Page 64 of Dearly Departed

“Oh,” Lydia says slowly. “Part of your hobby search?”

“Yeah.”

I remember her saying You have hobbies. You’re interesting.

And I remember that, between the three of us, we couldn’t name a single interesting hobby of mine.

Lydia clears her throat. “The plane wasn’t part of that, was it?”

“No. That was because I thought Jacob was taking me on a surprise honeymoon. He forgot to bring me with him when he left the hotel. Or—I thought he forgot to bring me with him. So I followed him to the airstrip and hid on the plane.”

“You’re so cool,” Lydia breathes.

“Lydia. He was trying to leave me behind so he could fake his own death. That’s why he left Gabriel that letter. He wanted me to think I was dead. I looked like a fool.”

“He doesn’t think that anymore, does he?” Elise’s tone is extremely neutral, which means she’s willing to beat Jacob up for me. She would, too. After Jacob rescued me from my parents’ house, Elise stormed into his penthouse and said she’d kill him if he hurt me. She said other things, too.

“No! We talked about it. I told him that was not a solution.”

“Good.” Elise rubs my arm, her hand moving slowly up and down. “We tried to find out where you’d gone. It took so long to find the plane in the first place, and then there was some data, but we couldn’t tell if it had landed in the water or heat. And then the signal stopped.”

“That’s probably because the plane blew up.”

Lydia gasps.

“After we had, like, de-boarded.”

“So you just had to, like, survive on some random island? By yourselves? With nothing?”

“We had our bags.” I feel compelled to say this. It wasn’t nothing. I wasn’t the heroine who ripped my dress into strips to make a rope and construct a raft. “And we had, like, two steak knives. And we found a cabin that had running water.”

Elise, my genius sister, lets out a low whistle. “You found a cabin with running water. What are the odds?”

“I don’t know. You’re the math person. You tell me.”

“They can’t have been good.” She shudders. “And the creatures on the island had to be⁠—”

“There weren’t many of them. Something scratched at the cabin door, but I never saw what it was. And the cabin was nice. It didn’t have anything living in it.”

“But you were surrounded!” Elise stops rubbing my arm and just holds on tight. “You were literally surrounded.”

“With trees.”

“No!” Lydia cries. “With poisonous snakes! And poisonous insects! And⁠—”

I cover my ears. “I didn’t see any poisonous insects,” I say loudly. “It’s better if I don’t think about them.”

“You had to be so brave,” Lydia answers, just as loudly. “I’d have lost my shit.”

“Lydia,” says Elise.

“I would have lost my mind,” Lydia corrects. “Even knowing all that stuff was out there.”

“I couldn’t think about anything but Jacob.”

“Ugh.” Elise gives me another hug. “I’m so sorry we weren’t there.”

“All of this started in London, anyway. You couldn’t have been there. You guys have lives.”