"This is one of my nighties," Mira said. She laughed in spite of herself as the somewhat worse for wear confection of lace and satin dangled silkily from her hands. It was just such aridiculousthing to find as her last souvenir of the sunken boat, the sort of weird luck you could only laugh at. "I used to sleep in this."
She turned toward Dane. He was flushing slightly, making her realize that she was waving a piece of skimpy nightwear around. Blushing a little herself, she lowered it and stopped flashing it at him, but her excitement didn't abate. "This is mine. So that meansMerrylegs—that's my boat—went down somewhere near here."
"Yes, it wasn't very far away," Dane said.
"You saw it go down?" she asked, excited.
"No, but I saw—" He broke off swiftly. "We might be able to find the wreck," he went on after a moment. "If so, we can get some of your things."
Her heart leaped in hope, but then sank again. "Unless you have SCUBA gear stashed under your cabin, that's not very likely."
"I might have a way," Dane said. "I can try later."
Mira tried to shake off her brief surge of hope. Everything onMerrylegswas likely too damaged by water to salvage anyway, and she couldn't imagine how Dane thought he might be able to bring anything up from the submerged vessel. "It's okay," she said, carefully folding up the nightie. It had a few rips from its adventure on the rocks, but was otherwise surprisingly intact. "I can't believe I found this much. At least I have something to sleep in."
"What did you say your boat's name was?"
"Merrylegs," she said. "It's from—"
"Black Beauty,right?"
"Yes," Mira said, surprised. Her eyes opened wide. "Most people don't recognize that. I mean, most people know the book, but not enough to remember all the horses in it."
"I loved that book," Dane said. He seemed to relax a little, opening up and even giving her a shy, beautiful smile. His green eyes were bright with interest. "I read it over and over when I was a kid. It made me cry every time."
"Me too!" Mira grinned at him, flush with the fellow-feeling that always came from finding someone else who loved one of her favorite books. She had met very few men who would admit to crying at a book. "I used to cry and cry whenever I reread the part where Ginger died, but what really made me cry was when he was reunited in the end with the boy who used to love him as a child."
"Ginger's death wasn't the part that was saddest for me," Dane said. His gaze grew a little distant. "It was being parted from his friends, knowing they would never be together and happy again."
Mira swallowed; this brought back too many memories for her as well. "But he was happy again," she argued. "It wasn't thesamehome, but in the end he found a wonderful home with people who loved him."
"After he was too broken to ever be whole," Dane said quietly.
"But no, the whole point of the book was that hewasn't. It didn't matter. Even if he had some scars, they loved him just the same, and he started coming back to life once he wasn't alone anymore. He—" She broke off abruptly, realizing that they were no longer talking about the book. Suddenly this felt like far too intimate a conversation to be having with a near stranger.
Yet he hardly felt like a stranger. On some level, she felt like she had known him all her life.
She had experienced this instant feeling of connection with a few friends before, the thing where you started talking to someone in a college dorm or a bar, and eventually look up to realize six hours had passed and you hadn't even noticed the time pass at all.
But she had never felt it on this level. It was an instantclick, a feeling of some lost part of her soul snapping into place. She didn't believe in soulmates or fate or anything of the sort, but it felt to her, in this moment, as if somehow she wasmeantto have been out in that storm, and washed up on this island.
Don't be ridiculous,she thought, as a quiver of mixed anticipation and nervousness marched up her spine.Just because you like the same book doesn't mean that you're made for each other or anything of the sort.
Dane was gathering up the clean, wet dishes, and Mira wished she hadn't let the conversation trail off into awkwardness. "Do you have—um—other chores that I'm keeping you from?" she asked, offering a fresh topic as an olive branch. "You said something about checking for storm damage."
"My garden," Dane said after a moment, carefully balancing the pile of dishes in his big hands. "I should go see if it survived."
"May I come? I'd love to see that."
The tiniest of smiles flickered on his face. "I'd love to have you come," he said sincerely, and then quickly looked away.
MIRA
The walkto Dane's garden was a short one, made slightly longer because they had to step over fallen trees on the forest path. The walk took them past a burbling spring with a small cairn of stones built around it, although Mira didn't even recognize what it was until Dane knelt beside it to rinse the dishes in the trickle of water flowing away from it.
Now that she realized this was the island's water source, Mira saw the head of the pipe that led downhill to Dane's shower at the cabin. There was also a chipped cup sitting on a rock by the bubbling water. Dane dipped it full and offered it to her. She took a sip, somehow feeling as if she ought to be careful of drinking strange water from holes in the ground. But she had just been drinking it at the cabin earlier, and anyway, it seemed fresh and clean. There was a very slightly salty taste, but otherwise it was cold and good.
Dane set the dishes to dry on clean rocks. Mira swished her nightie in the flow of water to get the salt out, wrung out the silky fabric, and laid it out to dry as well.
