21. Charlotte Gallagher
Charlotte Gallagher
The knock is coming. That’s the first thing I wake up thinking about.
Grandad called last night. Dane answered while I sat beside him on the bed, listening to his side of the conversation.
I’ll see you in the morning, he said.
And now morning has arrived.
We’re dressed in the clothes they sent up.
Dane stands by the window with the curtain pulled back just enough to see outside.
The slacks and button-down fit, but they still look strange on him.
Too clean. Too deliberate. I’m used to clothes that wear the shape of his life into them—sun-faded shirts, rolled sleeves, fabric softened by years of use.
I’m in a sundress. Light. Soft. Strange in an entirely different way. The fabric shifts against my legs when I move, brushing my skin. I keep noticing it.
“They’ll be here soon,” he says, still looking down at the street.
“Any minute.”
I watch him for a second, trying to see what’s underneath it. Not fear exactly. Something else.
The rescue was the easy part. This is where things get complicated.
Grandad remembers me as his eleven-year-old granddaughter. Christina remembers me as her ex-husband's adopted daughter. That’s who they’re expecting when they walk through that door.
Neither of us fits neatly into those memories anymore.
“We don’t tell them,” I say.
He glances back. He knows exactly what I mean.
“I agree,” he says. “That’s best for now.”
We already made the decision last night. This is just saying it out loud again. Confirming it.
The knock comes about ten minutes later.
Dane opens the door, and Christina is through it almost immediately, moving with the kind of momentum that comes from being forced to wait too long.
She stops when she sees him.
Just stops.
Then she crosses the room and takes his face in both hands.
“Michael Dane—” Her voice breaks. “I didn’t know if it was really going to be you.”
Her eyes move over him, taking him in—the jaw, the eyes, everything the years have changed.
“But it is you.” She lets out a shaky breath. “And you’re a man.”
“I’ve been a man for a while, Mum.”
“You were only a boy when I last saw you. Driving away with Ryan—” Her voice catches on his name, and she can’t finish.
Dane pulls her into him.
She folds against his chest, arms wrapped tightly around him, her face pressed into his shoulder. The sound she makes is quiet, but it sounds like fourteen years of grief finally breaking open.
Grandad walks through the door and straight into my arms, tears running down his face.
“Thank God you’re both alive,” he says into my hair.
For years, it’s only been Dane. Only one person’s touch. One person’s presence. This feels different. Familiar, but distant too. Like something from another life.
“I missed you, Grandad.”
He leans back and looks at me, his gaze moving across my face as though he’s trying to reconcile memory with reality.
“You’re beautiful,” he says. “All grown up. It’s hard to believe.”
Then he pulls Dane into a hug just as fierce.
“I looked for you for years. There was nothing. No wreckage. No signal. We thought the yacht went down. We thought you were gone.”
Dane rests his forehead briefly against his shoulder.
“It’s okay, Grandad. There was no way to know. No one could have.”
When they separate, Dane’s hand brushes the small of my back.
“You remember Charlotte?”
Christina turns her attention to me. “Of course I do. I’m glad Dane wasn’t alone.”
“He kept me safe.”
Dane glances at me. “We looked after each other.”
Christina nods. “That’s what brothers and sisters do. You take care of each other.”
I force myself not to react.
Beside me, I can feel Dane go stiff.
“We’ve got a jet waiting,” Grandad says. “We’ll talk more once we’re in the air.”
Then, after a beat, he adds, “We spoke to Tara’s parents. They’re not well enough to make the trip, but they want to talk to you once you’re settled in.”
I barely remember Mum’s parents.
They lived in America, and most years the distance between us stayed exactly that—distance. A few phone calls. The occasional visit. Christmas presents arriving in the mail. They never felt woven into the fabric of my life the way Grandad did.
Still, the thought of hearing their voices again makes something shift in my chest.
“Time to get you home,” Christina says.
The noise hits the second we step outside.
Cameras. Voices. Questions thrown from every direction at once.
“Dane—”
“Charlotte, over here—”
“Is it true, fourteen years—”
“Can you tell us where—”
Dane’s hand settles at the small of my back. He shifts, putting himself between me and the nearest cameras without even looking, creating a wall before I realize I need it.
Grandad moves ahead, cutting a path through the crowd like he expects it to open—and it does. Christina stays close on my other side, closer than I expect.
I keep my eyes forward.
The car door shuts, and the noise disappears all at once.
The city slides past outside the windows in fragments. We don’t talk. Our hands rest near each other, fingers brushing occasionally as the car moves through traffic.
Eventually it slows and comes to a stop. The doors open, and we move again.
The jet is waiting.
We board, and without thinking, Dane and I take the seats beside each other. We settle into the shared space automatically, leaning toward each other the way we always have.
Christina is watching us.
I don’t look at her directly, but I can feel it. Her attention lingers, but she hasn’t said anything.
The plane lifts off, and the city falls away beneath us.
I look out the window as the coastline recedes, blue stretching in every direction. It makes me think of another horizon.
Nobody speaks for a while. Then Grandad breaks the silence.
“When you’re ready, can you tell us what happened?”
Dane looks at me.
Just a glance.
I nod.
He turns back to them. “Of course.”
As he begins, I’m pulled straight back into it. The same story. The same memories. But for the first time, I hear it through him. Through what he saw. What he carried.
Grandad leans forward. Christina goes completely still, all her attention fixed on her son.
For fourteen years, this story belonged only to us.
Every loss.
Every choice.
Every day.
Now we’re unpacking fourteen years of survival.