Charlotte lowers herself carefully beside Ryan’s marker while I work, Connor still held against her chest. She never takes her eyes off him.
After a while, her voice comes through the sound of the shovel breaking earth.
“He would’ve liked having you as an uncle.”
I stop for half a second, then keep digging.
When the grave is finished, I straighten slowly and look down at it.
It’s so much smaller than the others.
Charlotte comes to stand beside me after a moment. She doesn’t move immediately. Just stands there looking down into it while Connor rests against her.
“Connor Gallagher. He was our son.” Her voice stays steady somehow through all of it. “Whatever this island takes from us… it can’t take that.”
“No,” I say quietly. “Never that.”
Then she kneels.
She takes her time saying goodbye to him. Adjusting the wrap around him carefully. Smoothing her hand once over his chest in the same slow motion she’s repeated all morning, like she’s trying to memorize even this part too.
Then, finally, she lowers him into the ground.
It’s harder to watch than anything I’ve survived here.
When she’s done, I kneel beside her.
I look at him one last time. “We love you, Connor.”
Then I reach for the shovel.
The sound of dirt hitting the grave is soft and horribly final. Every pass closes something permanently. I keep going until the earth is level again. Until it looks like the others beside it.
Afterward, I cut the marker the same way I always have. Same height. Same spacing. Same careful depth carved into the wood.
I press it into the ground beside the others and step back.
Charlotte’s hand finds mine a second later. I close my fingers around it, and we stand there together in silence while pale morning light filters through the trees overhead.
“What do we do now, Dane?”
Not broken. Not hopeless. Just asking what comes next.
I look at our son’s marker for a long moment before tightening my grip on her hand.
“We keep surviving.”
Chapter 19
Charlotte Gallagher
We visitConnor’s grave every morning. Not for long—sometimes only a few minutes—but we go. It’s become part of the day, the way rituals do, quietly and without discussion, until one morning it’s simply there, and it would feel wrong to leave it undone.
“Morning, my beautiful boy.”
Talking to him doesn’t feel strange anymore. It did at first, when every word felt misplaced. I stopped worrying about saying the right thing. Now I talk to him the way I do with the others—simply, about ordinary things.
“The tide’ll be low this afternoon. Your dad thinks the western reef might open up. The birds have been loud all morning. You would’ve liked that, I think.”
