I raise my camera. Frame the shot. Delilah at the bow with the ocean behind her, the wind in her hair, the whole world open and blue. I take ten frames without thinking.
“That’s your bridal portrait right there,” I say.
Her eyes light up. “Here? On the bow?”
“Golden hour. You in the dress. Wind doing exactly what it’s doing right now. I’ll shoot from the side so I get you and the ocean and the sky all in one frame. It’ll look like you’re standing at the edge of the world.”
“I’m going to cry,” she says.
“Save it for the wedding. I need you dry for the portraits.”
Lottie appears from below deck, slightly flushed. "The bathroom has a rain shower and a soaking tub. I just stood in there for two minutes trying to figure out which buttons to press. A rain shower. On a boat.”
“Yacht,” Justin says from behind her, climbing up from the lower deck with grease on his hands and a wrench in his back pocket.
Lottie turns. “What?”
“It’s a yacht. Not a boat.”
“It floats on water. It’s a boat.”
“A fishing trawler is a boat. This is a floating hotel with Italian marble.”
“So it’s a fancy boat.”
Justin’s jaw does the thing. The Spencer jaw thing—the same micro-movement Paul makes when he’s processing something that irritates him. It runs in the family, apparently.
“It’s a yacht,” he says again, quieter, like he’s trying to end the conversation by lowering his volume instead of raising it.
“Agree to disagree,” Lottie says with a smile that is not agreeing toanything.
“There’s nothing to disagree about. It’s a classification.”
“And I’m classifying it as a boat.”
Olson and Mitch explode up the stairs from below deck, Aidan right behind them. They were supposed to be sitting in the salon. They were not sitting in the salon.
“Mom! There’s a hot tub!”
“Don’t touch it.”
“There’s a button that makes the jets go!”
“Did you press it?”
Silence.
“Boys.”
“It turned off by itself!” Mitch says, which is not the same as answering the question.
“They also found a room with a TV that comes out of the wall,” Aidan adds helpfully.
“How do you know that?”
“Because Olson pressed something.”
“Olson, enough with the buttons.”
