It was never a consideration.
The minute Gen crawled into bed, the fear struck. That old terror, let loose in the dark, that nameless, floating phantom that had accompanied her through childhood and still sat on her shoulders as an adult. The ridiculous, infantile conviction that she’d be abandoned. That everyone would die, one after another, leaving her at a string of grave sites, the only one left to place flowers and grieve. All alone, finally, with her island and her silence.
It had been with her as long as she could remember, even before her father, before Eddie. Gen remembered it, long, terrible nights when she’d begged for her father to come sit with her so she would know that he wouldn’t disappear. Days spent listening to her mother trying to convince her that she was just being a foolish child, that of course the people who loved her wouldn’t just die.
But they had, one after another, just as she’d known all along. And Gen lived in daily, hourly fear that the worst was yet to happen.
And now she knew what the worst would be. She lay in the bed that had held her grandmother and her great-grandmother and her great-great-grandmother, and she knew that what she’d been waiting for was this man to appear. She’d known from her first memory that there would be someone in her life whose leaving would shatter her. She’d thought her dreams of Rafe had simply been reflections of that. They hadn’t. They had been warnings.
It was so stupid. She was a grown woman. A woman of the nineties, who had never, not even in the years when she really loved Michael, lived or died by a man. She even admitted to herself that Michael’s death had left her with no greater emotion than relief at her re-found independence.
She swore that the only person she couldn’t lose was Annie.
And yet, the minute Rafe had opened his eyes, she’d recognized him. Not as the man in her dream, but as the person she’d feared all those years. The single human being who seemed to tap into that deep place in her that held instincts she’d never been able to name. Primal memories so powerful that Gen couldn’t believe she hadn’t heard them before.
But she had, in different ways, faint and troubling, as if she’d only heard them from far off, like fading explosions from a very old sun. Echoes so deeply ingrained that they had altered the tenor of her life without her even realizing it, until the sun returned from its distant orbit to surprise her with its terrible power.
And so she lay in bed, watching the spectacular assault of the storm, listening to the old house protest and fight back, and the terror grew in her like a cancer. Because all she could think of was that, as surely as Rafe had appeared, he was going to leave.
And that his was the leaving she wouldn’t survive.
The storm must have eased during the night, because Gen finally drifted into an uneasy sleep. She didn’t have the nightmare, just a jumble of disjointed dreams about Annie and her father. She even heard Michael whispering to her, deep in the night, and he hadn’t disturbed her dreams for a long time now.
The day never seemed to really dawn; the night just eased into an indistinct gray. By then Gen was wide-awake again, staring out her window at the angry, churning sea and the scudding clouds that seemed to skim the heaving waves. The storm had eased. It hadn’t finished. Gen relented and tuned her portable radio to the weather station—and lost a little more of her equanimity.
They weren’t riding out a storm. They were seeing the advance squall line of a hurricane that was threatening the coast. Gen rubbed at her weary eyes. Just what she needed. A hurricane, and no way off the island. When she’d arrived there hadn’t been a breath about it, or she wouldn’t have ever come. If she hadn’t been plagued by those stupid dreams, she would have paid more attention to the world around her.
She had to figure a way to jimmy the temperamental two-way radio back to life, if only to get hold of Annie and let her know that everything was okay. If worse came to worst, she’d go over and break into the wildlife station. They probably had a radio that was the model of modern efficiency. Gen simply could not let Annie worry about her. Especially after all the times she’d sat at the edge of her little girl’s bed stroking her head and promising that she would never be alone.
First things first. The storm shutters needed closing, and the generator needed checking. And then, before she went traipsing around in her sou’wester, Gen would have to figure out exactly what to do with her guest.
She found him standing in the living room, where he was enjoying the view out the floor-to-ceiling windows along the oceanfront wall. Gen had had them installed when she renovated the sagging, empty house. She’d also bowed to common sense and given them good, stout shutters, in preparation for the kind of news she’d just had. But they had yet to be really tested.
Rafe didn’t move as she neared. She wondered if he knew she was there. He was so still, standing with his arms down, his head up a little, as if he was searching the ravaged sky for answers. He’d fashioned a wrap with one of the big bathroom towels, leaving his back and shoulders bare. Gen couldn’t take her eyes off them, off the solid, uncompromising lines of him, work hardened and sleek. Warm as life against her hands. Protective, rather than intimidating, even when he was angry.
She lifted a hand to her mouth, as if to hold back the memories just the sight of him seemed to provoke. A small house with a hardwood floor and stone fireplace. The sun beating down on his glossy hair and tanned face. His smile at her approach over the hard, dusty ground.
But it couldn’t be. It couldn’t.
Could it?
“Have you remembered anything?” she asked, her voice husky with denial.
He didn’t even flinch. Just shook his head, as if the weight of that admission was too much for words.
“Does anything look familiar?”
His shoulders lifted just a little as his head came down. “That,” he said, still watching the ocean.
“What kind of impressions do you get from it?”
Another small silence, as he assimilated the question. “I was happy here.”
Gen didn’t know how to answer him. She didn’t know what other questions to ask that might pry something loose, so she retreated to the pragmatic.
“How’s your head this morning?”
He shrugged.
