Chapter 34 #2
Sloane’s voice came quietly beside me as we sat on the wide wooden porch of the main cabin. The boards creaked under our weight, still warm from the last of the sun.
Lock had disappeared inside a few minutes ago to grab a medical kit for my ankle. Jeff and Ethan were down at the dock tying the Mariner off properly for the night.
I leaned back against one of the porch posts, stretching my legs out carefully.
“I have two brothers and two sisters,” I said.
Sloane turned her head toward me.
“Five of you?”
“Yeah.”
She let out a low whistle.
“That explains a lot.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You have strong middle-child energy.”
I snorted.
“I’m not the middle.”
“Close enough.”
I shook my head, but a small smile crept in despite myself.
“The youngest is Fiona. She’s twenty-four now, a doctor up in Boston—or she had been before everything.”
Sloane nodded slightly; neither of us said the obvious.
“Then there’s Finn.”
“Then Brenna,” I continued. “Younger than me by five years. Nurse. Always the responsible one. Still in our hometown—Portland.”
“And then you.”
“And then me.”
“And Lock.”
I nodded.
“Lock’s only fifteen months older.”
Sloane tilted her head.
“You two seem… intense.”
I let out a quiet laugh.
“We used to be really close.”
The memories surfaced before I could stop them: growing up, sharing a room, competing over everything—grades, sports, who could hold their breath longer underwater.
Lock taught me how to throw a punch when I turned twelve, then made me practice until my knuckles bled because he said nobody in his family would ever lose a fight they didn’t start.
“He’s actually the reason I joined the Marines—well, him and our dad. Dad was a career Navy officer,” I said.
Sloane looked at me with interest.
“Really?”
“Yeah. He went first—Navy—came home on leave looking like some damn war hero.” I shook my head. “To seventeen-year-old me, that might have been the coolest thing in the world.”
“So you followed him.”
“Pretty much. Other than Fiona, all of us have served. Lock the longest, then Brenna did eighteen years; she just got out. Finn left after ten, and then me, the failure: four years and booked it.”
The porch creaked as Sloane shifted beside me.
“You said you grew apart.”
“Yeah.”
I rubbed the back of my neck.
“Lock stayed in. Reenlisted, did it again after that. Made it his whole identity.”
“A lifer.”
“Exactly. And I did my time, but I knew after my first tour it wasn’t what I wanted my whole life to be.”
Sloane studied my face.
“And he didn’t like that.”
I shook my head.
“He thought I had quit.”
Her voice softened.
“Did you?”
I thought about that—really thought about it, the way I hadn’t let myself in years.
“Maybe,” I admitted. “But I didn’t want to spend twenty years fighting wars for politicians who’d never know my name.”
Wind rustled softly through the pines surrounding the clearing.
“So we argued,” I continued. “A lot. And well, life happened. He got married.”
“And?”
“And his wife hated me.”
Sloane blinked.
“She hated you?”
“Pretty much from day one. Honestly, she hated our whole family. Called us Irish trash.”
“Irish trash,” Sloane repeated flatly.
“My dad was a captain in the navy. My mom was a lawyer. Not exactly the trash profile. But she had her mind made up.” I paused. “She really couldn’t stand me, though. I think she saw me as some kind of threat—like I’d pull Lock back into the family and away from her.”
Sloane snorted.
I shot her a look.
She grinned.
“Continue.”
I sighed.
“They had a kid a few years after they married.”
Her expression shifted immediately—softened.
“A boy?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s his name?”
The question hung in the air—present tense, innocent—the way people ask when they don’t know yet.
“His name was,” I said quietly, “James.”
I stared out at the barn for a moment.
“I didn’t get to know him very well. Lock and I weren’t talking much by then. His wife made sure of that. But the few times I saw him—holidays, a birthday here and there—he seemed like a good kid. Quiet. Smart. Had Lock’s stubbornness but none of his edge.”
Sloane’s expression grew serious.
“What happened?”
My throat tightened.
“Cancer.”
She winced.
“How old?”
“Fifteen.”
Sloane reached over slowly and rested her hand on mine. She didn’t squeeze. Didn’t say anything hollow. Just let her hand sit there, warm and steady.
“I’m sorry.”
I nodded.
“Yeah.”
I swallowed against the tightness in my throat.
“After that, Lock kind of disappeared. Divorced the ice queen. Then just… vanished. Stopped coming to family events. Stopped answering calls. Barely talked to anyone—not me, not Finn, not our parents.”
The cabin door creaked faintly somewhere inside as Lock moved around.
“Mom said he’d been living on the road almost full-time,” I added. “Moving from place to place. No fixed address.”
“Alone?”
“Mostly.”
Sloane’s thumb brushed across my hand once.
“That kind of loss changes a person down to the foundation,” she said quietly.
“Yeah,” I said. “It does.”
We sat there for a moment. The sun had nearly gone now, only a thin band of orange clinging to the horizon beyond the trees. Somewhere down at the dock, Jeff’s voice and Ethan’s laugh—faint, ordinary, almost startling in how normal it sounded.
The door behind us opened.
Lock stepped out onto the porch holding a battered metal medical kit, the kind the military issued—olive drab, dented at the corners, probably older than both of us.
He stopped when he saw us sitting there. His eyes moved to Sloane’s hand on mine, to my face. Something flickered behind his expression—recognition, maybe, or memory—the ghost of someone who used to sit beside him like that, once.
He held my gaze a moment longer than necessary.
“Alright,” he said gruffly.
“Let’s see how badly you screwed up that leg.”
