“We’ll stop ahead,” LeFleur announced, “grab something to eat, OK?”
“Yes, Inspector,” Rom answered.
“You gotta be hungry, right?”
“Yes, Inspector.”
“Look, you can stop with the formalities, OK? You’re not being investigated here.”
That caused Rom to turn.
“Am I not?”
“No. You just found the raft. You didn’t do anything to it.”
Rom looked away.
“Right?” LeFleur said.
“Yes, Inspector.”
What a strange bird, LeFleur thought. The north shore seemed to attract a lot of men like him, thin, raggedy drifters who were never in a hurry. They smoked a lot and rode bicycles or carried guitars. LeFleur often thought of them as lost souls who, for some reason, felt found on Montserrat. Maybe because half the island itself was lost, buried in volcano ash.
They pulled into an open-air restaurant that was part of a small motel. LeFleur pointed to an outside table and told Rom to take it.
“I’m going to find a bathroom,” LeFleur said. “Order whatever you want.”
Once inside, he rang the front desk bell. Out from the back came a middle-aged woman with a sweep of black hair across her forehead.
“Can I help you?”
“Listen,” LeFleur said, his voice low, “I need a room for an hour or so.”
The woman glanced around.
“Just me,” LeFleur sighed.
The woman produced a registration form.
“Fill this out,” she said flatly.
“I’ll pay cash.”
She put the form away.
“Also, do you have any paper towels?”
A few minutes later, LeFleur was inside a simple room with a double bed, a desk, a lamp, a floor fan, and some magazines atop a mini fridge. He went into the bathroom, ran water in the tub, then removed the notebook from the plastic bag. He ran the notebook gently through the water, just once, to remove dirt and dissolve the salt that was binding the pages together. Then he laid the notebook on one towel and patted it with another. He slid paper towels in between some pages and pressed down. After a few minutes, he was able to separate the cover and reread the opening sentences:
When we pulled him from the water, he didn’t have a scratch on him. That’s the first thing I noticed. The rest of us were all gashes and bruises, but he was unmarked.
Who was this stranger, LeFleur wondered? He glanced at his watch and realized how long Rom had been waiting. The last thing he needed was that guy to grow suspicious.
He placed the notebook upright on the desk, then pulled the floor fan over to help dry the pages. He hurried out, locking the door behind him.
At the restaurant, LeFleur saw Rom at a corner table, with a glass of ice water in front of him.
“Did you find what you were looking for, Inspector?”
LeFleur swallowed. “What?”
“The bathroom?”
“Oh, yeah. Found it.”
He grabbed the menu. “Let’s eat.”
Sea
It is dawn, Annabelle. I haven’t slept. I’ve been waiting for enough sunlight to write you again. I remain haunted by the death of Mrs. Laghari, and there is no one here that I can speak to about it. Not the way I can speak to you.
I’ve been thinking about a memory; it comes to me vividly now. A few days ago, I had dozed off, and when I opened my eyes, I saw Mrs. Laghari combing little Alice’s hair with her fingers. She did it gently, unhurried, and Alice seemed to revel in the human contact. The old woman straightened the little girl’s bangs. She licked her fingertips and pressed them across Alice’s eyebrows. Finally, she tapped the girl’s shoulders as if to say “All good,” and Alice leaned in and hugged her.
Now Mrs. Laghari is gone. We are nine people left in the raft. Even as I write the words, I cannot believe it. What’s happening to us?
I realize I haven’t written about how Mrs. Laghari or Alice or any of the others wound up in the raft the night the Galaxy went down. The truth is, I don’t remember much. I was so exhausted after pulling myself in that I must have blacked out. When I came to, I was on my back, and I felt someone tapping my face. I blinked my eyes to see a short-haired woman staring at me.
“Did you set the sea anchors?” Geri said.
It was surreal, the question, the setting, her face, the faces of people behind her, barely lit by the hazy moonlight. I recognized Jean Philippe and Nina from the staff. The others were so wet and terrified-looking, I couldn’t place them. My mouth hung open and I turned my head as if looking at a dream.
“Sea anchors?” Geri repeated.
I shook my head no, and she quickly moved away. I saw her rifling through the ditch bag as the others helped to sit me up. That’s when I realized there were eight of us: Yannis, Nevin, Mrs. Laghari, Nina, Geri, Jean Philippe, Bernadette—who was lying under the canopy, her head bandaged—and me.
Geri found the sea anchors, two small yellow fabric parachutes, and she threw them in the water and tied them through grommets on the raft.
“These will slow us down so they can find us,” she said. “But we already drifted a lot.”
Nina was crying. “Does anyone know we’re out here?”
“The yacht must have sent distress signals. We just have to wait.”
“Wait for what?” Mrs. Laghari asked.
“A plane, a helicopter, another boat,” Geri said. “We gotta stay alert and use the flares if we see something.”
She suggested we get out of any clothes that were holding the cold water, and she gave Mrs. Laghari a large pink T-shirt from the backpack she’d grabbed before abandoning ship. I remember Mrs. Laghari asking Nina to unzip the back of her gown, then requesting we turn away while she struggled to get out of it. Even on a lifeboat, people have their modesty. The explosion had come during a dinner party, and the sight of most of us in dress clothes, now soaked and ripped as we huddled inside a raft, was a grim reminder of how little the natural world cares for our plans.
After that, we were mostly silent, just staring at the heavens, hoping to see an approaching airplane. None of us slept. A few of us prayed. It wasn’t until the sky began to lighten that we spotted anyone else. Geri had found a flashlight in the ditch bag, and we took turns waving it like a beacon. Somewhere around five in the morning, we heard a distant yell.
“There,” Geri said, pointing, “about twenty degrees to our right.”
Up ahead, in the flashlight beam, was a man gripping a chunk of something. As we drew closer, I realized it was actually a piece of the Galaxy’s fiberglass hull, and the man clinging to it was the ship’s owner, Jason Lambert.
I fell backward, trying to catch my breath. Not him! He made a guttural moaning sound as the others struggled to pull his corpulent body into the raft.
“It’s Jason!” Mrs. Laghari yelled.
He rolled on his side and vomited.
Geri turned to the horizon, which was coming clear with the daylight. “Everyone look carefully out there! This is our best chance to see if anyone else survived!”
When she said that word, it hit me like a bell chime. Survived? We were the survivors? No one else? No. I could not accept that. There must be others. In some other raft. In some other part of this angry sea. I thought of Dobby. What had happened to him? Where had he gone? Was he responsible for this disaster?
Geri pulled binoculars from her backpack, and we spread about the raft and passed them around. My turn came. At first glance, through those lenses, every small wave seemed like something alive; you’d swear you saw a dolphin, or a piece of equipment flashing in the chop. Then I saw a spot of something red, and red is not a color you confuse with the ocean.
“I think I see someone!” I yelled.
Geri grabbed the binoculars and confirmed it. She removed a soggy piece of paper from her pocket and ripped off a small corner, then threw it in the water and leaned over to watch it.
“What are you doing?” Mrs. Laghari asked.