Chapter Twelve
The grave is marked by a smooth gray stone. There are no names, no dates carved into the rock. But I know this place, because it’s the only square of land on the island that I avoid.
It belongs to Clay. Not me.
A sacred place that I have no right to step foot on.
But I settle onto my knees, facing the stone, and my mind imagines the bones underneath.
A woman whose hips had widened with the force of labor.
I’ve never seen a photo of Alice Lockhart, yet I wear her clothes, and I know she was smaller than me, slight, narrow-shouldered.
And I picture her this way now. Petite, delicate, two smaller collections of bones nested beside her. The children she lost.
I’ve avoided this place, not only because it felt wrong, but because I felt guilty. I have trespassed into her life. Her home. And now, her husband.
My hands press to my knees, legs folded under me.
“I’m sorry… for what happened to you,” I begin, then pause, biting the inside of my cheek.
I don’t know how to speak to the dead, I don’t know how to make amends, to apologize, for this life I have stolen.
I know I am a thief. But after last night on the beach, after we vowed ourselves to each other, I woke in the morning and my first thought was of her: Alice.
My legs carried me here without much forethought, as if she was beckoning me, demanding an explanation. One wife to another.
I close my eyes. “I love him,” I admit to her, and saying the words aloud feels like an incantation, a secret cast out into the wind.
“I love him more than I’ve ever loved anyone.
” Tears squeeze past my eyelids. “And I promise not to hurt him, I promise to keep him safe. He won’t be alone anymore.
Neither of us will.” I pull in a breath, and a cool wind slides over the island, so strong that it coils my hair out behind me.
My eyes lift, seeing a blue heron—just like the one from my dreams—rising up from the shore, winging over the island and circling above me. I crane my head back, wiping the tears from my cheeks, and watch it turn away, flapping out over the water—toward the open ocean. Toward nothing.
I’m sure it’s just a bird.
But somehow… it feels like goodbye.
Like Alice Lockhart is finally letting go—of the house, of the island, of what could have been. Letting go of her husband.
Leaving it all to me.
I want it to be true.
I touch the soil, this hallowed ground, as more tears fall. “Thank you,” I whisper. Maybe the bird was nothing at all, no omen from the dead. But it feels like relief, like atonement.
Acceptance.
What she has given up, I now inherit.
And in many ways, it feels like she’s saved me—gifted me a life that feels like a second chance.
I walk back to Clay in the garden. He’s at the fence, a shovel in his left hand—he must have seen me at the grave—and he watches me approach.
I sink into his arms, his hands folding around me.
He doesn’t ask what happened at the grave, the words I spoke.
Maybe he already understands why I was there.
I wanted permission to have this life. To have him.
And now, with the salt air in my lungs, his fingers wiping away the tears, I feel a calm in the center of my ribs.
Like one story has ended, so another can begin.
A life that is all mine.
“What do you think happened to it?” I ask. “The resort—why was it abandoned?”
I’m sitting at the edge of our bamboo raft, legs dangling in the water. Clay tugs on the fishing rod in his hand, adjusting the line. We found it in a supply closet at the resort, and he’s already caught three fish since yesterday. I’m hoping for a fourth today.
“Maybe a hurricane,” he answers, tilting his eyes to the beach. “Like the one that blew us here.”
I swirl the warm, salty water with my leg, then sink back onto the raft, a hand over my eyes to block the sun.
“What’s the longest you’ve ever been stuck on land?”
We’ve been lodged against the reef for eight days, and although I haven’t admitted it to him, I hope we stay longer. Maybe months, a year even. I like it here. A sandy beach only a short swim away, with plenty of fresh fruit.
We’ve rebuilt the chicken coop, planted seeds in the garden, cleaned up about a third of the island. Some of the mud and muck will likely take a good rain to wash away.
“A few days. Never this long.”
I’m quiet. And he senses it.
“Ye like it here,” he says.
“Don’t you?” I ask.
He lifts a shoulder. “Been at sea so long, suppose I got used to it.”
“We could make a home here,” I suggest, dropping my arm from my eyes and looking at him.
“Aye.” But he doesn’t sound so sure.
“You might start to love it—even someone as salty and sea-mad as you.”
He laughs, and the sound makes my chest feel buoyant. “What about ye?” he poses. “A woman from Seattle is nae kin of the sun.”
