Chapter Thirteen
“Not feeling it today, Zoe?” Cristina asked. “How about we call it quits?”
Zoe checked the time. Ugh! Only 7:45. Fifteen minutes to go.
She endured rather than enjoyed her morning workouts but never had she cut a session short. This morning, though, she didn’t know how she was going to make it to the end. She was curiously deflated at the prospect of the week ahead. Not to mention exhausted, courtesy of last night’s mishmash of dreams and half-formed memories that had broken her sleep into fragments.
“OK,” she said to Cristina. And then she caught a tiny twitch at the corner of Cristina’s mouth, which told her Cristina knew very well what—or more specifically who—was responsible for Zoe’s frame of mind, and in the spirit of rebellion added: “You go back to the bungalow, I’ll stay and finish.”
“If you stay, I stay, you know the rules,” Cristina said, but nevertheless emitted a teeny-tiny moan when Zoe doggedly grabbed a set of dumbbells.
As Zoe started her biceps curls another memory popped into her head. Ewan telling her the reason Finn started half an hour late at the Shack was because he also did odd jobs at the gym in exchange for using their equipment. Ewan had thought he was wasting his time: what Finn needed to do if he wanted more bulk was to eat more. Which of course was why Zoe was always pushing her food on him.
He’d certainly put that bulk on. And not just by eating more. You could tell by the muscles straining at his clothes that he’d worked out a lot over the years. She could easily picture him in workout gear—a loose singlet and shorts sticking to his sweaty body—his face hard with concentration—muscles tensing as he worked...
Uh-oh, the shiver was back!
Do not think about Finn’s muscles, think about Poerava’s state-of-the-art adapted fitness equipment, think about...
Nope. No use. Muscles. That was all she could think about.
She checked the time again. Five minutes to go.
She looked at the suffering Cristina and had to laugh. “I know a better way to exercise my arms, Cris. Let’s go fishing.”
“But you hate fishing!”
“I do, but Captain Joe is skippering the boat and while you’re flirting with him—uh-uh, don’t even think about pretending otherwise—I can flirt with Daniel.”
“Daniel? But you said—”
“That was yesterday. Today I have a whole new perspective on...on muscles. And Daniel’s are impressive. I’m opening my mind to the possibility, anyway.”
Scrubbed, primped and hair clipped, Zoe sallied forth, certain that being away from Poerava with a different man in her sights would distract her from unproductive thoughts of Finn.
And yet she found herself searching for him the moment she was aboard a charter boat that was so much smaller than Pearl Finder, Finn’s absence was immediately obvious.
It was undeniable at that point: she had secretly harbored a hope that Finn had missed his flight again and learned she was going fishing (which he knew she never did) and decided to come along.
Confirmation that she was an idiot!
After the way he’d ushered her out of his bungalow oh so easily last night when she’d all but insisted he take her to bed, she knew she should be glad he wasn’t on board, distracting her with his muscles, his guarded eyes, his waiting stillness, his dismissive shrug, his chipped tooth, and...and any other part of him. In fact, she would be glad. Glad he’d left Tiare Island. Maybe now that disturbing jangle of half memories would dissipate and give her some peace.
But as the fishing rods came out, an intact memory emerged from the jangle. That time she’d confessed to Finn that she didn’t bait her hook because killing the fish she was going to eat made her feel like an executioner. He’d laughed so hard he’d got a stitch in his side. And the next day he’d taken her out on Sir Gaden’s stolen dinghy after work, with two borrowed fishing rods and no hooks at all, and they’d pretended to fish. That was when she’d told him about her biggest life goal: to travel the world and write books.
How much of herself she’d revealed to him that summer. Everything she wanted, everything she needed, everything she liked and loved and hated. All her dreams.
How had she never realized that he hadn’t shared a dream of his own?
She could have asked him. She should have asked him. And if he’d said he didn’t know they would have talked about it, and she would have intuitively known what he was trying to say even if the right words weren’t there—the way he always knew what she was trying to say when she couldn’t find the words—and they would have found the perfect dream for him. But now the only clue she had to go on was an unfinished one.
