And this thing… with him. What happened last night outside. It can’t be real. I can’t let it be real. My life is waiting for me back in Seattle. Not here. This place is a fable. An impossible mound of rock and soil. What I feel for him is desperation, my heart spun off course, swayed by the Atlantic winds.
I can’t allow myself to be deceived by this feeling at the center of my chest. At the root of my spine.
I’m wearing another man’s ring. And I have to go back to him.
I dress in the same T-shirt I wore the day I swam to the island. But I pull on a wool sweater and a pair of linen pants that belonged to Clay’s wife. I can’t set out across the sea without pants. Or a way to keep warm.
He is already on the front porch when I step outside, my bundle of prepared supplies in my arms.
“I have to go,” I say, firm—convincing myself. But just being this close to him again sends a shudder of doubt back through me. “It’s the only thing that makes sense.” I’ve pretended long enough, played house, as if it could last. But the real world is waiting. And I can’t live in this dream any longer.
Like Alice down the rabbit hole. It’s time to wake up.
He doesn’t speak, just peels me open with his eyes. He carries my supplies, eyes slanted out to the sea as if he’s judging the tide, the wind, trying to gauge my chance of survival.
I ease the little boat down into the water, the sun perfect and shimmering against the calm sea, but it all starts to feel terrifyingly real. The boat now seems too small, the sea too large, but this might be my only chance.
I can’t risk waiting any longer.
He places my things inside the bow of the boat, but before I can step inside, he grabs my hand, pulling me back. His eyes are like two dark storms, and I sway a little, swallowing, my body so close to his I feel sheltered from the soft wind, from the sea waiting to swallow me up. I rest my palm against his chest, where his heartbeat is a drum, where I can feel the air leaving his lungs. I stare into the painful blue of his eyes, begging him not to let me go. To tell me something to make me stay. Begging his mouth to move over mine. Pleading with him to take me back to the house.
Stay.
Stay.
Stay.
He’s so damn close his skin smells like sunlight, like the sea, and I want to rise onto my tiptoes, press my lips to his, so badly it feels like my body will shatter if he pulls away.
But I slow my breathing. I rock back on my heels, severing the tension held in my chest.
I can’t allow myself to forget why I’m here, on the shore. My mind already made up.
I don’t need a reason to stay.
His eyes fall to my hand against his chest, the ring glinting in the dull light, and his fingers slide down the sleeves of the sweater that belonged to his wife, releasing his hold on me.
I touch the side of the boat—feeling weightless, wanting to touch Clay again—but knowing it’s time to go. He holds the boat steady so I can step inside, and I stare up at him, knowing this is likely the last time I’ll ever see him. Even if someday I find myself back on the island again—like he said last night—I will have aged. I will be an old woman, but he will remain the same.
“Maybe in another time, another life, I could have stayed and we could have…” I close my eyes. “Time just isn’t on our side.”
He watches me, like this isn’t enough—a coward’s excuse. A lie. Or maybe he understands. Maybe the coldness in his eyes is because he knows it’s what I have to do, and that stings the worst. Because he’s accepted it.
“Goodbye, Ellie,” he says, and I can hear all the regret, all the unsaid things hanging in the air. He pushes the little boat away from the shore, the hull scraping briefly across the rocks, and then I’m adrift out into the deep ocean, away from the island I found again after all these years—proof that I was right, that I didn’t make it all up.
I drift away from him, and my heart feels like it’s severing in half.
CHAPTER NINE
I think of the seagull that Clay scared off the island. How it had wanted to stay, but he forced it to leave. This isn’t like that. This is the opposite.
I’ve thought of the island nearly every day of my adult life, wondering if it might still be out there. It has tormented me. Made me what I am. I tried to forget it but couldn’t.
And now, as the little rowboat drifts farther from the island, the ache inside me worsens.
The day is calm, blue and crystalline, not a hint of wind pulling me in any direction, and when I reach for the oar, I see something tucked beneath the seat. Something that wasn’t there yesterday.
I pull it free.
