So I lay awake that whole night wondering about death. No one who has died can tell us what it feels like. I don’t think there is any kind of death that is painless, even if it is just a split second. Even if someone just cut off your head or shot you in the heart. Life feels too strong to go away without some kind of agony.
Our father was very paranoid about life leaving us, me and Emma and Witt. He got so angry when we didn’t do the things he’d told us to do to stay alive. Bike helmets and seat belts were the worst. I don’t know what it was like for Witt and Emma, inside their heads, when they didn’t wear a helmet or put on a seat belt. Maybe they did it on purpose, because they wanted to be free of those restraints. But for me, it was just about forgetting. Our father would lecture us when it happened, about how kids feel invincible, how they don’t understand that they can die. That they will actually die one day. That they are destructible. Emma would giggle and I could see that his words went through her like a ghost. She didn’t care that this feeling would leave her one day. It was like being beautiful. She was going to enjoy it while she could—otherwise, what’s the point?
I want to go out in a big, enormous ball of flames the minute I feel the way Daddy does. I would rather live half as long feeling alive than twice as long feeling dead already.
Emma whispered this in my ear one night as she lay in my bed. She was sixteen, and by then she didn’t ride a bike and she always wore her seat belt because she was driving and she didn’t want to get a ticket from the police. Still, there were so many other things like those things, rules and restraints. When she said these words to me, I could tell that she felt very grown-up. That she felt as though she had come up with something no one had thought of before. But now I know that she was just finding a way to understand what was going on inside her.
When a scream wants to come out, nothing can stop it. Not rules. Not restraints. Not even the common sense to want to stay alive.
I was more like my father. From as early as I have memories of my own thoughts and feelings, I know that I feared death and that I felt that death was going to come for me as a punishment. Every time I smoked a cigarette, I told myself I would be punished with cancer. Every time I drank alcohol, I imagined lying in the hospital with yellow skin because my liver was failing. And when I drove Emma in her car without a license or even a permit, I would resign myself to a bloody death on the side of the road.
What I have come to know about death is that it is not like that. It is not fair. It does not add up your cigarettes and drinks and irresponsible behavior and come for you when you’ve reached your quota. People die all the time who were very good, very responsible. And people stay alive to the bitter end of their natural lives who were very bad and who did very bad things. Mrs. Martin will probably live to be one hundred. Mr. Martin will be right beside her.
When I was young, I was undeserving of death. Even after I started drinking and smoking and thinking bad thoughts and doing bad things, I had never done anything so bad that I deserved to die. Still, I feared death as though I deserved it just because I was me, and I think I will never stop feeling that way until it finally does come.
When I chased death from my thoughts, they turned instantly to the island and what would happen in the morning when they went there. I did not sleep. Not for one minute.
How I missed Emma that night as I lay in bed—wondering what they would find on the island. And knowing what they wouldn’t.
EIGHTEEN
Dr. Winter—Day Five of Cass Tanner’s Return
Five miles off the coast of South Bristol, Maine, was the island of Freya. It was renamed by the current owner, a corporation named Freya Investments, LLC. The name was Scandinavian, meaning the Nordic goddess of love and fertility.
Freya Investments, LLC, was registered in the State of Delaware and owned by a man named Carl Peterson.
They found the island of Freya five days after Cass Tanner returned home. It started with a boat found drifting miles away, near Rockland. The boat belonged to the owner of a dock and small marina in South Bristol. The owner had leased the boat to Richard Conroy, who was, in fact, Richard Foley. The owner’s wife eventually recognized Foley from a news broadcast showing his picture, and they alerted the authorities.
Abby, Leo and a Critical Incident Response Group, or CIRG, were moved to the closest mainland point on Christmas Cove, which adjoined South Bristol by means of a swing bridge. Satellite imagery of every island that sat at the mouth of the bay was analyzed. Cass had described three structures and one dock. The main house was on the easternmost point, facing the Atlantic. The dock stood to the south, facing a larger island. And the two smaller structures, a greenhouse and a generator shed, were to the north of the house. On the western side were the treacherous rocks.
Only one island matched the description.
“You ready?” Leo asked as they stood on the dock. A coast guard cutter was standing by. Abby and the forensic team would wait on the boat until the island was cleared. Leo was going with the CIRG team.
“I’m nervous,” Abby said.
She stared at the map she’d been given from the satellite. She could see where Freya was positioned, and the structures on the island. She could imagine Cass and Emma standing on the dock, seeing the larger island of Thrumcap and beyond that, the mainland, their freedom close but unattainable. There was no way someone could swim that distance in this water without a wetsuit. And the coast guard had confirmed that the currents were strong. Swimming across this stretch of water would be like swimming twice the distance, and that was only if the currents didn’t pull you toward the rocks on the western end.
Everything had happened quickly. Too quickly for Abby to make sense of it all. The boat was found two days before Cass returned home, even though it had taken four more days for the dock owner to put the pieces together. Yet she’d said she’d come home that same night, on that boat. And it was found drifting on its own, the key turned to the on position and the gas tank empty.
“That’s not like Rick,” the dock owner had told them. He had always taken very good care of that boat. “We had no idea he was in trouble till we saw the news this morning. Called the local sheriff, but we didn’t know his real name so no one made the connection.”