“Yeah,” I lie so she’ll leave me alone, but I lift my eyes to give her a proper look. She’s a bony-shouldered woman, with bobbed dark hair and a short fringe scraping along her eyebrows. It’s a modern cut; she’s a woman who follows trends—an influencer maybe, documenting her travels. But the severe angle of her hair doesn’t detract from the softness of her face. Her pinked cheeks remind me of a Strawberry Shortcake doll I had as a kid, and her eyes have a slouchy, sleepy look about them. She has the face of a woman you want to trust. Whether you should or not.
Maybe she’s simply here with family, a vacationer with a husband who’s up in their room showering after a day exploring the island and she figured she’d have a drink at the bar before dinner. “I’m glad this place cleared out, it was a little too crowded for me,” she comments.
Now I’m more convinced she’s just a tourist, oblivious to the reason for the bustling hotel. My reason for being here.
“Supposed to rain tomorrow,” she adds, eyes flicking to one of the restaurant windows that faces the sea. “Storm blowing in.”
“I’m leaving in the morning,” I reply quickly, offering a sharp smilebefore looking back at my phone, hoping this will be enough for her to realize I’m not interested in small talk.
She clears her throat and takes another drink. “Giving up like the rest of them, huh?” Her voice is low, like she only half expects me to hear. And there is a hint of Midwest drawl, a woman from the flatland states, perhaps.
But I sink my shoulders back. “Excuse me?”
“Most everyone thinks the island is long gone, that it won’t appear again, that’s why they left.”
So she’s not on vacation. And now I wonder if she is a reporter after all. “You’re here looking for the island?” I ask.
She lowers her glass. “Of course. Aren’t you?”
There’s something off about her languid tone, a falsity in her voice, hiding an edge she doesn’t want me to hear. I draw my mouth into a hard line, not answering.
“The others think the island drifted west with the current, that it’s heading toward Iceland.”
I set my phone on the bar. “Is that where they all went? To Iceland?”
“A few. But most’ve given up.”
“Not you, though,” I point out, tensing my posture on the bar stool and glancing to the doorway back into the lobby.
She shakes her head, takes another drink, looking briefly disinterested, but it’s only for show. “And not you,” she observes.
My eardrums pulse, a prick of some instinct telling me that there’s more to this back-and-forth than she’s letting on. But I repeat, “I’m leaving tomorrow.” Making it clear that I have given up.
She runs her finger around the rim of her glass, nails painted a mauve shade of pink, eyes trained on the claret liquid inside. “That’s not a good idea, Ellie.”
A tiny ribbon of tension snaps tight along my spine, and I swallow against the name uttered from this stranger’s mouth. She knows who I am. She’s likely known since the moment she sat down besideme. “Who are you?” My tone is sharp, giving away the unease growing inside me.
Her eyes meet mine without blinking, drowsy and alert all at once. “Helen Ashcroft. We spoke on the phone several days back. I’ve tried calling since then, but I didn’t think you’d turn up here.”
Her voice did sound familiar when she first spoke, but I didn’t link it, didn’t make the connection. Now I’m seated beside Helen Ashcroft, the podcast journalist who phoned me back in Seattle and cracked apart the boundary I’d carefully laid out for myself. She’d called me Eleanor then, but she’s since learned the shortened name I’ve gone by most of my life. Has she known I’ve been in this hotel the whole time? Maybe she’s been following me, tracking my movements, waiting for the right time to approach. Trick me into talking to her.
“When did you get here?” I ask.
“The day after the sighting, same day as you.” She finishes the brandy, then waves at the bartender for another. “I saw you when you arrived in the lobby. But I wanted to be sure, didn’t want you to think I was following you.”
“So you haven’t been following me?”
She shakes her head. “I have my own leads to pursue. But now that we’re here, just the two of us, maybe you’d like to make a statement? I have my recording gear up in my room, we could sit down for an hour, talk about what you remember.”
I stare down at my half-empty glass, my uneaten plate of lasagna that the bartender placed in front of me without my realizing. And for a moment, her offer almost sounds appealing: I could tell her all of it, every detail I remember—get it out, and maybe it won’t be my weight to carry anymore.
I can return home tomorrow and leave it all behind.
“Maybe if you tell your story now, as an adult, people will believe you. It will finally give credit to the story you told when you were twelve. It will erase the stigma you endured.”
A lump hardens in my chest. Stigma. And a fresh wave of anxiety boils up inside me. If I tell my story now, as an adult, it won’t set anything right; it will only bring a new surge of doubt and criticism. Everything I worked so hard to put behind me will come roaring back in. And this time I might drown in it. When you’re twelve, people write off your stories as childish make-believe. It’s something you can outgrow, pretend was all in your head. But if I tell the same story again, I won’t be able to escape it so easily. Helen Ashcroft is wrong. People won’t believe it any more now than they did back then. A few will, of course, those who want to believe in such things. But most will add me to the list of conspiracy theorists, alien abductees, bigfoot sightings, and religious figures seen in corn crops and burnt toast. I won’t risk the life I’ve built. I’ll keep my mouth shut.
I place two twenty-dollar bills on the bar and stand up. “Sorry,” I tell her. “I don’t remember any of it. It was a long time ago.”
