“Any clue that someone had been in it?”
LeFleur collected his breath.
“Look, Mr.—”
“Dobby.”
“Dobby. That raft had to travel two thousand miles to get here. That’s two thousand miles worth of waves, storms, wind, sea life. What chance would anyone have against all that? For a year?”
Dobby nodded, as if hearing something he’d already told himself.
“It’s just that …”
LeFleur waited.
“My cousin. He found a way to get through things. He had a tough life. Really poor. He could’ve given up many times. But he didn’t. When I read about the raft, I thought maybe, crazy as it sounds, he found a way to survive that, too.”
“You flew all the way down here to find that out?”
“Well … yeah. We were really close.”
A car turned down the street, its headlights sweeping across them. LeFleur scrambled to the left, Dobby to the right. Now they were on opposite sides of the pavement. LeFleur racked his brain for more details from the notebook. He needed to get back to it, to learn everything about what part this Dobby had really played.
An idea formed in his mind. Risky. But what choice did he have?
“Where are you staying, Mr. Dobby?”
“In town. A guesthouse.”
LeFleur glanced at his porch, and the lantern that illuminated it.
“Would you like some supper?” he asked.
An hour later LeFleur was sipping Patrice’s goat water soup and forcing a smile as Dobby talked. Patrice had taken it in stride. Her husband had come home with a foreign traveler. Could they add a chair at the table? It wasn’t something that happened often, but privately, she welcomed it. The isolation they’d endured since Lilly’s death had settled like a shadow inside their house. Any new visitor was a light.
“What part of Ireland are you from, Dobby?” Patrice asked.
“A town called Carndonagh. It’s way up north.”
“Did you know they call Montserrat ‘the Emerald Isle of the Caribbean’?”
“Is that so?”
“Because it’s shaped like Ireland. And a lot of people who came here years ago were Irish.”
“Well, I left Ireland when I was a kid,” Dobby said. “I grew up in Boston.”
“When did you leave Boston?” LeFleur asked.
“When I was nineteen.”
“College?”
“Nah. I wasn’t much for school. Neither was Benji.”
LeFleur felt as if a character from a book had come to life. He knew things about this man that the man himself had not yet revealed. He had to be patient, draw him out.
“What did you do after that?”
“Jarty,” Patrice said, tapping his hand. “Maybe let the man eat?”
“Sorry.”
“Nah, it’s all right,” Dobby said, chewing on a roll. “I did a lot of things. Odd jobs. Traveled around. Wound up in the concert business.”
“You’re a musician?” Patrice said.
“I wish.” Dobby smiled. “I carry the equipment. Set it up. Break it down. A roadie, for want of a better word.”
“How fun,” Patrice said. “You must meet a lot of famous people.”
“Sometimes, yeah. Famous people don’t do much for me.”
“What about the army?” LeFleur said. “You ever serve?”
Dobby’s eyes narrowed. “Now why would you ask me that?”
“Yes, Jarty,” Patrice added. “Why would you?”
LeFleur felt a flush. “Dunno,” he mumbled. “Just curious.”
Dobby leaned back and ran a hand through his long, stringy hair. Then Patrice said, “Is there a Mrs. Dobby somewhere?” and the conversation shifted. LeFleur silently cursed himself. He’d have to be more careful. If Dobby suspected that LeFleur knew what he’d done, he could disappear from the island before LeFleur could make a case. On the other hand, he couldn’t just arrest the man without evidence. Evidence meant the notebook. The notebook meant explaining why he’d taken it. His thoughts marched around this triangle so intensely he lost the flow of the conversation, until he heard his wife say, “… our daughter, Lilly.”
LeFleur blinked hard.
“She was four,” Patrice said. She placed her hand on her husband’s.
“Yeah,” he mumbled.
“I’m truly sorry for you both,” Dobby said. “There’s no words for that.”
He shook his head as if lamenting a common enemy.
“The damn sea,” he said.
That night, after dropping Dobby at the guesthouse, LeFleur parked across the street and killed his engine. Part of him did not want to take his eyes off of this man.
His phone buzzed. A text. Patrice.
We need coffee. Pick some up.
LeFleur bit his lip. He texted her back.
Having a drink with Dobby. Home in a bit.
He pressed send and sighed. He hated lying to Patrice. He hated the chasm that was now between them. The latest chasm. Deep down, he’d also resented that his wife had seemingly made peace with Lilly’s death while he was still at war with it. She believed it was God’s will. Part of his plan. She kept a Bible in the kitchen and read from it often. When she did, LeFleur felt as if a door had been locked that he couldn’t get past. He had been a believer earlier in his life, and the day Lilly was born, he did feel blessed by something larger than all of them.
But after her death, he viewed things differently. God? Why turn to God now? Where was God when his mother-in-law fell asleep in her beach chair? Where was God when his daughter got swept into the sea? Why didn’t God just make her little feet run the other way, back to safety, back to the house, back to her mother and her father? What kind of God lets a child die that way?
There was no comfort in invisible forces, not for LeFleur. There was only what got put in front of you and how you dealt with it. Which is why this notebook had so engrossed him—and at times frustrated him. A group of shipwrecked people think they have God in the boat? Why not pin Him down? Hold Him accountable for all the horrors He allowed in this world? LeFleur would have.
He clicked open the glove compartment and took a long swig from the whisky flask. Then he reached over the seat for his briefcase, found the notebook, flipped on the courtesy lights, and returned to the story. He didn’t notice, in the guesthouse’s second-story window, the small round lenses of the binoculars that Dobby watched him through.
It was after midnight when LeFleur finished the final page.
I am the Lord. And I will never leave you.
He dropped the notebook in his lap. The little girl was the Lord? He searched for more pages that weren’t there. The little girl was the Lord. Storywise, it explained certain things. Why she was always giving her rations to the stranger. Why she didn’t speak. She was watching them the whole time. She was watching over Benji. But who was the man who claimed to be God? And why was he allowed to die? Why didn’t the little girl save him—or the rest of them?
He glanced at his watch. After midnight. The date on his display had just changed. April 10.
He froze.
Lilly’s birthday.
She would have been eight years old today.
He pressed his fingers to his forehead and covered his eyes with his palms. His mind flooded with memories of his daughter. Putting her to bed. Making her breakfast. Holding her hand as they crossed a street in town. For some reason, he found himself thinking about the last scene in Benji’s story, the little girl in his arms, and what that little girl might have looked like. He pictured her as Lilly.
He got out of his car, walked to the back, and popped open the trunk. He pulled aside a pale-blue blanket that covered the spare tire. There, wedged inside the rim, was something he had hidden three years ago. A small stuffed animal: Lilly’s brown-and-white kangaroo. He’d put it there the night Patrice was gathering Lilly’s things in boxes. He hid it because he didn’t want every piece of his child to be packed away. He chose that toy because he’d given it to Lilly for her fourth birthday. Her final birthday.
“Daddy,” Lilly had said that day, pointing to a slit in the kangaroo’s belly, “baby kangaroos go in here.”
“That’s right,” LeFleur said. “It’s called a pouch.”
“Is the baby safe in the pouch?” Lilly asked.