When I finally left the Cove I still didn’t know...
She could no longer find the words for him. He’d become opaque. She’d never know how that sentence ended because Finn had gone, back to his life, and she would be going back to...what, exactly?
“Zoe? Zoe!” Daniel snatched her fishing rod out of her hands. “Let me bait your hook for you.”
An offer that was the beginning of a truly hideous day.
Daniel was a nice guy, he meant well, he was Hollywood-handsome with a spectacular body—but he was as annoying as hell in a heat wave.
Not content with baiting Zoe’s hook, he tried to take over when Zoe’s line went horrifyingly tight and everyone could see she’d caught a fish. Ordinarily Zoe would have handed over the rod with immense gratitude and averted her eyes when the poor fish was pulled into the boat, but on principle she clung tenaciously to her rod.
Thank goodness Captain Joe, reading the mood—and perhaps Zoe’s disgust when the fish was reeled in—insisted the defenseless tuna was too small to keep and threw it straight back into the water.
Joe and Cristina ran interference from that moment, but despite their good intentions Zoe was so frazzled by the time the fishing expedition ended she took to her room for what was left of the day, opting for—shock, horror!—a room service dinner. Not even Matilda’s laughingly made offer to monopolize Daniel for the evening if Zoe joined the media group at Tāma’a could get Zoe to change her mind. Because the truth was Daniel wasn’t the problem; he was a symptom, not the disease.
The disease was hidden inside her. An endless need to be “on.” Smiling and cheery and never angry and always understanding, even when people trampled over her need to demonstrate her strength and independence. Finn had called it detouring but she thought of it as containment. Keeping her aggravations wrapped tightly inside because if she didn’t she might start screaming. And strong, independent people didn’t scream and wail and feel sorry for themselves.
It was exhausting. She was exhausted. And she was sure she looked it when Cristina didn’t demur at Zoe’s insistence that she take Joe up on his offer to take her out to dinner again so she could rest.
Peace. Quiet. No one waiting for her or grabbing her chair or nagging her or worrying over her.
It should have been blissful. Instead, the feeling washing over her was melancholy. And with nothing to do her thoughts returned to Finn, to dinner last night.
Princes and princesses.
Time machines and fairy tales.
The past.
Those things he’d said.
I remember a lot of things...that night for example... I’ll help you locate that memory...the story’s told, dinner is over...and you’re looking forward not back.
Yes, she was looking forward, but she knew there was something she had to go back for, knew she wouldn’t be able to...to breathe until she did.
She closed her eyes and focused, trying to force her mind to open to the past, but what emerged wasn’t a memory but a vision of Finn at midnight, waiting on that beach, and her heart swelled with grief, and tears that she would not shed pricked at the back of her eyes. It wasn’t real, that image. The real image, the real memories, were skulking in the shadows daring her to find them, claim them, own them. Like that tide that kept pulling her back to the girls. But she knew those memories would be no gentle tide sweeping her toward the truth, they’d be a tsunami and she’d need all of her strength to swim through them if she wasn’t to drown. Drown...
Crash...
Shattering glass, lights, shouting. It was there, it was there!
Show me, show me, let me feel it.
But as quickly as the flash had come, it was gone.
She opened her eyes. Her heart was thudding, her breaths coming in pants.
She had to do something. Anything.
Write. She had to write.
Lily’s eulogy for Blake. She’d write that. Those memories, at least, had no power to hurt her.
Some scenes came fast as she typed—the fishing expeditions to the Hawkesbury beach, Malie leaving for Hawaii with Blake Hawkesbury’s support, Lily’s joy at getting the job at the Hawkesbury Estate. Some came more slowly as she tried to delve into what made Blake the man he was—the accident was part of that, Blake’s son Henry, the aftermath. How strange to know the experience of the accident because people at the hospital had talked about it but not to see it in her head, not to feel it.
