He sat up quickly and winced. He grabbed his head and muttered something vile. He pulled his hand away and scowled at the blood on it. “What hit me?”
“The anchor,” she said, taking Annabelle from Lydia and rocking her. “Luckily, it hit you in the head, otherwise it might have killed you.”
He gave her a narrowed look that promised retribution.
She smiled innocently and rocked the baby.
He looked around for a moment. “When did the storm stop?”
“I’m not certain. It’s been a while.”
She watched him brace his feet on the rocks and push hard on the lifeboat. It rocked, and he kept rocking it until the anchor she couldn’t budge began to loosen. He gripped the chain in two hands and pulled the anchor free almost too easily, then tilted the boat over to one side.
A snatch of pinkish sky was all she could see, but it was a welcome sight. Not too long before, she’d been certain that wall of rocks was the last thing she’d ever see.
While Hank crawled up onto one of the high rocks, she turned to the children. Theodore and Lydia were in deep conversation with the goat, assuring it like worried parents that everything was safe.
“Hey, Smitty.”
She turned back and looked up. The sunlight grew a little brighter, and it took a moment for her eyes to adjust. She could hear the waves against the shore, the caw of gulls. She caught the sweet tropical scent of something wet and green.
“Take a look at this,” Hank called down to her. She crawled up the rocks, hugging Annabelle to her chest. She knelt on a flat rock and froze. Everything froze—her ability to speak, her breath, for an instant, her heartbeat.
Spread out before her was the broad cove of a tropical inlet, entirely arched in a thick rainbow of pink, purple, blue, and yellow. Beneath the rainbow were lush green hills. In the distance was the high, dark cone of a volcano. A small cloud of mist ringed that tall peak and made the island look as if it touched heaven.
The water in the cove bled from deep aqua blue to pale green to a brilliant silvery color just before it foamed like spun sugar into the wet sand. Spiky pandanus palms and bushes thick with flowers the color of the tropical sunset spread from the green hills all the way down to the edge of the beach, where the white sand took on pink tints from the cast of the slowly setting sun.
Even the sky was different here. The late afternoon sun was a yellowish-pink ball in the west, where clouds strolled by wearing colors of gray and lavender. It was the same sky, the same earth, yet it seemed too brilliant to be earthly. Perhaps it was because this island’s beauty was something she had never before experienced.
Like yesterday’s dream, the rainbow faded. A cloud blocked the sun, but there was still enough tropical warmth to cause steam to rise up from the sand and from the lush green ferns and bushes behind the beach. Tall coconut palms waved in the trade wind like welcoming hands. Their color turned from green to violet to purple while the gleam of the sea blended from silver to pink.
Surprised that something could touch her as deeply as this place did, Margaret stared at the changing colors so real, yet so unreal. She had seen islands, had seen the setting sun and pink skies after a storm. She’d seen many beaches. The northern coast of California was one of the most majestic sights in the world.
But this was so different it was hard to believe it was the same Pacific Ocean that she had known all of her life. There was more than just a sense of peace about this island. More than a place saturated in beauty. It was untouched, isolated, as though the world had passed it by. Not forsaken, but hidden. A treasure so precious, nature had protected it.
Silently, the children joined them, first curious, then chattering. They pointed at the flowers and birds and shoals of bright swimming fish spread before them. Annabelle tugged on the neck of her dress and tried to squirm her way down. Margaret hugged her tighter.
Annabelle patted her shoulder to get her attention, but Margaret couldn’t bring herself to look away at that moment. All she could do was whisper, “This is paradise.”
7
“This is stupid.”
Margaret raised her chin and looked Hank in the eye. “What is stupid? The fact that I made a suggestion or that you don’t agree with it?”
“Look, sweetheart.” He dropped the trunk he was carrying, and it hit the sand with a heavy thud. “You just worry about those kids and let me handle everything else.”
Margaret turned away from him and watched the children for a second. Not because he’d said to, but because she’d momentarily forgotten about them.
Luckily Annabelle was curled underneath a palm tree, sleeping on a tarp near the tilley lamp. It wasn’t quite dark yet, just dusky and shadowed. Theodore was digging in the wet sand. Nearby, the goat ate a clump of tangled kelp. Lydia was bent over, her hands pressed against her knees and her blond hair hanging in the sand as she stared at the goat’s belly. There was a tin cup underneath the animal’s udder. It looked as if she was trying to milk it.
“Lydia! Wait!” She turned to Hank, who was looking at the girl, too.
They both started walking toward her at the same time.
“Hey, little girl!” he bellowed. “You trying to milk that thing?”
Lydia looked up at him and nodded.
