27. Charlotte Gallagher
Charlotte Gallagher
The seat beside me at the breakfast table is empty.
It’s strange how hard it is to ignore one empty chair. My eyes keep going back to it.
Grandad’s dining room is big, filled with soft morning light. The table is set with a kind of precision that only comes from staff, everything exactly where it should be.
I sit at one end with a cup of coffee, keeping my focus anywhere but that empty chair.
This is the first morning in years without him—if I don’t count the time I ran to the other side of the island because I was convinced he wanted nothing to do with me.
Grandad comes in and takes the seat across from me, coffee in hand. He moves more slowly than I remember, age showing in the careful way he lowers himself into the chair.
I take in the room. Everything is clean and orderly in a way that feels managed, like someone’s been paid to keep it looking this way.
The bowl in the center of the table catches my attention—the same one from last night, refilled. The fruit’s arranged like it’s meant to be looked at, not eaten.
It pulls me back to that first week on the island and how long it took us to find food and fresh water. Hunger like that strips everything else away until survival is the only thing left that matters.
“How did you sleep?” Grandad asks.
“Good. Still getting used to being inside and sleeping in a real bed.”
We talk for a while about easy things—the city, the weather, and how Brisbane changed while we were gone.
Then we move on to technology. How everything is connected now. Faster. Instant, almost.
After a moment, he sets his cup down.
“You and Dane… your story is everywhere. The news. Social media. I’ve already had requests for interviews from journalists and documentary producers. Several came through my office yesterday.”
“No.”
Grandad studies me for a moment.
“No interviews. No documentaries. None of it.”
“Dane may feel differently.”
“He won’t.”
I don’t need to think about it. I know exactly how Dane would react to cameras, questions, and strangers dissecting the island and everything that happened there. I know it the same way I know his silences and the look that settles over his face when a decision is already made.
He picks up his cup again. “If you wait, the offers will improve. These things become valuable. There’s real money in it.”
I think about the island, the graves under the trees, the chess game that stretched on for years, the way the light hit the water at certain times. How it looked. How it felt.
None of that translates. At least not in a way that means anything to someone who wasn’t there.
And it doesn’t belong to them. It never will. No amount of money would make me hand it over.
“That’s not something we’d consider.”
He takes that in without reaction, just a small shift in posture.
“You don’t need the money, of course. You and Dane will inherit everything that belonged to Tara and Mitchell. The estate was placed in a trust and preserved. It’s all been managed over the years—the house, the investments.”
My eyes widen.
“You didn’t know.”
“I hadn’t thought about it.”
For fourteen years, money hasn’t existed for us. Everything was immediate—food, water, shelter, fire. Nothing beyond that.
“There’s quite a lot. What they left has grown. And then there’s my estate, in time. That will be yours and Dane’s as well. You’ll both be very well provided for.”
We survived fourteen years with nothing—no money, no safety net, no guarantees. Just what we could find, build, or fix. And we made it work. We always did.
But this feels more frightening.
“I kept your family home. It’s been maintained. Ready for you and Dane whenever you decide to go back.”
Something shifts in me at that. Home. With Dane. A place of our own with the doors closed and no one watching.
Exactly what we need.
There’s a question I’ve been carrying for years now. Since the island. Since the night Dane told me what Ryan said.
Dane isn’t here, and for the first time, this feels like mine to ask.
“There’s something I need to ask you.”
Grandad nods. “What is it, love?”
“Ryan told Dane something about Dad,” I say. “And me.”
Grandad stills slightly. It’s subtle, but I see it.
“The answer is yes.”
I let out a breath.
Not because I’m surprised. I’m not. The feeling that settles over me is closer to confirmation than shock, like a piece of something I’ve always half-known finally clicking into place.
“Can you tell me more?”
He nods once.
“Mitchell was still married to Christina, but they were already separating by the time your mother came into the picture. Their marriage had been breaking down for years. It was drawn out and messy, the kind that leaves damage behind it. Financially, personally. Nothing about it ended well.”
I’m not shocked by any of it.
If anything, it confirms what I’ve always believed. Mum wasn’t the reason Dad’s marriage to Dane’s mother ended.
“The marriage was already over before your mother came to work for him,” Grandad continues. “Their relationship wasn’t planned. It just... happened. They fell in love.”
They did. Anyone who spent five minutes around them could see it.
“You were conceived before his divorce was finalized. It was kept quiet—for obvious reasons. You were given your mother’s maiden name, Hebert. Then the divorce was finalized, your parents married, and Mitchell adopted you to make it legal. It was easier that way, but you were always his daughter.”
It doesn’t come as a shock. If anything, it just confirms what I didn’t want to hear.
I can’t remember a time when Dad wasn’t there. Not really. There’s no before and after. He was always a part of my life.
He treated me like I was his. No hesitation, no difference. Like there was never any question. Like I belonged exactly where I was.
It all fits now.
“Dane was very bitter,” Grandad says. “He saw it as his life being pulled apart by your mother. And that’s not what happened. Christina had her part in the end of that marriage too. But Dane was a child, and children make sense of things with whatever pieces they have.”
He pauses.
“He was an angry little boy because he was hurting.”
