Unfortunately, her naps that’d allowed me time to fish or tend to our camp were few and far between as was the cooing and babbling. Her little vocabulary had transformed into a well-versed conversationalist.

Galloway had earned her second word. Da-da. And as much as I would love her to call me mummy, her girlish heart belonged entirely to G.

I adored that she’d turned from a helpless newborn into a tiny independent person, but I hated that my phone was no longer able to capture her growth and imprison her giggling chortles for me to look back on and relive happy times.

Because happy times were few and hard to come by.

Especially as lethargy and vacancy crept over us like a fog determined to smother.

We tried to fight it.

We did our best to reverse it.

But we couldn’t prevent the inescapable.

Our avenue for recording was gone.

Our perseverance for living was done.

We put on a brave face, but as our bodies slowly starved and storms did their best to relocate our island to Antarctica, it became harder and harder to remain happy where everything seemed so tough.

.............................

APRIL

Conner shed fifteen for sixteen under a starry evening and crude jokes.

He and Galloway hung out while Pippa, Coco, and I spent the evening doing whatever we could to treat Conner like a king.

We’d all chipped in and created him a flax sleeping bag for the nights he wanted to camp away and Galloway had carved a doll with big lips and boobs, saying it was his first girlfriend.

That had earned him a punch followed by surly curses.

Two days after Conner’s birthday, we lay on the sand digesting breakfast of taro and fish, and for the first time, we heard something that wasn’t the wind rustling through the trees.

The loud foghorn hung heavily in the air, echoing in my ears, heralding all of us to the shore.

We stared for minutes, doing our best to squint on the horizon. If we had my phone, we could’ve taken a photo and zoomed in to see what lay out there (like a cheap version of binoculars).

We’d done that a few times.

Conner had repeatedly snapped images of every inch of the horizon, enlarging the photo to its maximum potential and studying for any signs of life, any other island, any hint that we weren’t so alone.

Over the course of our years here, we’d seen plumes of commercial airliners, soaring thousands of feet above our head. We’d spotted a fishing trawler far, far out to sea that didn’t notice our hastily burning signal fire. And imagined voices when tiredness turned our thoughts into mush.

But this...this sounded closer.

Real.

Was it a tanker? A barge? A ferry? Some sort of nautical magic that could whisk us away from here?

As the afternoon ticked on, our legs grew tired, and we sat, one by one, in the sand.

And we stared.

We stared and stared until daylight switched to moonlight and we had to admit what we’d been chanting in our heads for hours.

They’re gone.

No one’s there.

We’re alone.

.............................

MAY

Rustling multihued feathers switched the calendar to May, donating hundreds of squawking parrots to our island.

We didn’t know where they’d migrated from but we tracked the jewels creatures through the trees in awe. Pippa trailed beneath them, collecting discarded indigo and emerald feathers, while Conner climbed into the branches to see if they were tame.

We didn’t look at them as food.

Merely pretty animals to enjoy.

Not that they stayed long.

As quickly as they’d arrived, they flew off.

A pandemonium of parrots in a rainbow blur.

A few days later, Pippa decided she no longer needed Puffin as a security blanket.

And Coco much preferred her flax voodoo doll, courtesy of Conner, to the tatty stuffed kitten.

I didn’t know why that upset me, but it did. The faded cat was no longer wanted. No longer carted around the island by its paw.

It was discarded.

However, I gave it a forever home on our shelves in the house, sitting pride of place between the salt bowl and dried mint.

RIP, Puffin.

He’d gained new employment as our mascot.

Chapter Fifty-Six

...............................................

G A L L O W A Y

......

ONE YEAR BEFORE THE CRASH

“DID YOU KNOW about this?”

I stared into the distrusting eyes of my term manager. We were all assigned a caseworker to take our grumblings and requests to the bosses.

I never summoned mine. Never had a reason to. And they’d never summoned me in return. I was a murderer serving a life sentence. There was nothing more to discuss.

Until now.

“Answer the question, Mr. Oak.”

I shook my head. “No, how could I?”

“You didn’t plant this evidence?”

“No.”

“Yet you admitted to committing the crime?”

“Yes.”

“Why would you do that?”

“Because it’s the truth.”

My manager closed the folder in front of him. “Well, it just so happens, the truth has been proved a lie.”

My heart (that’d been dead every day since they’d imprisoned me) picked up. “What?”

“You’re free to go, Mr. Oak. Time to leave.”

.............................

JUNE

IT’S TIME TO leave.

We’d waited too long.

We no longer had a choice.