“I hate to break it to you, but there’s no Coast Guard out here. Just you, me, and Matthew in his Italian leather loafers.”
Now I’m actually getting nervous.There’s no way that pickled skeleton made it this far into the jungle on her own. So much for my day of changing perspectives: now all the Warrens will remember is how I lost their matriarch. She’s probably being devoured by feral pigs or sea snakes as we speak.
“For what it’s worth,” he says, pulling a vine out of my path, “I’m impressed. I can’t believe you got them out here.”
“The tides helped,” I say.
“Maybe, but it’s still a feat. I’ve been itching to get the Warrens involved in conservation efforts since I started here, but I’ve never had the guts to pull it off.”
This time, it’s me who stops in my tracks. Is Caleb actuallycomplimentingme?
“Ya, well, it doesn’t matter now,” I remind him. “If anything’s happened to Patricia, it’s all they’ll remember. I’ll be lucky if they don’t bulldoze the whole damn island out of spite.”
“She’ll take care of herself. She’s a tough bird, Patricia. Even if she can be a little…”
“Terrifying?” I fill in. Caleb chuckles.
“I was going to say prickly.”
“That’s diplomatic of you,” I retort. “But I guess you can’t trash talk the boss.”
“It’s not that,” he says. “I’ve been working for Arthur and Patricia for five years. When I first met them, I thought they’d be total megalomaniacs. But that’s not who they are. They have their shortcomings, of course, but when Jim’s mom had a stroke and needed emergency surgery, they paid for all of it. They gave Allie and Russ the down payment for their house in Toronto. And they took a chance on me when no one else would. If I was working on another yacht, it’d be years before I would have made Captain.”
“Doing good things doesn’t excuse them from environmental ignorance.”
“No,” Caleb says. “It doesn’t. What I’m trying to tell you is that they may be stuck in their ways, but they’re decent peopleat their core. More than decent. And if you give them the chance, they might do something to surprise you.”
“That’s easy for you to say, wonderboy,” I quip. “Not everyone on this boat is daydreaming about you falling overboard.”
Instead of hitting me with some snappy comeback, Caleb goes quiet for a minute. After a few seconds, I look back at him to make sure he isn’t being devoured by some serpent or poisonous plant.
Don’t get your hopes up, Stella.
“Gia heard your conversation about the whale at dinner,” he says as we lock stares. I stiffen. If Caleb gives me flack for walking out on dinner, too, I swear to this island I will chuck one of these fallen coconuts at his head. “Is that why you wanted them to come here so badly?”
As he speaks, his blue eyes catch one of the ribbons of light that dances through the canopy.
“That’s part of it,” I say, stepping over a large, murky puddle to walk past him. I don’t give him any more information, which of course makes him want more.
“And the other part?”
“Everyone keeps telling me how great the Warrens are… But they live in a bubble. As crazy as this is, I don’t think anyone has ever impressed on them how detrimental climate change really is. People always seem content to bury their heads in the sand and pretend our planet isn’t on fire. But this family actually has the means todosomething about it. I thought if I showed them a way they could make a difference, maybe it would help them get involved in creating solutions.”
Caleb nods.
“Well then,” he says slowly, as if choosing his next words very, very carefully. “It’s a good thing they have someone likeyou to teach them.”
It’s a good thing they have someone like me?I do an audial double-take. For the seven-thousandth time this trip, I think back to when we first met on the beach, before Caleb turned saltier than a margarita glass. I wonder what things might have been like if we’d met under different circumstances. If Caleb’s initial disdain for me was less about my background and more about his obsession to please the Warrens. If he, like Jules, is just desperate to be accepted into their little clan.
“Hey, have a look at this,” he tells me, bending down towards a tangle of small white flowers on the side of the trail. For a second, I wonder if he’s spotted some kind of danger—killer crabs? Man-eating tarantulas? But he pulls out a pocketknife from his back pocket and emerges with a cutting of sooty, brown root.
He holds it towards me to smell.
“Is that… ginger?” I ask, recognizing the scent.
“It grows fresh all over the islands,” he tells me. “Turmeric, too. If we’re lucky, we might even see some guava off the trail, though it’s technically considered an invasive species.”
He hands me the root and I inhale its peppery scent. Instantly, my nose feels clearer—my senses sharper.
