“We’re leaving this week, Estelle. It’s time to prepare the boat.”

We were saying goodbye.

Leaving Conner in paradise.

It was time to return home.

Chapter Fifty-Eight

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G A L L O W A Y

......

JANUARY

I’D HAD ENOUGH.

My family were dying.

Conner had already left us.

I wouldn’t lose any more.

I’d never missed someone as much as I missed him.

Not even my mother or father.

Conner was more to me than a kid I shared an island with.

So much more.

And now, he’d disappeared, leaving us to deal with the wreckage.

I hated him for that.

I hated that he’d checked out and left us here.

But I hated myself, too.

While Estelle punished herself for his death, I beat myself up for ever letting Conner take so many risks.

Fishing was dangerous.

Fishing alone even more so.

What was I thinking?

Why didn’t I go with him? Why didn’t I take over and force the boy to stay on the shore?

I knew the answers to my questions: because Conner wouldn’t have accepted my ultimatums. If he was forbidden the ocean, he would’ve been in trees and broken his back. If he’d been denied fishing, he would’ve found some other risky pastime.

It was his destiny.

Just like ours hadn’t been when we’d crashed.

Pippa turned eleven but pleaded not to celebrate. She chose to spend the day cuddled in Conner’s flax sleeping bag on her own.

I worried about her.

About all of us.

Grief was a constant entity poking me full of painful holes. I wanted to rope the bastardly emotion into a noose, beat it up, then hack it to pieces with our blunt axe.

I couldn’t keep feeling so hopeless, so useless, so eternally sad.

So I threw myself into finding salvation for those of us left behind.

For a week, we stockpiled and prepared the kayak with food. I built a ballast on the side to keep us upright when navigating the choppy reef, stealing the design from a Balinese long boat.

Pippa helped prepare, but her heart wasn’t in it. She preferred to spend her time on the beach where Conner and her parents had said farewell.

I dreaded the day when we finally disembarked.

Would she come with us or would she be unable to say goodbye? Their bodies were gone, but their souls remained on our island. And I didn’t know if she’d be able to tear herself away from those she adored.

While Estelle wrapped our belongings in palm fronds and hacked down coconuts, I sailed around the atoll a few times to test how seaworthy the new vessel was. So far, the rickety, flax tied, bamboo crafted outrigger withstood enough. However, the four oars I’d made had dwindled to three.

Conner wouldn't be there to help me steer or navigate.

His loss pulverised my heart.

Our home was slowly less and less important, just a shell to abandon when we left. We were as prepared as we could be.

However, even for our forward preparation, it was water that delayed us.

January was the hottest month.

There was no respite from the humid heat.

Not one raincloud to top up our stores of drinking water.

Not one breath of wind to help guide us.

So even though everything inside said to leave, now, this very moment.

We couldn’t.

We had to wait until we had enough to journey.

We had to wait until death visited one last time.

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

FEBRUARY

Coconut turned two.

We didn’t celebrate.

Pippa had turned eleven.

She refused to celebrate.

The hot weather finally turned to showers.

We couldn’t celebrate.

Because although we’d been waiting for the rain to free us, the reality had finally hit home.

We were leaving.

Forever.

However, one of us was going on a much different journey.

An unplanned journey.

A cruise up the River Styx rather than the Pacific Ocean.

Chapter Fifty-Nine

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E S T E L L E

......

As humans, we abhor death.

We’re taught from birth to fear the unknown, cling to the known, and receive our limited time on earth.

But what if that’s a lie?

What if we should embrace death?

Would we be at peace knowing those that’d left us existed in another dimension? That we weren’t nothing the moment we took our final breath?

Death was my enemy.

But could it ultimately be my friend?

Taken from a carving on the umbrella tree.

...

THREE YEARS, SIX months.

Four deaths.

One birth.

Countless triumphs.

Untold failures.

Forty-two months.

One hundred and eighty-two weeks.

One thousand two hundred and seventy-six days.

And one terrified woman with the feeling of premonition on her shoulders.

Our bodies couldn’t take much more but we were almost there...almost free.

However, everything changed with a splinter and a scream.

Over the years, Galloway had built many things—a firewood storage shed, rain reservoirs, and even an outhouse to keep us private when human nature called. For years, he’d hacked at branches, woven rope, and built with no complications.

So why should the morning of our departure be any different?

I couldn’t explain it.

I woke with terror.