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.
A second oar—made from the piece of wood I had asked Clay about days ago. He’s carved and shaped it: One end is now flat, the other end narrowed so that it fits perfectly into the oarlocks. He spent time on it, in secret, to be sure it would work.
My eyes pinch closed.
He may not have wanted me to leave, but he wouldn’t let me row out into the sea with only a single oar. He’s giving me a chance at survival, at returning home. To James. And this last selfless act is almost enough to make me turn around.
But I force myself to take up the oars, and I begin rowing away from the rocky shore of the island.
The sea is flat, untroubled, and the farther I row, the island looks more and more impossible: a solitary outcropping of land, a white house at the highest point, smaller structures dotting the grassy slope.
If I were a passing vessel, a freighter or fishing ship, I could easily convince myself it was a mirage.
But I keep my eyes on it, afraid to lose it from view, while also hoping I might see a sliver of land rising up in the opposite direction, some hint of mainland.
My arms begin to throb with the steady motion, and soon the island is a faint band of dirt just visible in the distance, surrounded on all sides by unbroken sea.
I’m rowing away from the rising sun, hoping to travel west, but I really can’t be sure.
Time bends out around me.
An hour passes, maybe a little more.
The sun begins to feel torturous; the wide-brimmed hat I took from the tool shed is the only thing shading me from the heat.
I rest my arms, sinking back in the boat and staring out at the endless blue.
My head is muddied, messy, unable to sort through the stack of reasons why I’m doing the right thing. Why I needed to leave.
While my heart screams at me, pleads, to go back.
But I pick up the oars and find a new rhythm, refusing to slow my pace, and soon the ache in my arms seems to fade. The sea pulls me out into its depth. Glittery and cajoling. Welcoming me into its arms.
If fate brought me back to the island after all these years, maybe it will return me home once again.
Another hour passes, maybe two. No way to be sure.
The wind starts to stir up from the Atlantic, picking up momentum, and soon the surface of the water churns and tosses around me.
To the east, a wall of clouds is building in the distance—dark and low.
Rain clouds. They might not reach me, I say silently to myself.
Or I might get slammed by a downpour in a matter of minutes.
I stop rowing and lift my gaze from the ocean, back to the island. What’s left of it. It’s nearly gone, only a sliver against the sea, but it’s still visible—even after hours of rowing.
I draw in a deep breath, bobbing on the surface of the Atlantic, the air electric, a static that’s hard to pinpoint.
I think of Nana, imagining how worried she’s been, staying up nights wondering what happened to me: if I’m still alive, if I’ve drowned, or if I might come wandering up the shoreline at low tide with a story to tell that no one will believe.
Time repeating itself all over again.
I try to think of James. I try to feel some longing for his hands against my skin, try to picture seeing him again, stepping off an airplane, crying, and the relief I might feel in his arms. But I don’t feel anything. All I feel is Clay.
The memory of his fingers against my cheek, the way his eyes fell into me, lidded, greedy.
Fuck. I don’t know what this is, why my mind breaks apart when I think of him, why I feel like I’d do anything to feel his hands again.
To lift onto my tiptoes, lean in close, and promise I’ll stay. Promise to never leave.
I don’t know why I want to make promises to him at all.
Why, right now, sitting in this tiny boat, I only want him.
Days ago, he asked me how I know where I belong.
I had thought the answer was simple. It was obvious; I made a promise to a man waiting for me back in Seattle. But belonging has nothing to do with responsibility. And everything to do with the muscle beating beneath my ribs.
I press my hands against my eyes, doubt clawing at me from the inside—far more dangerous than the approaching storm.
This is my chance, this boat is my hope of finding a way back to land, so why does it feel like the wrong direction?
Why does it feel like I’m no longer certain of what I really want?
Maybe because I haven’t known what I want—for years now, for most of my adult life.
Maybe because I’ve thought of the island every day since childhood. And now that I’ve found it again, I’m afraid to lose it.
I’m afraid that my life back in Seattle is not what I think it is.
