“I don’t know who you are,” I admit.
He touches a hand to his chest, and I can see his legs actually wobble, like his knees are going to give out. “James,” he says. “It’s James.”
“No,” I hear myself say. I frown at him, taking another step back. This man looks nothing like James. His hair is gone, his beard full and riddled with gray—a beard that James never would have grown. And he’s old, much older than James was when I last saw him.
“I didn’t think…” The man smiles, lets out a rounded laugh. “I didn’t think I’d ever see you again. I, uh—” He starts to cry, wiping at the tears. “You look… the same. You look—” He frowns, like his mind is bending in on itself, trying to make sense of it. “Everyone thought you were dead, drowned,” he says now, like too many memories, too many thoughts, are rushing through him. “But your grandma, she always believed you were still alive, said she could hear your voice in the sea air.” He smiles again, and this time… I hear something in his voice, the tenor, the short swing of his vowels, the clipped way he ends a sentence.
“James?”
He smiles even brighter, takes another step closer. This time I don’t back away. But my mind is pinwheeling forward and back, trying to calculate the time. “How long…” I ask. “How long ago did I disappear?”
“Twenty-two years, and a few months.”
My legs teeter beneath me like I’m back on the island. “Twenty-two?”
He nods, the smile fading. “But you haven’t changed at all.”
I blink, trying to anchor myself.
It’s been far longer than I thought. Too long. Twenty-two years feels like an anvil against my chest, fracturing any hope I had that my old life may still be just as I’d left it. Fuck. James is in his fifties now. But he looks even older. Time has worn him down, taken things from him. My disappearance may be partly to blame.
“We got your letter,” he says now.
“Letter?”
“The note you left, in that hotel on St. Andre Island.”
Now I’m the one to smile. “You found it?”
“A pair of fishermen found it while exploring the island. Total luck, they just happened to see it. It had been there a while, a few years, but they recognized the name. Your name.”
I shake my head, feeling like I might cry.
“It was a big deal when you vanished… for the second time. People still talk about it. The legend of Saltwell Island and the woman who found it twice. Especially among sailors, there’ve been countless reports over the years of people seeing the island. We always hoped you’d come back someday, and when we got your note, we knew you were still out there, alive. Police thought it was a hoax, that the fishermen had written the note… because of the last name. But we knew your handwriting. We knew it was you.”
“The last name?” I ask.
“Wells-Lockhart. It’s the same surname as the man from the oldstories, about the island. Clay Lockhart, I think his name was. It was odd, the only thing that didn’t make sense about your note.”
He exhales, searching my face for answers. But then his gaze drops—to my hand.
To the ring.
The sapphire catches the moonlight, flaring a bright blue—a symbol of something I have kept secret. With no way to tell him the truth. Until now.
“I fell in love, James,” I say, I admit, running my thumb over the sapphire.
He turns quiet, staring into the heart of my words. Because long ago, it was his ring that sat on my finger. It was his promise. His future. But now, another man’s ring lives in its place.
“None of it was a myth,” I say softly. “Saltwell Island, Clay Lockhart, the story of how he became lost at sea. It’s all true. And I—” I never imagined explaining this to James, I never thought I’d get the chance. But now, all the words feel too improbable. Too much has happened—too many things that defy logic and time.
But James just nods, a smile finding his eyes. “And now it’s your story too.”
I glance down at the ring. My story has become a constellation of moments too impossible to explain, but no less real. “It is,” I say simply.
Waves slide up the shoreline, the sea breathing in and out—an old sound I remember. Reminding me that the sea is also tugging at the island, threating to pull it away. I don’t have much time.
Still, questions press at my mind.
