Page 29 of Dearly Departed

“It smells…sort of normal in here.” Dusty, yes. Slightly humid, yes. But nothing’s decaying. “Is that a good sign or a bad one?”

Jacob switches places with me and studies the interior side of the door. He flips a latch near the top and finds a deadbolt lower down. When he gives the handle a firm tug, it doesn’t move.

His shoulders sag. I hadn’t realized just how stiffly he’d been holding them until they droop with his obvious relief. Jacob leans his forehead against the door and pats it like he’s greeting an old friend.

“Jesus. I never thought I’d love some abandoned cottage this much. Two locks on the door? I couldn’t have asked for better.”

“Excuse me. You chose an abandoned cottage for our honeymoon? I thought you said this was a resort.”

Jacob turns back to me, his expression sobering. “You’re right, kitten.”

“Right about what? I was joking.”

“It doesn’t seem abandoned. It seems cared for, if only minimally.”

That’s when my adrenaline runs out. It crashes harder than the plane does, and every step we took tonight burns through my feet. My shoulders ache from bracing ourselves on the plane. My whole back aches from carrying my bag for what has to be hours on end.

A maintained cottage is even more mysterious on an island where we haven’t seen anyone but Raymond Harris. If someone’s keeping the forest from devouring the cottage—I’ve seen enough TV to know that’s what happens to houses left alone—then it really can’t be abandoned.

Somebody will be back. It’s only a matter of time.

“I don’t care if they come back tonight. Let’s see what else is in here.”

There’s not much to search through. The entire cottage is one room, except for a tiny bathroom that looks like it was built between two trees.

“There’s a sink,” I tell Jacob. “A real sink in here.”

He reaches over me and turns one of the taps.

Nothing happens.

“Hmm,” he says, then wanders out to the main room. The only room. There’s a plane-sized kitchen area on one wall and a double bed on another. A small wooden table and two wooden chairs. No other furniture. Jacob peers into the cabin’s second sink, then crouches to open the cabinets underneath.

Nothing jumps out at him from the pitch-black shadows underneath.

I don’t know how Jacob can see what’s in there, but he must be able to. After a few seconds, he reaches into the cabinet. Something clicks.

And then…

There’s a sound.

A faint rumbling sound, almost too quiet to hear, like a plane passing far overhead. Only it’s close to the ground.

It might be in the ground.

It is in the ground. It’s in the back wall of the cottage, too.

Jacob stands up, staring at me like he’s come across buried treasure, and slowly, tentatively, turns the tap.

Water comes out of the sink.

This is what it feels like to become religious. I don’t know what religion I’m joining, but my spirit is soaring at the sight of a running tap. It sputters a few times, my heart going with it, but then it just…runs. Like it’s a normal sink in a normal cottage on a normal island. Like we might not die after all.

“Do you think it’s good water?” I don’t care that my voice trembles. I’m not into wilderness survival. I still know that water is a major issue. I know we’ll die without it. “Like, clean enough to drink?”

“I think that’s the sound of a filtration system,” Jacob answers. “And it seems like a waste of time to pump dirty water into a cottage.”

A sense of peace settles over me. The water will be fine. If it’s not, we’re stuck on this island anyway. At least we have a roof over our heads.