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“Don’t you want to see what’s out there?” I ask, sighing.
Grabbing my arm, he scowls, looking at me like I just said the earth is flat.
“Mona, you’re not serious? You recognize what’s out there: evil. The killer who took Clara from us.”
Flashes of Clara’s coffin fire into my mind like bullets from a gun. Wounding, scaring. Clara snuck away that night like many before it. She must have had a destination. Someone or somewhere she was running to. Was it them who killed her, or just a random monster? Is that what it’s like out there—death and murderers waiting at every turn?
My father forced me to see her body. Her skin had turned an awful shade of blue. She didn’t look real, like a marble model of her former self. There was a slit cut into her skin from chest to groin. They stole her heart directly from her chest. I will never find peace with the information that she was being butchered while I slept. I will never be free of that image—or that her heart was never found, never returned to us.
“Did your mother ever speak of the outside world?”
He pushes away from me and turns to lean against a tree. “You know I don’t like to speak about her. It pains me that she wasn’t a true islander.”
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing.”
The waves lapping at the shore can be heard in the still of night. Like a siren’s call, I want to feel it on my feet.
“There must have been some good or Clara wouldn’t have kept going back. Do you not wonder?”
“No,” he snaps, and I jerk my head toward him. “I’m sorry,” he exhales. Coming over to me, he smooths a hand down my hair. “It’s just painful thinking about her slipping off to God knows where with God knows who and me not aware of it happening, not being able to stop her, to help her.”
I understand how he feels. I did know what she was doing, and I didn’t stop her. Granted, I was young, but if I had tattled on her, she might be alive right now.
“Have you ever been off this island?” I ask, a shiver skating up my spine, making me shudder.
“No, and I don’t want to ever leave here or be anywhere else.” He slips out of his jacket and cloaks it over my shoulders. “This is our home. We belong here. You belong here.”
“I don’t know where I belong anymore,” I tell him truthfully, tears burning the corners of my eyes. I feel like I’m suffocating every day.
“What is that supposed to mean?” His tone is ice-cold, sending a wave of chills rippling up my spine. I hate that he doesn’t feel what I feel, that he can’t understand my need.
“When Clara was taken from us, it was like I lost a part of myself. My soul fled my body when her pulse left hers.” I plead for him to understand, to recognize part of me died with her. But he never will. He has no siblings.
“You’ll be okay. Your missing piece is closer than you think. She’s beside you right now, in your dreams when you close your eyes, your prayers when you read scripture. You have to trust God’s plan.”
“Do you honestly believe that?” I ask, looking at his features cast in the glow of the moonlight slipping through the gaps in the branches. He’s handsome in a classic kind of way: clean lines, square jaw, petite nose, dark eyes with contrasting blond hair. He should be enough, but there’s something missing when we’re together.
“With all my heart. There are rules for a reason, Mona. Clara broke them and met a terrible fate. That’s got to make you believe in your father’s vision, his faith.”
Hypocrite. Hypocrite. You speak so loud and hear nothing.
“We break the rules,” I admonish.
A smile lights his face. His palms loosen and slip down my arms to grip my hips. “We bend the rules. There’s a difference.”
“How is it different?”
“Well, you will be my wife when you finally accept your fate, and then no one will ever have to be privy to the fact we consummated the union long before our wedding night.”
I ignore the tightening of my chest and push him back against a tree. “You talk too much.”
“Then shut me up.” He grins, stealing my lips in a kiss that doesn’t cause my stomach to dance with butterflies like Clara once told me it should. I embrace him, giving him my tongue and allowing my hands to dip inside his slacks to caress the hardness there, willing the feelings I wish I had to come over me. There’s just the motions, the sensation. I play the game, doing my part, taking my turn and giving him all the right sounds, but there’s a longing inside me calling out to the water, to the world beyond it.