“It’s because I’m from Seattle that I love the sun.”
He laughs again, and I pull both my legs from the water, turning to kiss him on the cheek. “I’d go to the Arctic with you,” I say playfully, as if we are two teenagers who’ve run away from home, deciding where to go next. Hoping to see the whole world. Carefree and aimless.
“Arctic is jeelit, skin feels like it’s sloughing from the bones.”
“You’ve been to the arctic?”
“Bloody close enough. Prefer not to drift that way anytime soon.”
I cross my legs under me, tilting my head back to savor the warmth of the afternoon sun.
The rod in his hand tugs downward and he stands, reeling in the line quickly until he yanks the fish free from the water. I’m ready with our bucket, maneuvering the slippery thing inside.
I can see the satisfaction on his face, and I smile, loving how beautiful he is like this, standing over the turquoise water, his skin darker each day. I can’t imagine a life any better than this.
But as he gazes toward the open sea, there is something else in him.
A thought. Tiny, diminutive. A secret in his eyes.
Something so microscopic it may have been there all along and I never noticed.
Like he’s holding back the ocean with his hands, keeping us from drowning, but eventually it will overtake us.
Out here, I’ve learned that the sea is neither friend nor foe. She is volatile, capricious. And she could rip us from this paradise whenever she decides.
A second later, Clay turns, stares back at the beach. And the thing I saw in him is gone.
Maybe I’m looking for something that doesn’t exist.
It’s still dark outside. The sunrise hours away.
I slide from bed, Clay sleeping quietly with only a sheet over his chest.
At the shoreline, I slip naked into the water. It’s warm, but the air is cool, and it sends goose bumps down my legs to my toes.
I wade forward until I’m forced to swim.
Clay would be upset if he knew what I was doing. Ye should never go to the beach alone, he told me days ago.
But this I have to do alone. Because he would never understand.
I swim silently through the dark water, the sky clear and bright above, the moon nearly full. At the beach, the white sand reflects the pale light like shards of glass, but I don’t linger here. I find the familiar route, cutting into the jungle, the moonlight vanishing above.
The sounds of the jungle are more indefinable at night—eerie, furtive. The skittering away of animals I try not to imagine. The crunching of leaves, the swooping of some nocturnal creature above me—a bird maybe, or something else entirely.
At last, I reach the small wooden sign: THIS WAY TO POOL.
Seeing it feels different this time. Alone. Without Clay.
A remnant of the world I left behind.
I follow the path until I see the empty pool and the thatched roof of the resort.
I climb the steps, passing through the abandoned restaurant and down an arched hallway that leads to the lobby.
I try to imagine the open-air space filled with guests checking in, kids dashing toward the pool, a busboy wheeling luggage down the hall.
If the resort was still up and running, bustling with people, I could walk to the front desk and ask for help, tell them who I am, where I’ve been, and beg to use their phone.
Maybe if we’d washed onto this beach months ago—or years on the mainland—then I’d already have spoken to Nana and assured her that I’m safe, and Clay and I would be seated at the restaurant, ordering lattes and French toast, deciding what to do next.
But instead, I walk around to the backside of the front desk. Three computer screens sit dark, layered in dust, dead leaves strewn across the counter.
To my left, I hear a sound, tiny claws across the floor—a crab, most likely. But it’s too dark to be sure.
I slow my breathing, clearing away a section of leaves and placing the sheet of paper on the counter—only slightly damp at one corner—and grip the pencil in my hand.
When I swam across the cove, I kept one hand above the waterline, carrying the items I took from the bedside drawer. Paper and pencil.
I let out a small sigh, then quiet myself, as if the jungle might hear me. As if I might wake Clay.
This secret thing I’m about to do. This tiny lie.
But what do I write?
What note will I leave behind?
Because if the sea decides to carry us away tomorrow, send us back out into the deep, this might be the last time we see land for months.
I close my eyes.
I tell my mind to slow, and when I press the tip of the pencil to the paper, the words form without much thought.
Ellie Wells was here
11 months after leaving the Faroe Islands
I pause, frowning down at it. Maybe I don’t want to say leaving. It sounds voluntary. Although maybe it was.
I erase the words, making space, then start again.
Ellie Wells-Lockhart was here.