* * *
Sloane stood up from the porch rail and stretched, glancing toward the cabin door.
“So,” she said, brushing salt-stiff hair out of her face, “this fancy apocalypse cabin got a bathroom, or are we back to the boat method?”
Lock chuckled—rough but genuine.
“Yeah. Down the hall on the right is a half-bathroom.”
“Bless you,” she muttered, already heading inside.
The screen door creaked shut behind her, leaving me and Lock on the porch.
For a minute, neither of us spoke.
Lock set the metal medical kit on the porch beside my leg but didn’t open it yet. Instead, he leaned back against the railing and studied me, those sharp eyes doing what they’d always done—reading, calculating, filing things away.
“Where’s Sadie?” he asked finally.
I looked out toward the greenhouses, watching the glass catch the last of the fading light.
“Dead,” I said simply.
Lock’s brow furrowed.
“Dead like…?”
“Dead. But also—we broke up a few years ago.”
He exhaled slowly.
“Shit, man.”
His voice dropped half a register.
“I’m sorry.”
I shrugged.
“It’s all good.”
Not exactly true, but not something I was getting into now, sitting on this porch at the end of the world with a brother I hadn’t spoken to in years.
Lock nodded once.
His eyes flicked toward the cabin door where Sloane had disappeared, then back to me.
“You and the fairy a thing?”
I barked a laugh.
“Fairy?”
He shrugged.
“Red hair. Tiny. Looks like she should be floating around sprinkling magic dust on things.”
“Jesus, don’t let her hear you call her small; she will fight you, and my money is on her.” I chuckled.
But I thought about the question, let it settle instead of deflecting the way I would have a month ago.
I watched the treeline sway in the breeze for a long second.
“Yeah,” I said finally.
Lock raised an eyebrow.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, she’s mine. Just do not tell her that.” I chuckled.
“Honestly,” I added, rubbing the back of my neck, “she hit me like a sucker punch.”
“How’s that?”
“Worked with her for years. Same building, same job, same stupid arguments every day.”
Lock smirked.
“That sounds about right for you.”
“And it took the dead rising and the complete collapse of civilization for me to figure out I’d been in love with her the entire time.”
Lock let out a low chuckle.
“Yeah,” he said. “Priorities have a way of sorting themselves out when the world narrows down.”
“Apparently.”
He crouched down then and finally popped open the medical kit. Inside—exactly what you’d expect from Lock: military neat. Gauze, tape, antiseptic, a compression wrap—everything lined up in precise rows.
He grabbed my ankle and started peeling the makeshift wrap off.
I winced.
“Jesus,” he muttered, studying the swelling.
“Yeah.”
“That’s a solid sprain. Let me guess, got it doing something crazy?”
“Yeah, I jumped off an aquarium and rode a pipe sixty feet down, but I had worse.”
He whistled low.
“Lucky you didn’t break your neck.”
While he wrapped the ankle properly—firm, practiced hands that had done this a hundred times on worse injuries in worse places—I studied him.
He looked older, more gray threaded through the beard, more lines carved around his eyes. The kind of aging that didn’t come from years alone. Grief had done this, carved him down and rebuilt him leaner, harder, with less room for anything soft.
“How’d you get here?” I asked.
He finished tightening the wrap and leaned back on his heels.
“Stole a sailboat in South Carolina.”
I blinked.
“You what?”
He shrugged as if he’d just described picking up groceries.
“Things went sideways fast. I’d been down there visiting a buddy from my unit.”
“And you just… took someone’s boat?”
“Owner had already turned,” he said flatly. “Figured he’d lost his claim.”
“Jesus.”
Lock smirked faintly.
“Hauled ass north for three days straight.”
“In a sailboat.”
“Turns out I’m still a good sailor.”
I shook my head.
“Of course you are.”
A thought struck me.
“You seen Finn?”
Lock’s expression darkened.
“No.”
My stomach dropped.
“You think he made it out here?”
Lock leaned back against the porch railing, staring toward the treeline. The easy humor from a moment ago had gone. His jaw tightened.
“I got here about two weeks ago,” he said slowly. “Place stood empty. No sign of him. No note. Nothing.”
The knot in my chest pulled tighter.
“But,” he continued, “I’ve got a pretty solid idea where he went.”
“Where?”
“Fiona.”
Finn and Fiona had always been tight. Closer than any of the rest of us.
He’d practically raised her during the years our parents worked long hours—walked her to school, helped with homework, sat through every terrible school play she performed in without complaint.
Protected her. Spoiled her. Treated her less like a little sister and more like his own kid.
“If something went bad,” Lock said, “Finn would go get her first. Before anything else. Before this island. Before himself.”
I nodded slowly.
“Yeah.”
It wasn’t that the rest of us didn’t love each other.
We did. Fiercely, in the loud and messy way big families love.
But Finn and Fiona had always existed on a different frequency.
He’d die for any of us. But he’d burn the world down for her.
Lock, myself, and Brenna were planned. Fiona and Finn were midlife accidents in the best way possible, as our mother put it.
By the time Fiona came around, I had already been a year into the military. I had been fifteen when Finn was born. Those two grew up in an almost separate family from the rest of us.
Lock crossed his arms.
“If he reached her,” he added, “they might still be out there somewhere, trying to get here.”
The cabin door creaked open behind us.
Sloane stepped back out onto the porch.
Lock glanced at me sideways.
“Your fairy’s back,” he muttered.
I rolled my eyes.
But I couldn’t stop the smile pulling at my mouth.