Watching the waves slowly claim him, slipping over his closed eyes and parted lips, drove me wild.
Galloway had to hold me, putting up with my fists and screams, as Conner slowly left land for sea. I craved comfort from my husband’s arms but I felt undeserving. Who did Conner have to hug and kiss?
He was alone now.
That night, we didn’t move from the beach. Pippa sought solitude rather than our arms, and we sat in the moonlight with silent sadness in our souls.
Once the sun rose and Conner had vanished, we added his name to the small shrine of the Evermore parents with a newly carved cross and an inscription of our everlasting love. We plucked a hundred red flowers and scattered them over the sand in his memory. And we lost each other, retreating to our private corners of grief.
The day we lost Conner was the day we lost all energy to continue.
I didn’t remember much of those weeks.
I didn’t remember comforting or speaking or doing more than eating when my body demanded and crying when the dysphoria grew too much to be contained.
Pippa curled in on herself, turning into an inconsolable wraith.
Galloway spent a day hunting every stonefish he could find, slaughtering them one by one. It terrified me that he would step wrong and suffer the same end as Conner.
Death didn’t pay for death.
And once he’d finished, his shoulders wracked with silent sobs, crying for Conner, our future, and a past he still couldn’t shake.
Even Coconut grieved.
Her questions about Conner petered out the longer we shook our heads and gave no answer to his return. Her babbling conversation turned quiet and morose as if, even at her young age, she understood that her favourite older brother was gone forever.
We’d been so brave.
We’d been so strong.
But this...this was the breaking point I feared would ruin us.
.............................
NOVEMBER
Grief had an awful way of lingering.
It tainted, not just our crying hearts and every thought, but I tasted it in the sky. I ate it for dinner. I slept with it at night.
After our self-inflicted solitude, we found our way back to each other.
For two months, we existed in a daze, constantly expecting Conner to charge up the beach with an arm full of freshly caught fish or proudly carry Coco to go swimming.
Pippa jumped with hope if the wind whistled in the trees, morbidly mimicking Conner’s laugh.
Galloway threw everything he had into protecting Coconut. He became mistrustful of everything, and the light that’d shone so bright in his gaze, the same light that mirrored in mine, had been snuffed out.
For so many months, we’d beaten adversity together...now, I felt more alone than ever.
Night-time turned into nightmares. I couldn’t escape them. I couldn’t stop the heartache of missing him.
One star-spangled night, Galloway kissed my cheek and spooned me.
I tensed, expecting sex. Sex I wasn’t emotionally ready for.
Instead, he whispered, “We loved him, Estelle. We loved him a son, friend, and brother. But we can’t keep killing ourselves this way. He’s gone. We’re still here. We have to keep going.
“He would want us to move on. He trusts us to care for Pippa.” He embraced me hard. “We owe it to him not to give up.”
My tears came afresh, but this time, they weren’t full of weeping acid but pure with parting.
This man wasn’t my other half.
He was my heart.
And no matter what happened, that would never change.
.............................
Days vanished without us bothering to count them.
The rainy season pelted us, but we ignored it.
The sunshine burned us, but we paid no attention.
The constant sameness of our humid, tropical island was a mockery to our pain.
We lost sight of how to be happy, how to laugh in fear’s face and survive in death’s glare.
We bowed under the pressure and finally came to terms with the fact if we didn’t leave, we would die.
We would die, and we wouldn’t really care.
We weren’t playing house on the beach.
We weren’t living a fantastical dream where society couldn’t touch us, everyday flu couldn’t find us, and stress of work couldn’t harm us.
This was real.
Conner was dead.
Dead.
We were the gateway and final destination to life and death.
We were the morgue, the supermarket, the hospital, the house, the bank, the pharmacy, the restaurant. We were every mortal thing and the pressure to fight had finally vanished.
.............................
DECEMBER
Only a few dates smudged and sullied into perspicuous recollection.
A few dates that would forever be known as life-changing.
The date Madi uploaded my song and changed my career was one.
The night we crash landed on our island was two.
The morning Coco was born was three.
The afternoon Conner died in our arms was four.
And the upcoming nightmare in our future was five.
Five dates that defined me.
Five dates that would carry such heavy, heavy weight.
Even now, three months since Conner abandoned us, we hurt just as badly.