11 months after vanishing from the Faroe Islands.
I’m still alive.
Tell Nana I love her.
Tell James I’m sorry.
I read the note several times, repeating it in my head. I wasn’t planning to write my name this way. Using his name. But seeing it now—it feels like the truth. Ellie Wells-Lockhart: a woman who is no longer who she used to be.
I fold the paper in half, then open one of the drawers below the row of computers.
It’s mostly empty, aside from a single paper clip and a flattened pack of cigarettes.
If there had been a cigarette inside, I might have smoked it—for reasons I can’t explain.
I’ve never smoked in my life, but the thought of anything from the real world might be enough to entice me.
I open every drawer along the counter, until I find what I’m looking for: something heavy.
I pull out the shell—a conch, cracked on one side, larger than my hand, with ridges across its surface, and a smooth, pink interior. It was probably used as décor, as a paperweight. Which is how I intend to use it now.
I place it atop the folded paper.
I’m fairly certain Clay won’t see it—we’ve stopped coming to the resort, we’ve already picked through everything of value.
I step back, also certain that the note is pointless.
No one will ever find it.
This place is abandoned beyond all memory of humans.
And even if someone does come here, will they see the note? And if they read it, will they even understand what it means?
Probably not.
But knowing I’m leaving something behind gives me a small sense of comfort. Evidence that I was here. Still alive.
I leave the hotel, walking back through the jungle, and sink down into the water.
I want to feel weightless. I want to feel nothing.
I float on my back, staring up at the stars, wondering if I really am still alive. Or if I died long ago, drowned at sea, and now I’m stuck in some halfway place between this life and the next.
A fish slips past my feet, sending a chill up my spine.
I suddenly feel too naked, too alone in the cove, where anything could pull me under.
I swim to the island, climbing up onto the rocks, tiptoeing into the house, where I towel off in the bathroom, then slip back beneath the sheets next to Clay.
His hands reach for me, sliding across my bare hip.
My heart stalls, worried he’ll feel the dampness of my skin, smell the sea in my hair, the jungle on my flesh.
But he moves closer, until our bodies form a shell against each other, and his strong arms wrap around me, each exhale shivering through my wet hair.
Twelve days drift by, lazily, dreamily, the sun turning us copper.
It starts to feel like we’ll be here forever.
We’ll grow old on this beach, fat and delirious and in love.
Time on our side.
I settle in, I imagine building a little home tucked in the trees, a place for us to sleep sometimes. Our own tiny beach house.
I imagine we’ll never wear clothes or shoes again. My hair will grow long, every inch of our bodies browned and glistening from the sea. We’ll die here, happy.
Happier than anyone has any right to be.
I am a fool.
We don’t even hear it happen.
We don’t witness the beach slipping away behind us.
The air shifts through the open bedroom window—changes direction. This is what wakes me from sleep. What makes me sit up and look to the window. But instead of palm trees, I see only ocean.
“Clay!” I touch his shoulder as I step from bed, crossing to the window.
I can feel the gut-hard loss before I even see it.
The beach, the half-moon cove, the island of swaying palms—it’s all gone. Not even a dot in the distance. No hope of finding a way back.
The ocean has ripped us away at night, when we couldn’t cry out against its cruelty.
I hear Clay’s footsteps across the floor, and we stare out at the endless sea that has become our companion. Intimate and constant. “I’m sorry,” he says, his hand finding my back. “I know ye wanted to stay.”
“The sea decides,” I answer, numb. “Not us.”
The wind stirs the bedroom curtain. And he exhales. “We exist at the edge of the world.”
I shake my head. “We are part of no world. We are caught somewhere between, in a place where no one can reach us.”
He kisses my shoulder, and I lean into him, needing his comfort.
He doesn’t know that I left a note inside the hotel lobby—a secret thing I will never reveal to him. A message in a bottle. A letter home.
I could cry, but I don’t let a single tear fall. The beach is not worth crying over. The beach is not what I have lost.
It was the last piece of something—an idea. A notion that we could live a normal life. Tethered to land.
We drift back out into the ocean, and time no longer has meaning, no beginning or end. We are guided only by the tides and the wind and the constellations above. We can’t know what lies ahead, what future waits for us. I let go of it all.
Including the past, left under a shell inside an abandoned resort.