“Yes,” I say quietly. “He was.”
And I was where a lot of that hurt landed.
“It’s no secret Dane had a habit of taking it out on you,” Grandad says. “I hope he didn’t mistreat you out there.”
I think about the early days on the island—what his anger looked like then, how it held on. And how, over time, it started to fade. Not all at once. Just… slowly.
“It was strained for a long time. But it changed. He changed. He took care of me.”
Grandad nods, taking that in.
“From everything I’ve seen since the rescue, you and Dane are very close now,” Grandad says. “Closer than most siblings, I’d say.”
He has no idea.
“We are.”
“I’m glad to hear that. Whatever happened before—it’s behind you now. That’s what matters. Family is important, Charlotte. It’s everything.”
“It is.”
Dane is everything to me.
I love him.
I want him.
And nothing said here changes that.
Grandad went to bed early, like he hit his limit and stopped. I heard his door close about an hour ago.
I sit on the bed and let my mind drift somewhere I never really expected it would have to go.
The future.
We didn’t plan for one. Not really. Rescue was an idea, not something you could build around. Everything beyond that was too uncertain, too far away to shape into anything real.
Now we’re here, and I realize we don’t have a plan for this part.
I left school in Year Five. Dane in Year Six. That’s it.
Fourteen years of surviving doesn’t translate into any kind of formal education this world understands. The things we learned out there don’t count for much here.
I think about jobs, qualifications, and the way people move through life with something solid under them. We don’t have that, and I can feel the gap.
My mind drifts back to what Grandad said this morning. It’s been sitting there all day, settling into place.
The house. The estate. Maintained. Yours.
That changes things. We’re not starting from nothing. We’re stepping into something already built. A house that’s been kept for us. Money that’s been sitting there, waiting.
It’s not excitement. Relief, maybe. Or something close to it—like finally having solid ground under my feet.
We’re going to be okay. And I can’t wait to tell him.
There’s a knock at the door, and I know it’s Dane before I even fully register the sound.
“Come in.”
The door opens, and he steps inside. He crosses the room without slowing—no hesitation, no distance—and pulls me into his arms. I go willingly, like there was never another option.
I press my face into his neck and breathe him in—really breathe him in—like something inside me has been waiting for this all day. His arms come around me, and I hold on tight.
“I missed you,” I say, my voice muffled against his skin.
“I missed you too.”
He was only gone twelve hours.
Half a day. That’s all it was.
But everything in me settles with him here, like something that’s been slightly out of place all day finally clicks back where it belongs. I feel it in my chest, in my breathing, in the way my body just... lets go.
He exhales softly against my hair.
We move to the bed and sit, facing each other. His hand finds mine, and I hold on.
“I’ve got something to tell you.” A smile slips through before I can stop it. “Grandad kept the house. It’s been maintained all this time. He says it’s ours.”
I watch his face as the news settles in.
“And Mum and Dad’s estate—it’s all still there. The trust, the investments, everything. We have money, Dane. Real money. We’re not starting over from nothing.”
He goes quiet, taking it in the way he always does.
“Okay,” he says after a moment.
Steady as ever.
“Good.”
It’s subtle, but I see it—the way his shoulders ease, the slight shift in his expression.
Not excitement.
Relief.
The kind that comes from knowing he doesn’t have to carry everything on his own and figure out how to keep us afloat from nothing.
I recognize it because I feel it too.
He leans forward and rests his forehead against mine.
“We’re going to be okay,” I say.
“Yeah,” he says. “We are.”
For a moment, neither of us says anything.
The moment passes, and I tell him the rest.
“Reporters and documentary people want our story. Grandad said requests are already coming in.”
“No.”
Immediate. Flat.
“I told him that.”
“No one gets that part of us.” There’s no anger in it—just finality. “None of it.”
“I know. It’s ours.”
He nods once.
Then he tells me about his sisters. The social media. The footage of us on the dock and outside the hotel—how it’s everywhere. People watching, sharing, commenting.
Our lives being passed around by strangers like they have a right to our privacy.
Something in my stomach twists as I listen.
On the island, everything had boundaries. You could see the edges of things. Weather came from somewhere. Danger had a shape. You could face it.
This doesn’t. It has no edge. No source. It’s just… everywhere.
“They’re watching us?”
This feels different from what Grandad was talking about—bigger somehow—and harder to contain.
“Yeah. Our story’s everywhere.”
Fourteen years with no one else. No audience. Everything we were belonged only to us.
And now… we’re something else. Something people think they have a right to know about. To watch. To talk about.
I think about what that means. Living like that. Being seen from angles I can’t control.
“I don’t want any of this.”
I just want to be with my husband. Freely. Without cameras. Without strangers watching us like we belong to them.
“I want to go home, Dane. To our house.”
He doesn’t hesitate. “Yeah.”
“Tomorrow?”
“First thing in the morning, babe.”
It settles the way it always does when we land in the same place at the same time.
He climbs into bed beside me, and I move with him automatically, fitting close. His arm comes around me, my head settling against his shoulder.
The world is still out there—the noise, the people, all of it—but it feels distant from here.
Tomorrow, we go home.