Dobby had mentioned Annabelle, but after saying that she’d died from a rare blood disease and that Benji had struggled to find money for her treatment, he offered no more details. His patience for gunpoint had expired. “I’m not saying any more until you swear I’m not a suspect. I can prove I wasn’t on that yacht. Just get me back and let me make some calls.”
LeFleur reluctantly agreed. What choice did he have? Deep down, he hoped Dobby was telling the truth. He didn’t care to be this close to a man who could lie that well.
“You never told me how you found that raft,” Dobby said.
“I didn’t find it.”
“Who did?”
“A guy. A drifter.”
“Where is he?”
“That’s what everyone wants to know.”
“Did he have a name?”
“Rom Rosh.”
Dobby turned. “Rom Rosh?”
“What?” LeFleur said.
Dobby shook his head. “Strange name.”
“Yeah.”
Through the windshield, LeFleur saw the large sign that read “Now Leaving Volcano Hazard Zone.” He felt a pang of relief. They were back on the island’s north side. Back to the living.
“Another twenty minutes,” he said.
“Can I get something to eat?” Dobby asked. “Before you lock me up?”
Two hours later, after dropping Dobby at the island’s only jail, LeFleur returned to his office and flicked on the lights. He was bone-tired. He took the notebook from his briefcase and placed it in on his desk. Then he leaned his forehead into his hands, shut his eyes, and rubbed hard, as if to shake loose an answer from his brain.
Nothing came. He was back to where he’d begun. A sunken yacht. A discovered raft. An unbelievable story. An accused with an excuse.
He wanted a drink. He pulled open his lower drawer, where he stashed small bottles of rum that he picked up at the island factory. Katrina, his assistant, would periodically throw those bottles away. A churchgoing woman, she didn’t approve of him drinking on the job, but she wouldn’t dare say that to him directly. So he’d get the little bottles and they’d be there for a while, then one day they’d be gone and he knew she had tossed them. He never confronted her. It was their little game.
This time, when he opened the lower drawer, something else caught his eye. A large tan envelope with the precinct’s stamp on the upper left-hand corner. Except the envelope was sealed.
He dialed Katrina, who sounded surprised to hear from him.
“Where were you all day?” she asked. “People were asking for you.”
“Yeah,” he said, “I had to take care of something. Hey. Did you put a sealed envelope in my desk?”
“What?”
“In my drawer. You know. The lower drawer?”
“Oh, yeah. That was last week, from that guy. Remember? That day you were stuck in Marguerita Bay?”
“Rom?”
“I don’t know his name. He never told me. He asked for an envelope while he was waiting, so I gave him one. You said it was OK, remember? And then, like I told you, when I came back out to find him, he was gone. But he left the envelope on the steps, so I put it in your desk.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I did.” She paused. “I thought I did. Oh, Jarty. There’s so much going on. I’m sorry if I forg—”
But LeFleur had already hung up. He ripped open the envelope to find a stack of folded pages. The edges were frayed and the handwriting was familiar. LeFleur knew exactly where they had come from.
He started reading so fast he didn’t even feel himself drop back into his chair.
Sea
My Dear Annabelle.
One final time, I beg your forgiveness. It’s been months since I wrote you anything. I am still at sea, but no longer at war with it. I may live. I may die. It doesn’t matter. A shroud has been lifted. I can say all I need to say now.
I’d be quite a sight to you, my love. There is much less of me. My arms are scrawny. My thighs are thin chops. Some of my teeth are loose. The clothes I used to wear are just shreds of fabric, chewed away by the pervasive salt. The only thing there is more of is my beard, which is growing unfettered toward my collarbone.
I don’t know how far across the Atlantic I have traveled. One night I saw a large boat on the horizon. I fired a flare. Nothing. Weeks later, I spotted a cargo ship, so close I could make out the colors on her hull. Another flare. Nothing.
I have accepted that rescue will be impossible. I am too small. Too insignificant. I am a man in a raft, and if I am to survive, the currents hold my fate. The oceans of the world are all connected, Annabelle, so perhaps I am meant to pass from one to another in a ceaseless looping of the planet. Or maybe, in the end, Mother Sea will take me, as a mother bear takes her weak and sickly cub. Put me out of my misery. Perhaps that would be best.
Whatever awaits, that’s what will be. The sick and elderly sometimes say, “Let me go. I am ready to meet the Lord.” But what need do I have for such surrender? I have met the Lord already.
Looking back on these pages, I see I stopped writing after little Alice spoke for the first time.
I remember only darkness after that. I must have blacked out. The shock of losing Lambert and Geri, the effort of swimming after weeks of inactivity—all that left me a gasless tank.
When I came to, the sun was gone and the evening sky was an indigo blue. Alice was sitting on the edge of the raft, lit by moonlight, her narrow arms crossed in her lap. She wore one of Geri’s white T-shirts, which hung over her knees. The bangs of her hair fluttered with the breeze.
“Alice?” I whispered.
“Why do you call me that?” she said.
Her voice was childlike, yet clear and precise.
“We had to call you something,” I said. “What’s your real name?”
She smiled. “Alice will do.”
My throat was dry, and my eyes were sticky with sleep. As I turned my head, the empty raft brought a sickening wave of grief.
“Everyone is gone.”
“Yes,” she said.
“The sharks got Geri. I couldn’t save her. And Lambert. I couldn’t save him, either.”
I thought about those final moments in the water. Then I remembered.
“Alice?” I said, lifting to my elbows. “Did you say you were … the Lord?”
“I am.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just what I said.”
“But you’re a child.”
“Isn’t the Lord in all children?”
I blinked several times. My thinking was foggy.
“Wait … then who was the man we pulled from the water?”
She didn’t answer.
“Alice?” My voice rose. “Why did that man die? Are you just mimicking him? Who are you really? Why didn’t you speak before now?”
She uncrossed her arms, got to her feet, and walked toward me without the slightest wobble. She crouched by my side, and crossed her small legs in front of her. I stared, wordless, as she lifted my right hand and placed it inside hers.
“Sit with me, Benjamin,” she said.
And we sat. Through the evening—and through the night—without saying another word. It’s not that I couldn’t speak, Annabelle. It’s that the inclination was suddenly gone. I know it sounds strange, but all protest within me had vanished. Holding her hand was like a key turning a tumbler. My body melted. My breath calmed. As the minutes passed, I seemed to get smaller. The heavens grew enormous. When a spread of glowing stars took over the sky, it drew tears from my eyes.
We sat like that until the dawn, when the sun broke over the horizon and its rays shot out in every direction. The reflection sent a path of glimmering diamonds through the chop and all the way to our raft. In that moment, it was possible to believe that the world was nothing more than water and sky, that land was not even a concept, and all that man had built upon it was inconsequential. I realized this is what it means to forgo everything and be alone with God.
And I knew that I was.
“Now, Benjamin,” Alice said softly, “ask me what you wish.”
My voice felt buried deep in my windpipe. I dragged the words up like a bucket from a well.
“Who was he? The man who called himself the Lord?”
“An angel I spoke through.”
“Why did he ask for food and water?”
“To see if you would share it.”
“Why was he so quiet?”
“To see if you would listen.”
I looked away. “Lambert killed him.”
“Did he?” she said.
I turned back. Her expression was calm. I swallowed hard, unsure if I wanted to ask the next question, but knowing that I had to.
“Was Jason Lambert my father?”