Not what I’ve ever truly wanted, but what I thought I was supposed to have.
Fear had kept me there—fear that I couldn’t trust my own mind.
So I needed something steady, reliable, like James, to keep me from tipping into madness.
To keep me from chasing after impossible things.
But there was another fear, one I couldn’t shake: that I might wake up one day when it was too late, and realize that I deserved something more. That I wanted something more.
Nana once told me, “There is nothing more powerful than a woman who knows her worth—and won’t ever be convinced otherwise.”
I’ve never been sure of who I really am without the story I kept inside me since I was twelve. That girl was brave enough to step onto the island for the first time.
But is the woman I’ve become strong enough—certain enough—to return to where it all began?
Hands shaking, I reach inside my coat and touch the silver chain around my neck—two shells.
One from the past.
The other from Clay. A shell that held meaning I didn’t quite understand. But perhaps it’s the one that reminds me of what I really want. Who I might become, if I’m willing to risk everything I used to be.
The old storm-rattled house, the bedroom where I slept—it made me feel sheltered. Safe.
And Clay. The thought of him is a merciless ache in my chest. A campfire glow. Something primitive—as basic and necessary as air.
When Mom left, I felt the gravity ripped out from under me. But Nana made things sturdy again, built scaffolding I could hold on to. When I moved away to Seattle, I felt off-center once again. I lost my bearings, north from south; I could no longer hear the sea from my bedroom window.
But these last couple months, sleeping in his bed, waking to the tide and the rain lashing against the house, I’ve felt rooted again. Calm—like a still pond without a whisper of wind.
I’ve felt like myself.
The me I might have been if life hadn’t destroyed who I was, little by little.
Overhead, the sky grows darker, a low echo of thunder rolling across the sea—like a truth breaking through the clouds.
Maybe we’re not meant to know what’s right or wrong. To know which path to choose. Which life. Maybe the not-knowing is the point.
Because maybe we’re meant to be a little reckless.
Madcap and foolish and wild. Maybe that’s where life truly begins: at the edge of what we fear most. Maybe we’re meant to chase the things we can’t explain. To find what we can’t live without, and do whatever it takes to hold on to it.
I spent so much time running from what happened that night, pretending the island didn’t exist, but now I lift the oars, pressing them down into the water, heaving the boat back toward the thing I’ve dreamed about most of my life.
It’s always been about that small dot of land.
Saltwell Island.
But now… it’s also about him.
I row hard, terrified that the storm will blow me farther out to sea, where I’ll lose sight of the island for good.
Waves spill over the bow, the ocean turning angry, and for twenty minutes I seem to make no progress—the island never drawing closer. The wind lashes at my face, and then, as if it were seeking me out, the rain starts to fall in gusting sheets. The storm has found me.
I tilt my eyes down, away from the downpour, and a gust rips the hat from my head, sending it tumbling out across the waves. I dig the oars into the water. Pulling, pulling, trying to move the little boat.
My lungs burn.
But I know I can’t stop.
The waves grow higher, and with each swell, the island vanishes ahead of me, swallowed up by the sea. But at the crests, I catch just a sliver of it rising above the tide.
The rain shifts, blowing sideways now, and I can feel it pushing me away—farther from the island. “No!” I scream, shoving the oars into the water as if they could anchor me. And when I lift my eyes, looking for the island again, it’s no longer there.
Gone.
I stop rowing, counting the waves as they rise and break over the boat, waiting for the swell to lift me—waiting for it to reappear.
But when the lull comes, when the sea stills for half a second, there is no island.
I turn, scanning the horizon. Maybe the wind spun me off course. Maybe the island is behind me now, just out of view.
Or maybe… it’s truly gone—slipped back into a ribbon of time, and it won’t return for another twenty years. By then, it’ll be too late. I will be too late.
Air sputters from my throat.
I lift the oars from the water, gasping, the storm pushing me deeper into the dark Atlantic. I close my eyes, the salt wind on my lashes.