The ferry kept bobbing up and down, looking like it would fall apart with the next wave.
"Is that the ferry?" I asked, bewildered someone would even want to enter that death contraption, not to mention drive it. On wobbly legs, I continued walking toward it, feeling the scent of rust mixed with the saltiness coming from the water.
Jacob didn't answer, at least not immediately, and he kept walking toward it until he reached the makeshift stairs, leading onto the deck.
The ferries I had seen during my life could hold more than thirty people at least. This one? We'd be lucky if it could hold even ten of us.
"I know it doesn't look like much," Jacob said, breaking through my thoughts and my impending panic. "But she's strong and she's been in my family for many generations." That, I could believe, not so much the prior statement. "It'll take you where you need to go."
Wait a second.
"You do know where we're supposed to go, don't you?" I asked as I came closer to him, hauling my suitcase along. "Right?" I only now realized he didn't ask me about the island. He didn't ask me about my destination at all.
Jacob simply grinned as he looked at me and I realized this man smiled a lot. Maybe even too much for this early in the morning. "I don't, but she…" He looked at the ferry. "She knows where your heart needs to go."
9
KAIRA
My mind was reeling,replaying Jacob's response on a loop. More than that, it was reeling because I still boarded the ferry, not asking the questions eating at my insides.
The ferry wobbled on violent waves as we stepped onto it, the croaking of the metal increasing the further away from the shore we got. So many words lodged themselves in my throat, aching to be released, to form the questions lingering in my mind.
But none came out. Better yet, none dared to come out because I feared the answers would make me run from here, and deep down I didn't want that.
Jacob told me to sit on one of the plastic chairs as he disappeared somewhere to the front, probably to start the ferry. The cold surface of the chair seeped through my pants, making me regret my choice in clothing.
But this type of cold didn't just exist on the surface of my skin. It dragged through my bones, wrapping itself around every single muscle, digging deep inside my heart. My nostrils flared as the scent of fuel penetrated through the forefront of my mind, erasing the smell of an ocean almost entirely. But I was too dazed to notice the turning of the engine. Too lost inside my ownmind to pull myself up from the chair and find Jacob to ask the questions I had.
I blamed the fog surrounding us on my inability to say anything, but as my head lifted and I looked out at the open sea, I realized we were no longer on the shore, already traveling toward the island.
"This just keeps getting weirder and weirder," I mumbled, wrapping my arms around myself as the biting cold seeped through my coat, settling behind my ribs.
I had half a mind to go up to Jacob's cabin to ask him to clarify what he meant with those words, but something told me I would get nothing but more cryptic words. It felt as if every single person I had met in the past two days was incapable of giving me straight answers, which drove me insane.
What was so difficult about answering my questions properly? First Christian, then Macy, and now Jacob. It was as if every single person clamped their mouth shut when I mentioned my last name or the island or my mother, and I had no fucking idea why. Was the truth so difficult to voice or were they all just enjoying fucking with my brain?
Perhaps I was overthinking it all, but overthinking or not, I couldn't shake off the feeling I was sailing into the storm, no pun intended. Jacob mentioned an actual storm coming through later on today and as we sailed farther, the first drops of rain reached my face, coming from the sides where the awning wasn't covering the seating area.
My eyes locked on the horizon, where the fog appeared thinner and where the first lightning bolt pierced through the darkness, illuminating the dark skies. It would seem the storm was closer than Jacob had initially thought and I just hoped it wouldn't catch us before we reached the island.
If we ever reach the island, that was.
This veil of secrecy and of weirdness kept following me since I entered Ashbourne, but it would seem a part of me didn't really want to understand everything. If it had, I wouldn't be sitting here, trusting the man I had never seen before. A man that hadn't asked me about my destination, leaving me with a cryptic answer.
He talked about this ferry as if it were a living thing, capable of making decisions like him and I were. I didn't know what to make of it. Not even a little bit.
"I just wanted to know more about my mom's past, dammit," I mumbled again, taking out my phone from my pocket. I wasn't surprised to see the lack of signal out here, but I was surprised to see the timing.
We've been sailing for almost an hour already, yet it felt as if mere minutes had passed since we departed from the mainland. I must have been deeper inside my head when we left if I lost track of time so much. The scarf I wore had proven to be pretty much useless against the biting wind swiveling around me, and I burrowed deeper into it, hoping it would provide a bit more heat at least.
The ferry wasn't built to have many people inside the cabin where the captain was, at least it didn't seem to be, looking at it from the outside. A small window at the back of the cabin gave me a clear view of the back of Jacob's head, and I had a feeling there was no space there for me. So I bit my lip and pulled my coat more over my legs, thankful I had decided to wear the boots instead of sneakers as was my initial plan.
The coffee I drank just before leaving the B&B sloshed inside my stomach, but it wasn't the sea sickness that was making me feel queasy. It was the unknown I was going into. The churning in my gut worsened the farther we sailed. No matter how many times I told myself I was doing the right thing, the anxiety didn't dissipate.
If anything, it only grew, clawing through my throat as I stared at the empty seat opposite of me, praying this entire trip wasn't a mistake.
I had often caught myself overthinking, doubting just because people told me things I thought were correct, or relevant to what I was doing. I did that many times in my early career and while I learned how to let go of those thoughts, I felt them crippling me now, making me question more than once if this choice I made was something I needed to do or simply something I wanted to do, because I wanted to run away from my reality.
