Chapter 26
Aweek before the anniversary of their aborted cruise, Adam arrived at Lucy’s kitchen table with a curious gleam in his eye.
He’d prepared salmon and rice for dinner, but he set his own fork aside the instant he finished speaking.
“How would you feel about spending a weekend on an island off the coast of Maine?” he asked, leaning forward so that the low brass lamp caught the determined set of his jaw.
Lucy paused with her fork halfway to her mouth. The question felt like a stone thrown into still water—small in form but certain to ripple. She placed the fork on her plate and studied him. The kitchen clock ticked quietly. Their apartment felt suddenly spacious, as if it were waiting to exhale.
“It has a ranger station,” Adam continued, as though he were reading bullet points for a business proposal rather than inviting his fiancée away for a romantic escape.
“The station’s staffed year-round. You can reach the island by two ferry routes, or drive across a bridge.
There’s even an emergency causeway—visible only at low tide, the website says. ”
Lucy set her napkin in her lap. “An island with a bridge is making a weak commitment to the concept,” she said, trying to keep her tone light but unable to shake the memory of how she’d boarded that cruise ship last year—her heart already halfway out the door.
“It also has cellular service, electricity, potable water, and no executive assistants,” Adam shot back, reaching into his blazer pocket. He extracted a folded sheet of paper. “Evacuation procedures. I printed them.”
Lucy took the sheet before he could unfold it.
She smoothed it on the table, scanning the fine print.
The island’s outline looked like a crooked fingernail jutting into the Gulf of Maine.
Most of its acreage belonged to a state park; a handful of white clapboard houses clustered around a sheltered harbor.
Adam had highlighted five locations in neon yellow: the ranger station, ferry schedule board, a small clinic, the village police office, and three spots that sold bottled water.
“You even looked up the medevac helicopter,” she said, raising an eyebrow.
“I was curious.” He shrugged. “Flight time is twelve minutes, in favorable weather.” He picked up his wine glass. “But I didn’t call them.”
Lucy tapped the paper. “The fact that you thought about calling them is the scary part.”
He gave her a faint, apologetic smile. “We don’t have to camp if you’d rather stay in a hotel with nothing more dangerous than room service.”
She scrutinized the map again. A narrow trail traced the island’s eastern shore, looping past two lighthouses and back to the harbor. Little black triangles along the edge of a cove marked campsites. “Are we camping?”
“There’s an inn on the far side,” he said.
“You bought camping gear,” she said flatly.
Adam’s attempt to deny it ended in a cough. Lucy let her gaze settle on him until he admitted it: his apartment held a tent, two sleeping bags, a water filter, an emergency beacon, a satellite phone, a marine radio, signal mirror, a first-aid kit, and six days’ worth of packaged food.
“We only need two nights,” she said, folding the paper along his yellow highlighting. “One night camping. The second at the inn.”
He took a slow sip of wine. “Are you sure?”
Lucy felt the old tension flicker in her chest—the fear that any refusal might unravel them entirely. “No. Don’t ask again.” She set the rule, and the debate ended.
Friday morning, the sky over Connecticut was steel-blue and clear.
Adam’s car was already packed to the roof: duffels, a cooler, and a crate of safety equipment.
Every time Lucy glanced back, she discovered another gadget—waterproof matches, extra emergency rations, shock cord, an inflatable yellow life vest tucked beneath her seat.
“That’s not mine,” Adam said when she held it up.
She spun the vest by its stiff yellow collar until the maker’s mark and her name, written in black Sharpie, stared back at her.
He ran a palm over his hair. “Manufacturers cut corners.”
Lucy laughed.
They set out under a hush of anticipation. Adam kept glancing at her through the rearview mirror, as if her breathing could give him away. Lucy tried to read her own confidence in his eyes.
As they crossed the causeway toward the island, Adam reached for the ferry tickets in his coat pocket, then paused. “I thought you might want to decide whether arriving by boat felt romantic,” he said.
Lucy studied the narrow stone road half-submerged by the tide on both sides. Salt water lapped against the rocks. “The bridge,” she said. “Let’s take the bridge.”
Halfway across, she asked him to pull over.
Cars could not safely pass, so Adam eased the SUV onto a gravel turnout.
Lucy climbed out and stood beside the door, wind lifting strands of her hair.