Like her, Victoria, Malie and Lily never really talked about the accident; they’d left it in the past—three of them had left it geographically as well. Now Zoe wondered what it was like for Lily, the only one of them to stay in the Cove. Had she been able to move on? Had she felt abandoned? What was it like for her now that Victoria and Malie were engaged to be married—V so close in London, Malie planning to return to the Cove with a fiancé.
It seemed to Zoe that V and Malie had both come alive. Was that what happened when you belonged to someone?
Lily had belonged to someone once. Zoe never had, and yet she thought she understood what it was like to feel more alive, more yourself, when you were with a special someone.
It was how she’d felt last night. Not comfortable but certainly alive, in a way she couldn’t remember feeling for so, so long.
Her anxious second-guessing as she was getting ready. Her aborted plan to seduce Finn. The nerves, the laughter at shared memories, the longing for a look that would recapture the magic, even the disappointment at how the night had ended. For the first time in ten years she hadn’t known what was going to happen, she’d known only that because it was Finn something could. The prospect that something might happen, because she was with him, was what had made that summer fun, exciting, thrilling.
“And tonight is neither alive, nor fun, nor exciting, nor thrilling,” she said out loud. “Just like the countless other nights you’ve spent all over the world.”
Ugh. She was whining again.
There was nothing wrong with her life. She had everything she’d ever wanted.
Except that she didn’t.
She didn’t have the ability to walk.
And she didn’t have Finn.
If you had a time machine, Zoe, would you go back to the past or into the future?
I’d break the machine, and stay in the present, and dream about the future.
But what if she could go back?
If she went back ten years, maybe she could stop the accident from happening.
If she went back twelve years, to that summer, maybe she’d be able to see the way Finn looked at her, and maybe she could look at him the same way, and—
“Stop! Just stop. You cannot go back, there is only now. Finish the eulogy and send it.”
She reread the words she’d written and found herself blinking back more tears as she sent it, thinking of Lily’s loss, her grief. She reached for her phone almost without conscious thought and heaved a tremulous sigh when Lily’s face popped up.
“Zoe? What’s wrong?” Lily asked.
“Do I look that bad?”
“You look perfect as always. Well, aside from the bluish smudges under your eyes. But you sounded like you were going to cry and you—”
“Never cry. But yes, I’m a little...tired, I guess.”
“I know you love travel, Zo, but it’s not a sign of weakness to take a break and stay in one place for more than a week.”
“That’s the plan after this trip. A home holiday. But right now, I just want to let you know the eulogy is in your inbox. Let me know what you think after you’ve had a chance to read it.”
“Am I going to cry?”
“Maybe.”
“Then I’ll leave it until the morning,” Lily said, voice quavering. “My sob quota has been filled for today. Oh. Hang on!” She pulled a tissue out of the box beside her and blew her nose.
“Where’s V? She’s there, right? You’re not on your own?”
“She’s been with me all day but she’s staying at her parents’ place. Do you need her? Should we dial her in?”
“No, don’t. I was only calling to make sure you’re OK. And because I was feeling nostalgic after writing the eulogy.”
“I’m doing better, I guess. I have to do better, because there’s so much to plan for the wedding and I can’t, I just can’t, let Victoria down. I’ll probably be a mess at the funeral next week but that’s got to be my closure point. I won’t let myself fall apart after that.”
“Closure point,” Zoe said. “Yes, I understand that. I’m not sure I...”
There was a long pause, and then Lily said, “Are you thinking about the accident, Zo?”
“I was thinking about it tonight while I was writing the eulogy. I still can’t remember it, Lils. I know what I’ve been told about it, and there are fragments from that night that shift around in my head, but the detail...it’s missing. And I have this feeling that I need to remember it. It’s like I’ve left a piece of myself on that road in Hawke’s Cove and I have to find it.”
“You can always come home. We can find it together.”
“I can’t come back. If life was almost unbearable before the accident...”
“Yeah, after the accident it was becoming a full-blown fuss-over-poor-brave-Zoe-Tayler epidemic. I get it. So how do we find your missing part? How can I help you? Any of us? All of us?”
