“Eat. You’re too thin,” he says.
I nod and take a bite.
“We’ll take you into New Caledonia,” he says. “Couple of days if the weather holds. Longer if it turns.”
I sit with the mug in my hands and look back.
The island is already shrinking.
The tree line softens first, edges blurring until detail gives way to shape, then to something less certain. I keep watching, trying to hold onto it, not wanting to miss the moment it disappears.
It gets smaller. Smaller.
A line.
Then nothing.
I don’t realize I’m crying until the horizon fractures and everything goes out of focus.
Dane’s hand settles at the back of my neck, steady and familiar.
“I should be happy.” My voice doesn’t sound right. “We’re going home. I should be?—”
“I know.”
And he does.
“We’ll come back for him,” he says. “For all of them. We’ll bring them home one day. I promise.”
I don’t answer. I just lean into him and keep looking at the place where the island was until there’s nothing left to see.
Chapter 20
Dane Gallagher
New Caledonia announcesitself as noise. The dock is loud in a way I’ve forgotten—voices layered over each other, constant movement, something restless in the air.
I step off the boat and stop.
People with cameras are waiting for us.
For a second, it doesn’t register. I see them, but don’t understand why they’re here, why they’re pointed at us, or why this feels arranged instead of accidental.
Then I hear it.
“—fourteen years?—”
“—they’ve been out there?—”
The words come in fragments, then start to make sense.
Charlotte stops.
“Keep walking,” I say, close to her ear.
“There are—” she starts, then stops.
“I know, Charlotte. Keep walking.”
