CHAPTER 10
JASON
CocoCay was beautiful.
That was the obscene part — the island was exactly as beautiful as I’d imagined when I booked this trip a month ago.
White sand, water so clear it looked invented, the kind of sky that made you feel like the world had been freshly cleaned.
Everywhere I looked, people were happy. Children ran into the shallows.
Couples spread towels on the sand and reached for each other’s hands.
I moved through all of it like a man walking through a dream he couldn’t wake from.
I checked every beach bar, every shaded cabana cluster, every stretch of shoreline.
I walked the length of the main beach twice and then doubled back through the interior pathways where the shade was deep and the music from the resort speakers floated down through the palm fronds.
I checked the private cabana I had reserved for us — still set up, still waiting, two cold drinks sweating on the small table between two empty chairs.
I stood there and looked at those two empty chairs for a long moment.
Then I kept moving.
She wasn’t on the island. I knew it with increasing certainty with each passing hour, the way you knew things you didn’t want to know — quietly, in your chest, before your mind caught up. Camila had not disembarked. Or if she had, she had found a way off this island that I couldn’t trace.
By mid-afternoon I gave up. I went back to the ship.
The stateroom was a complete contrast to how I’d left it.
All her things were gone from the side tables. Her books, her yellow sundress. Everything. I ran to the closet and opened it.
Her side was empty.
Every dress, every beach cover-up, the white linen shirt, the sandals — all of it gone. The suitcase gone. The small canvas tote she used as a beach bag, gone. Her toiletry bag from the bathroom, the glasses she wore at night while reading.
Gone. All of it gone.
The only trace of her that remained was on the dresser — the half-eaten breakfast tray, and on the pillow, still exactly where I had placed them before dawn this morning, the flowers.
Pink petunias, slightly wilted now from the hours.
And beside them, catching the afternoon light from the open deck doors, her wedding ring.
I crossed the room and stood over it without touching it for a long moment.
Such a small thing. Such an ordinary, everyday thing — I had watched her put it on and take it off a thousand times without thinking about it, had seen it on her hand across dinner tables and in the car and while she was reaching for things on high shelves and while she slept.
It had simply been part of her, the way her voice was part of her.
I picked it up.
It sat in my palm, weightless.
I intend to spend the rest of my life making sure you never regret choosing me.
I had written those words this morning. I had meant them completely, in the way I meant everything that had to do with Camila — with my whole chest, without reservation.
And then I walked out of this stateroom and made them a lie.
I should have told her. From the very first day Scarlett called. I should have told Camila, and decided along with her what we had to do. I should have let her decide with full information. She had deserved that.
Instead I had decided to lie to her. It was cowardice dressed up as love.
My knees hit the floor.
I don’t know if I chose it or if my legs simply gave way. Either way I was on the floor of our stateroom, the ring in my fist, the wilted flowers on the pillow above me, and I was sobbing in the way I hadn’t sobbed since I was a boy — ugly and uncontrolled and without any dignity whatsoever.
No, I kept saying, to no one. To the empty room. To the ring in my hand. No, no, no.