“I don’t know. It’s weird, but it...it scares me a little—the idea that I won’t ever find that part. But equally, I think, that I will, which is probably why I’ve locked it away.” She made an impatient sound. “That sounds stupid.”
“You talk about Claudia’s death, about Henry having to deal with that, but do you know this is the first time you’ve ever even hinted at how you deal with what happened? We almost lost you, Zoe. We almost lost you. And if you think the rest of us don’t deal with that every single day, then...then maybe I’m going to fly over to French Polynesia, or Timbuktu, or Zanzibar, or wherever you’re going next so I can help you through whatever’s eating away at you. In other words, no it does not sound stupid, it is not stupid to be scared. You’re allowed to come to terms with what happened whenever you want or never, and if you remember everything or half of it or nothing, no one’s going to judge you. And now I’m crying again, thank you very much!”
“How about we gossip about Oliver and Todd?” Zoe said, forcing a dismal-sounding laugh. “We can rank them on our old Cove Hotness Scale from one to ten. Will that cheer you up?”
“The only guy who came close to a ten in those days was Finn Doherty, Mr. Off-Limits-To-Good-Girls—and do not come back at me with Brad Ellersley because he was a solid eight (and incidentally he’s now dropped to a seven). Oliver and Todd are so perfect I’d be jealous if I was remotely interested in having a love life. And for the record, I’m one hundred percent not interested. I’m too busy with the restaurant and the wedding and a million other things.”
“You don’t miss having someone?”
“Do you miss it?”
“I never had someone so how would I know? Not even Brad. Not really. But I’d like to know what it’s like to be in love.”
“Oh Zoe, you were always the one to zero in on a target and hit the bull’s-eye dead center. Why don’t you take aim at someone while you’re in French Polynesia?”
“The only guy who’s interested in me here is an American journalist, who’s admittedly a nine on the scale—or at least he would be if he’d stop asking things like ‘Can paraplegics still have sex?’”
“No!”
“To be fair he asked Cris, not me—he wasn’t quite that tactless—but I heard it. You should have seen the withering look she gave him!” She laughed. “I’m having room service tonight just so I can avoid him.”
“Room service? You? This is dire! OK, there’s nothing for it. I was thinking it would just be me and Mrs. Whittaker who ended up loveless, sharing a quaint cottage with four cats and a parrot in a cage, but I’ll look for a place with three bedrooms so you can join us.”
“You know you’re going to give me nightmares with that image, right?”
“I’m going to give myself nightmares!” Lily said, laughing. And then she sighed. “Promise me you’ll get some rest after this trip, Zoe.”
“I promise I’ll go straight home to Sydney and I’ll stay there until the wedding if you promise to stop stressing over every minute detail about the wedding, the funeral, the restaurant, the—”
“OK, OK, message received!” Lily laughed again, then her face softened and she blinked, blinked, blinked. “I love you, Zo.”
“Love you too,” Zoe said, “but we are not going to get into a cry-fest.”
“Not possible, you don’t cry.”
“Yeah, well, let’s not put it to the test.”
“OK, I’m going back to my lists,” Lily said, laughing as she disconnected.
Zoe blew out a long, slow breath.
Rest.
Home to Sydney.
A prospect she should be looking forward to, but that odd sense of dislocation that had been digging at her so often lately was back, full force. Tiredness, sameness, that fear she’d tried to explain to Lily—that something was missing, the absence of not-knowing-what’s-next now Finn had left. There really was nothing to do except go home to Sydney.
And who knew, maybe she’d write that novel she’d always dreamed of writing. Reverse “Rapunzel.”
Or maybe she’d write the mermaid story.
