He pulls me to him, a hand against my hair. “I know.” The words sound so plain, lacking any of the usual Scottish lilt, like he wants me to hear a voice that sounds like home. “I’m sorry, Ellie.”
I breathe in his scent, stunned by how quickly the desperation seized my thoughts. I draw in another breath, and with his arms around me, my heart begins to settle.
“There’s nothing here,” I mutter against his chest.
He nods. “We should get back to the beach.”
We can’t risk being gone from our island too long. Wandering this far into the jungle, losing sight of the island, was a stupid risk.
The reef refuses to let go of the island.
It’s dug in deep. Rock and coral and mud.
I’m thankful for the steadiness of each day, the air breezy and warm, the liquid song of birds through the open windows when we sleep at night.
We spend our days outside, making piles of broken wood, nails, shards of glass. We rake out the mud, finding topsoil beneath, setting down new rows for the garden. Clay begins rebuilding the greenhouse, smaller than what it was before. Thankfully, he kept tins of seeds in the cellar, collected over the years, marked and cataloged. Plenty for us to begin again.
We make trips to the beach once a day, sometimes twice, bringing back coconuts and handfuls of mangoes, jackfruit, and avocado I find growing near the hotel—a kitchen garden that once fed hotel guests.
I ask Clay if we can grow them in the greenhouse, and he replies with a not-very-hopeful shrug. “We can try.”
I make him toast with avocado slices, olive oil, and sea salt. “In my time, we put butter on toast, nae this,” he says, eyeing it skeptically. But he can’t hide the satisfied look in his eyes after the first bite. And the following morning, he asks for it again.
We haul back plates and glassware and coffee mugs from the resort kitchen, to replace our broken ones. We gather firewood and stack it along the back of the house. We even manage to catch five of our chickens who made it through the storm, and Clay builds them a temporary henhouse until he can construct a permanent structure. It gives me hope that there might be more still alive, maybe even the herd of sheep, hiding somewhere within the dense jungle of the island.
In the afternoon, when the air is too hot and stagnant for work, we row to the beach and lie in the sand, letting the ocean rise over our toes. A large sea turtle swims along the shore, curious about the humanswho have invaded its secret cove. We swim and float on our backs, eyes closed, and sometimes I pretend we’re on a weeklong getaway. We’ve strolled down from the hotel, escaping the noise of poolside bingo and Bob Marley playing on repeat from the restaurant speakers. I pretend we can stay as long as we like, that this is our new home.
This paradise we’ve found.
But Clay is less sure. The hotel unsettles him: the blank screens, the sleek devices with no moving parts and no clear purpose. He doesn’t ask what they are, what they’re for; I think he doesn’t want to know. He moves past them like one might pass a graveyard: quietly, careful, refusing to look too long.
When the sun begins to nip at the horizon, the day fading away, we sit on the shore, watching the sky become a fever of colors. “Let’s not go back,” I say. “Let’s sleep here tonight, on the beach.”
Clay shakes his head, about to tell me we can’t—the island might break free in the night, and then we’d be stranded—but I touch his mouth with my fingertips, stopping him from speaking.
“Just one night,” I add, my voice low, cajoling. “The island won’t leave us behind. We can pretend we’re on holiday.” I use his word for vacation. “Pretend it’s our honeymoon.” I say it without thinking, before I can take it back.
I lower my hand, wishing I hadn’t said it. Not because it feels too soon to say such things, but because he’s been married before, had a wedding and a honeymoon. And his wife died in his arms.
“I’m sorry,” I say softly.
He touches my chin. “I’d marry ye if I could. I’d stand at an altar an’ say I was yours. I’d promise to never leave yer side.”
Warmth rises into my cheeks, a swirling ache that feels dangerously like happiness, like truth, like I could actually keep him forever. “I’d promise it too.”
He leans closer. “I promise it now, even without an altar.” His other hand finds the necklace around my throat, touching the shell suspendedthere—as if it were a symbol of this promise. As if it were a ring around my finger.
I can see a life with him—all the days to come—and I don’t want to lose it. I breathe, letting the past melt away behind me. “I do too,” I tell him.
His lips press softly to mine. And I know the meaning in each of his inhales, I know the significance of his hands sliding around my neck and down my spine. The intention of his heartbeat as I sink back onto the sand and he plants kisses down my throat to the space between my breasts, all the way to my navel.
He is mine. And I am his.
We need no altar, no church, no wedding cake or bridesmaids or family gathered together with tears in their eyes.
This is enough. Our bodies, sun-seasoned and warm from days spent on the beach. The stars our witness.
I am his wife more than I’ve ever been anything else.
