He stands for a minute, eyes on me, watching, and I can almost feel the guilt coiling tight in his chest. Finally, I hear his footsteps fade back toward the house. Leaving me alone.
Alone.
I sit on the cliff edge, watching the stars swirl overhead, time passing in the darkness, galaxies forming, the past unmaking itself.
If he had shown me the boat the day after I swam to the island, I would have taken it. I would have rowed out into the sea and maybe I would have made it to the Faroes. Scraped up onto a beach where police and reporters would have been waiting for me. Maybe Helen Ashcroft would have been there, panic and relief in her eyes—desperate to know the story of what happened. I would have been gone only a few days on the island, but it would have been weeks, maybe a month, to everyone else. I would fly back to Nana, and then Seattle, back into the arms of James. I would resume my life, settling into that well-worn pattern of habit and normalcy. I would drink coffee at the café, see movies with James, a bag of salted popcorn between us. I would have pretended everything was fine. Because I wouldn’t have known any better—I wouldn’t have been on the island long enough to realize what I truly wanted.
But I also know this: on dark winter days, I would likely sit in my office and watch the rain stream down the window, and I would think of the island. I would think of him. The man I met again, for only a few days, but who seemed to look at me in a way that made cracks in my surface. That made some part of me never want to go back home. I’d spend my life dreaming about it—the island, him—imagining adifferent decision. If I had stayed, if I hadn’t taken the little boat and rowed away from the island. I would always wonder if I might have been happier out there, at sea, with that man named Clay. Another kind of life. One I probably didn’t deserve.
The island would have called to me, forever, until it drove me mad. Until I became an old woman with an unfinished life. With regrets so deep they would begin to split me apart, like rotted flesh peeling away from bones. A woman with an alternate timeline fading away behind her. A part of herself she ignored.
Perhaps there is no deeper wound in a woman’s chest than the road not taken. The life that might have been.
Like the locket I took when I was a little girl—I would always be out of place, out of time. My pulse desperate to return to the slow, deliberate cadence of the island.
Now, here, the dark peels away my thoughts. I lie back and count the stars, the minutes sliding over my skin, and I think about what I’ve lost. I measure the weight of Clay’s words:There was a boat, Ellie.
A way off the island, from the beginning.
I’m not sure what I should feel. The betrayal is too tangled and hard to pinpoint. Should I hate him, condemn him, never want to see him again? Or something else?
Love him… because it’s all I know. All I want.
The night turns cool, a dampness in the air like it might rain. I sit up, knees to chest, and twist the sapphire ring around my finger. It holds everything—the hours spent in his arms, the storms we survived, the truth he kept from me. The life I lost. And the one I found.
I hear the front door open, his bare feet on the path—everything sharpened somehow, my life made so clear. Out across the sea, the mainland waits for me, a life on hold. He doesn’t speak, but I sense him behind me, hesitating, before I feel the softness of something against my shoulders—a blanket he’s carried down from the house.
“You told me once that fate would always bring me back here,” I say,not turning to look at him. “You said it would always bring me back to this island. To you.”
“Fuck fate,” he whispers, a bluntness I rarely hear from him. “When the sea took the boat, I thought it meant the island didnae want ye to leave. I told myself it was fate. But I’ve always known it was me. I was careless. I’m the reason ye’ve been stuck here all this time.”
I stand up to face him. “I could have left before,” I answer. “When we saw the freighter. I could have started a fire. I could have left when the little boat returned, I could have rowed away and never looked back, but I chose to stay.” I swallow. “I chose this.”
“This…” he balks, shaking his head. “This isn’t a life, Ellie. Adrift… never knowing when the next storm might take everything from us. Even our lives. I should’ve let ye go a long time ago, but I can set it right now, get ye back to shore. At least I know ye’ll be safe.”
“No,” I answer, blood beating against my eardrums. “You took the choice from me once before, you don’t get to take it again.” Clay remains silent. He knows I’m right.
I slow my thoughts, tilting my head to look up at him.
“You don’t get to decide where I belong. I chose this life because I wanted you more than I wanted anything out there.” I point to the ocean, dark and seething. I point to the past, already long gone. “You can’t keep death from finding me someday—out here or back on the mainland.” I reach out, touching a hand to his chest—this man who tears me apart—the wind blowing against our faces, smelling of salt and green. “I hate what you did, I hate you for lying to me…” I say, nearly choking on the words. “I hate that you denied me a way back. Denied me the chance.”
I see the slightest twitch at his shoulders.
“But if you had given me the choice, I would have taken it. I would have left,” I tell him, knowing that the truth will hurt him. Of what might have been. “I would have gone back to something I don’t even want. I would have given this up, before I realized the island, with you, is where I belong.”
He stares back at me, and I shift closer until we’re only a foot apart. I remember a quote from the Dalai Lama—it was painted on the wall of my neighborhood coffee shop back in Seattle. I used to stare at it, sipping tea, trying to convince myself to let go of the past.There are only two days in the year that nothing can be done. One is called Yesterday and the other is called Tomorrow. I feel like I could cry, remembering it now.
Because I could never have both: the past and the future. I had to sacrifice something. This was the bargain. The truth of it.
One had to be abandoned.
And I made my choice long ago. When I swam toward the island.
“You saved me the day you carried me up from the shore. And whatever the reason, fate or free will, that brought me back here, I don’t care. None of it matters now. Because this…” I steady my breathing, feeling the ground beneath me, the night air a shiver against my skin. “It’s all I’ve ever wanted. All I want still.”
Tears slip down to his chin, and I wipe them away with my fingertips. Salt and time. I can see his heartbeat at his throat. “I dinnae want ye to regret this life, regret being here… with me.”
“It’s always a risk, choosing one life over another,” I say. The wind pushes up from the sea, and a memory finds me—a sliver of guilt I’ve carried for too long. “After the hurricane,” I begin. “When we found the resort. I swam over there one night, alone, without you.”