She gasped as the memory came at her, fast and painful. Finn smiling at her as he held up the pearl they’d found, swinging it back and forth on its platinum chain as though hypnotizing her, offering the perfect title for the story, their story he’d called it: “Mermaid’s Kiss.” He’d said it represented the waves tumbling onto the sand, two worlds meshing—the mermaid’s ocean and the mortal’s earth. A brief kiss before the waves receded, dragging the mermaid back to the ocean and leaving the mortal on the sand waiting for the next kiss, and the next, and the next, unable to anchor his love to his world, but waiting for her as long as it would take, even if that was eternity.
Their story. She’d thought he meant the fairy tale they were dreaming up together but what if he’d meant—
Zoe’s phone pinged, and the memory of Finn smiling at her vanished as she saw the email from [email protected].
Time to tuck the fantasies away.
Finn had rebuffed her last night. Eternity aside, she was twelve years too late to wonder what he’d meant.
She opened the message to read that in the wake of her rare visit home last Christmas her parents had gone ahead with plans to remodel a wing for her because maybe one day she’d decide not to live on the other side of the world.
Automatically she started to write back, telling them she was very, very happy in Sydney.
And then she stopped, because that was a lie. She wasn’t very, very happy in Sydney. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt very, very happy.
“I’m not happy and not one person knows it,” she whispered, as though the thought was a sacrilege that should not be uttered at all.
A sacrilege...but true.
She wasn’t happy, she wasn’t even content. What she was, was in a rut. Unfulfilled. Bored.
Lost.
A eulogy...travel stories...a blog...but no novel.
Finn’s words from last night now seemed to her to be a reflection of everything that was wrong with her life. She’d wanted to be a novelist more than anything. Wildly, passionately wanted it. And yet she’d locked away those story ideas, only remembering them when Finn brought them up.
So much for zeroing in on a target and hitting the bull’s-eye. She’d become a passive piece of flotsam, drifting from her blog to travel writing, filling her downtime writing web content for her wheelchair support group Chair Chicks, occasional speeches for her father when he had to attend conferences, and now a eulogy.
But no novel.
Could she write a novel?
She couldn’t even remember what she’d written to her parents since she’d arrived on Sunday!
Resolutely she pulled up all those emails, casting a critical eye over the words, stunned at how dull and meaningless they were, how soulless. She was in paradise and that was the best she could do? No wonder her mum and dad were shooting her anxiety-riddled messages four times a day. When had she become this pathetic shell of the person she’d dreamed she’d be?
Well, that was going to change forthwith!
She started her reply to their latest email with a quick line about the renovation: fabulous, she’d be home in August for Victoria’s wedding and again for Malie’s wedding but no going overboard.
And then she drumrolled her fingers either side of the computer, and sifted through mental images of today’s fishing trip, this morning’s gym workout, yesterday’s snorkeling cruise. Last night’s dinner—not about Finn (she didn’t want to give her parents a heart attack) but about the flavors she could miraculously taste right that second even though she hadn’t been aware of tasting them last night. Her bold new friend Matilda. Cristina’s budding romance with the dashing Captain Joe. The story of the legendary Kupe Kahale. The texture and scent of the air, the feel of the sun on her skin, the brooding silence of the rainforest and gentle swash of the lagoons, the crystal clarity of the water, the vibrancy of the blues, the magical colors of an underwater paradise.
Weren’t those things all symbols of the life she’d wanted? The daring, romantic, go-out-and-grab-it life for which she’d moved away from home? Of course they were. And her parents, who loved her devotedly, deserved to share that piece of her.
She started tapping the keys, the words suddenly flowing:
Mum and Dad, are you sitting down? I have a story to tell and you’ll never believe it.
It’s a story about a guy hitting on a girl by making her catch a fish! Yes, today I caught my first ever fish, and I have to tell you, it was as disgusting as I’d always imagined it would be.
Fifteen minutes later, Zoe hit send, feeling a new energy surging through her, and decided it would be a waste to take that energy to bed.
“I think the orange dress with the floral embroidery around the hem,” she announced to herself. “And a wreath for my hair made of the frangipanis in the bowl in the bathroom.”
No one was going to keep her marooned in her bungalow—least of all a man who forced her to catch a fish and then tried to steal the damn thing!