Before her lay the white rooftops of the village, the steeple of the lighthouse at the harbor, and the faint silhouette of hills on the mainland horizon.
Behind them, the road dipped away into the tide—gone if she chose to stay.
Adam stayed inside, one elbow on the open window frame. When her fingers curled around the door handle, he said softly, “I was wondering whether the tide comes in fast enough to cover the bridge while we stand here.”
“It does,” she answered. A smile trembled at the corners of her mouth.
He exhaled. “Then shall we move the car?”
She nodded, and they laughed as they slid back into their seats. Fear was still there, but it had shrunk to one detail in a moment rather than the defining shape of everything.
Their campsite lay in a grove of towering spruce. Through the trees, grey boulders ringed a rocky cove where waves whispered against stone. Beyond the green canvas tents of other campers, a ranger in a khaki pickup drove by every two hours, pausing to wave and speed off again.
Adam marched toward the ranger, flashlight swinging from his belt. He returned minutes later with an emergency phone number scrawled on a peel-off sticker. “Bears?” he asked.
“Not since ’87,” the ranger said, reclining against his truck. “Bear came ashore, sniffed around, then thought better of it.”
“What happened in 1987?”
“The bear left,” said the ranger, as if he’d summed up the island’s history in two words. Lucy tugged Adam’s sleeve before he could ask about wildlife records.
The tent came next. Adam followed the one-page instructions as though defusing a bomb—they showed two identical poles, each ending in numbered sleeves.
He tried slipping the wrong poles into each other until the fabric drooped.
Lucy stepped in, paper in hand. She guided him pole by pole, reminding him that companies build buildings, but tents have no employees and no supervisors.
Together they wrestled the canvas upright, clipped on the rain fly, and hammered stakes into the rocky soil.
He arranged every piece of emergency gear—radio, filter, mirror—along one wall.
Lucy, satisfied with the shape of their shelter, removed everything except a flashlight and the beacon.
“If we need the radio tonight,” she told him, “I’ll fetch it from the car. ”
He frowned. “What if the car becomes inaccessible?”
“It’s thirty feet away.” She shrugged. “If a tree falls, we head to the ranger station.”
“And if the island splits in half?” he challenged quietly.
She pressed a finger to his lips. “Then you may improvise.”
He kissed the spot before she pulled her hand away.
That afternoon, they hiked the coastal trail—wide, well-marked, with wooden signs at every junction and benches overlooking the sea.
Gray rocks plunged into turquoise water, and gulls wheeled overhead, screeching.
Adam lugged the backpack, which pressed into her spine enough to remind her he’d ignored her order to lighten the load.
At the first lighthouse, they ate turkey sandwiches on a granite ledge. In the wash of sunlight, Lucy lay back against the warm stone, and Adam rested a hand near her ankle. She felt his thumb graze her shoelace, as though he just needed to know she was still there.
“You can stop doing that,” she said after a moment.
He looked down at the spot he’d been touching. “Doing what?”
“Touching me when we’re near the water.”
Adam’s eyes lifted to her face. “I didn’t realize.”
Lucy closed her eyes against the glare for a second. “I know.” She let his hand slide away. The disappearance made her miss it right away—reminded her what it was like to be unseen.
They reached the second lighthouse at sunset.
The little museum beside it was closed for the season, its windows dark.
From the grass, they could see their green tent dwarfed by spruce and the ferry’s lights blinking as it crossed the harbor.
Adam knelt to unlatch the backpack. He moved bottles of water, protein bars, and the first-aid kit until, nestled inside a plastic bag, a small leather box came into view.
Lucy saw it before he could zip the pack shut. The quiet that followed made the gulls seem loud.
He lifted the box with both hands. “This wasn’t supposed to happen here,” he said, voice half-lost in the wind.
“You brought a ring to an island,” Lucy said.
“I’ve carried it everywhere for three weeks,” he admitted. He shifted on one knee, as though even standing made an apology. “I wasn’t planning a surprise proposal. I wanted it on hand if the conversation happened.”
“What conversation?” she asked.
He drew a breath, watching her through the fading light. “Whether marriage is still something you want,” he said.
Lucy stared across the cove at the ferry’s blinking windows. The campsite looked absurdly small among the trees. Her throat tightened. “I wanted to marry you,” she said.
“Past tense.” His fingers tightened on the box as though he were clinging to hope.