Three months since we’d genuinely laughed and smiled.
Three months since our will to survive had dried up.
However, with death came life, and Coconut blossomed overnight. She morphed from human larvae into a chatty little girl, magically stealing our sadness and reminding us how to smile again. Her tiny cheeks and intelligent eyes acted as a balm for our smarting memories.
The tears were never far away, and Pippa was irrevocably changed. She’d become a stranger who we shared our island with. The last surviving member of her bloodline.
But life dragged us onward, patching up our wounds with hours and days, slowly healing us despite our wishes.
The turtles visited (as they did every year) but this time, no one stayed up to witness their night long laying.
We were too tired.
Too weak.
Growing weaker by the day.
One night, the urge to connect with Galloway overwhelmed me and I stole his hand to lead him to bed.
Pippa remained by the fire, staring into the flames the same way she did every night. The only time she remembered she was alive was when I put Coco in her arms. Then she would blink and converse, shedding her cape of listlessness until the squirmy toddler decided she’d had enough being the emotional medicine for a severely sad sister.
For some time, I wondered if it’d been fairer for fate to take Pippa’s life instead of Conner’s. She carried her family’s death too hard. It might’ve been kinder for her to pass, to find her mother and father in the great wide ether and trade this existence for a celestial one.
But fate didn’t work that way. It didn’t give invitations to its upcoming events. It just orchestrated what would happen with no apology or suggestion.
We didn’t speak as I pulled Galloway inside our bedroom and hurriedly undid the bows of my bikini.
Galloway’s eyes burned with an intensity I’d never seen before as he shed his board-shorts and gathered me in his arms.
Our kiss was wild and furious.
Our coupling messy and violent.
And after whatever compulsion had driven us was sated, we lay in the dark and agreed.
It was time.
“We’re leaving this week, Estelle. It’s time to prepare the boat.”
We were saying goodbye.
Leaving Conner in paradise.
It was time to return home.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
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G A L L O W A Y
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JANUARY
I’D HAD ENOUGH.
My family were dying.
Conner had already left us.
I wouldn’t lose any more.
I’d never missed someone as much as I missed him.
Not even my mother or father.
Conner was more to me than a kid I shared an island with.
So much more.
And now, he’d disappeared, leaving us to deal with the wreckage.
I hated him for that.
I hated that he’d checked out and left us here.
But I hated myself, too.
While Estelle punished herself for his death, I beat myself up for ever letting Conner take so many risks.
Fishing was dangerous.
Fishing alone even more so.
What was I thinking?
Why didn’t I go with him? Why didn’t I take over and force the boy to stay on the shore?
I knew the answers to my questions: because Conner wouldn’t have accepted my ultimatums. If he was forbidden the ocean, he would’ve been in trees and broken his back. If he’d been denied fishing, he would’ve found some other risky pastime.
It was his destiny.
Just like ours hadn’t been when we’d crashed.
Pippa turned eleven but pleaded not to celebrate. She chose to spend the day cuddled in Conner’s flax sleeping bag on her own.
I worried about her.
About all of us.
Grief was a constant entity poking me full of painful holes. I wanted to rope the bastardly emotion into a noose, beat it up, then hack it to pieces with our blunt axe.
I couldn’t keep feeling so hopeless, so useless, so eternally sad.
So I threw myself into finding salvation for those of us left behind.
For a week, we stockpiled and prepared the kayak with food. I built a ballast on the side to keep us upright when navigating the choppy reef, stealing the design from a Balinese long boat.
Pippa helped prepare, but her heart wasn’t in it. She preferred to spend her time on the beach where Conner and her parents had said farewell.
I dreaded the day when we finally disembarked.
Would she come with us or would she be unable to say goodbye? Their bodies were gone, but their souls remained on our island. And I didn’t know if she’d be able to tear herself away from those she adored.
While Estelle wrapped our belongings in palm fronds and hacked down coconuts, I sailed around the atoll a few times to test how seaworthy the new vessel was. So far, the rickety, flax tied, bamboo crafted outrigger withstood enough. However, the four oars I’d made had dwindled to three.
Conner wouldn't be there to help me steer or navigate.
His loss pulverised my heart.
Our home was slowly less and less important, just a shell to abandon when we left. We were as prepared as we could be.