in trouble if people find out you didn’t report it the first time,” West says as we sit down.

“She promised she wouldn’t.” I grimace as I meet West’s gaze. “I know, the promise of a troubled kid isn’t rock solid, but I couldn’t turn her in. They’d make her spend the rest of the trip being escorted by a security guard or something, and she’d be even more angry. It wouldn’t solve anything. At least this way I’ve gotten her to promise to come talk to me when she’s upset.” I tell him how we hung out all afternoon before I returned her to her parents.

“It sounds like you didn’t have a lot of time to take photos,” West observes.

“No, sorry. But I couldn’t turn away from her; she started telling me all about her brother, and she really does love him, I can tell, it’s just that ever since—”

“Did you at least get the minimum photo count?” West interrupts, putting down his taco. “Tell me you at least did the minimum.”

I duck my head. “I’ll catch up tomorrow,” I say, but West’s mouth flattens.

“Yasmin, that’s not going to look good. You’re the only one who’s low today.”

At that I sit back in my cushioned seat. The chicken tacos, smothered with salsa and sour cream, smell amazing, but suddenly I’m not hungry. “Are you listening to me? This girl was basically me ten years ago! Are you saying I should have ignored her?”

West pauses. “Of course not. I just don’t want you to get in trouble.”
 

“I’ll be fine. It’s Hannah I’m worried about.” West wears a stubborn expression, and I cross my arms. “Can Boss West go take a hike while I talk to my boyfriend?”

“Your boyfriend agrees with Boss West about not wanting you to get in trouble over your photo count,” he shoots back.

“Does it really matter?” I ask, but the look on West’s face makes me want to smack myself. His job is as important to him as helping Hannah is to me. “I take that back. Sorry, I forgot how bad it would look for you. How about after dinner I go finish up my count?”