Chapter Fourteen
Fourteen.
Across the sea from the little bungalow resort we’d booked on Koh Samui was an uninhabited island.
I never asked the staff what it was called; details never matter when you’re happy.
But it’s this island my mind returns to when it strays back to that time.
To sunlight stippled across its dense trees, rainstorms battering it before coming over to batter us.
It was the last thing I saw before I left the morning after Johan was taken.
We’d booked a few days on Koh Samui before taking the ferry up to Koh Tao to dive.
After two days lazing on the beach I arranged for us to go over and explore the island opposite.
The owner of the bungalows, Mandi, a German woman who’d recently left behind her finance career to buy this resort, had asked me if she could tag along.
She’d only been running the place for two months and had not taken any time off.
I’d hesitated before saying yes. Mandi had yet to stop talking since we’d arrived, and had even followed me into the meditation hut when I’d slid off there for some peace.
But I saw many elements of my sister in this impulsive, adventurous woman with poor social boundaries, and of course Johan was never bothered by anyone. So I said yes.
Johan’s marriage proposal was neither particularly romantic nor private, but it was perfect.
Over the appalling noise of the longtail boat engine and Mandi’s nonstop commentary, amid black clouds of diesel fumes and the first smattering of rain, Johan put his arms around my waist and rested his chin on my shoulder. “I don’t want you to go home,” he said.
I smiled, leaning back into him. A fat raindrop fell squarely on my forehead.
“And I really don’t want to go back to Myanmar without you.” He kissed the side of my neck and said, as quietly as he could, “I want to be with you forever, Carrie. You and me. What do you think?”
I turned around, incredulous. “Did you just…Was that a marriage proposal?”
He laughed, then stopped. “Actually, yes.”
The smile fell from my face.
“Yes. I had planned something a bit more romantic, but why not? I want to be with you every day until I’m an old man, Carrie. The past few months have been the best of my life. I don’t need a sunset.”
We stared at each other for a few moments, then smiled, both of us uncertain. “Did you mean that?” I asked. “Is this…real?”
“It is for me if it is for you.”
He took my hands, smiling still. “I am not a romantic but I desperately love you,” he said.
“So forgive me such an unrehearsed proposal. But I mean it. I absolutely want to marry you. If nothing else, I think the sight of a ring on your finger will remind you to leave work and come home at the end of your shift.”
“I wouldn’t count on it,” I said, but I found I was on the verge of tears.
Johan was nervous now, his eyes searching mine for a sign. “I love you,” he repeated softly.
A gigantic bird wheeled in toward us before veering away sharply. The man driving the boat had no idea what was happening, but Mandi was staring at us in astonishment.
Unprompted, I started laughing. After a few seconds Johan followed suit. “Yes,” I said, kissing him. I kissed him again and again. “Yes.” Then we held each other tightly, and Mandi began clapping.
“Let me be your wedding person!” Mandi shouted, after what she probably believed to be a respectful silence.
She was on her feet, lurching toward us.
The longtail bucked. We had exited the bay and were now on open water.
“I trained as a…oh, what is the English word…trauredner…the person who does a marriage…”
“A priest?!”
“No! No…”
“Oh…like a minister? Or celebrant?”
“Ja! Celebrant! I trained as a celebrant before I left Germany! I thought it would be a useful asset to the business. So I can do the weddings on the beach!”
I would have preferred an official wedding, had we been back in our normal lives, but this felt both insane and perfect. We looked questioningly at each other and then nodded at the same time.
“OK,” Johan said to her. “You’re hired!”
Mandi didn’t miss a beat. “OK! Tomorrow?”
“No!” Johan yelled, just as I shouted “Yes!”
He frowned. “Really? Tomorrow?!”
“Yes!” The wind had joined forces with the cacophonous boat engine. “If I die learning to dive on Koh Tao, I want to be married to you first!”
And so it was set. We would get married on the beach the next day, and Mandi would do the deed.
On the island, Mandi took photos of us together and then dragged Johan off for some solo pictures in front of a cave. “He is so good to look at,” she told me apologetically. “And this is such a good story for our social media. Can I please…?”
I stood back, looking over the water toward our resort, hugging myself. The rain had already passed and above me the sky was swept nearly clean, only the tiniest stings of cloud remaining.
A wedding. A marriage. A lifetime. All of this was right. All of it was meant to happen.
Off to my left, Johan was negotiating his way out of Mandi’s photoshoot, asking to be able to talk to his fiancée. Above me, the palm trees lilted happily; the world turned.
Those palm trees would often crop up in my frenzied thinking when I was trailing around Bangkok trying to find someone, anyone, who could tell me why Johan had been removed from me by armed men. When I had nightmares or flashbacks, those happily swaying trees always came first.
—
That evening we went to a night market forty minutes away on a moped. Johan smiled good-naturedly through the tourist shops, which I loved, and talked to the mangy dogs wandering in from the beach.
“Beautiful ring for your girlfriend,” a man on a stall said, sweeping an arm across his wares.
Behind him, a woman fed baby twins at the same time as if it were the easiest thing in the world.
And so Johan went off to the cash machine.
He bought me a slender silver ring holding a little piece of jade, and I loved it from the moment he picked it up.
We wandered hand in hand through the stalls, beads of sweat on our brows illuminated by the festoon lights.
Above us, paper lanterns swayed and pale stars hung in a darkening sky.
I didn’t look where I was going and stepped in a dank puddle containing fish heads from a food stall, but I didn’t care. Someone would have a tap.
And they did, at a shop on a junction in the road. I hosed down my leg, leaning against Johan. When I looked up, there it was—my wedding dress.
I no longer own it; I think Maya must have thrown it away when I was at the lowest point of my depression, but I remember every detail of it.
Like the others on the rail, it was short and cheaply made from thin jersey, but unlike the others it was not spangled with lurid prints or metallic thread.
It was white with black spots, two straps that crossed over at the back, and although I’d never have worn it at home it was exactly what I needed.
“Look away!” I said. “I’ve located my gown!”
I carried it home in a blue plastic bag.
The storm sent its first tentative smatterings across the beach as we arrived back at our bungalow and we fell asleep early, on our last night together, lulled by the steady rhythm of rain on a reed roof.