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Anna reached over and patted my hand. “I’ll ask around the fishermen. They’ll know.” Sitting back, Anna asked, “Where were you and your family heading to? Do you have contacts here? Anyone who might be expecting you?”
I shook my head. “It was just us. We were aiming to reach Perth—”
“Perth?” Jack choked on a mouthful of water. “I hate to tell you, but you overshot that by a few thousand kilometres.”
I couldn’t comprehend that much distance.
“I suppose the storm knocked you off course?” Jack mused.
Old anger over my father’s dealings with the smuggler rose. I couldn’t stop my voice from hardening. “The guy who agreed to take us didn’t seem very qualified. His boat wasn’t suitable. He boarded too many people. I’m surprised we even ended up in Australian waters before the storm hit.” Choking on my fury for the guy who’d killed my family but also lost his life, I asked, “Where...where am I?”
“Only the best town in all of Aussie, mate.” Jack grinned. “Port Douglas.”
I frowned, doing my best to remember the map my father had made us all study. “By Cairns?”
“Close. Cairns is about an hour’s drive away.” Placing his elbows on the table, Jack rubbed his mouth and studied me. “I’m not going to ask about your life back at home.” His gaze flickered to Neri, who sat quiet and curious in her chair. “Not yet, at least. It’s getting late, and we have a busy day tomorrow. So...I’ll only ask the important bits.”
My spine prickled.
This was it.
I braced myself for him to say goodbye.
“Okay...” I laced my fingers tightly together. “Do you wish me to go?”
“Do you wish to go?” Jack asked with a brown eyebrow quirked.
Neri shifted in her chair, drawing up her knees and hugging them.
My heart skipped as she rested her chin on the flower print of her dress, her gaze fierce.
She didn’t speak, but her silence was deafening.
I should say I wanted to go because if I stayed, I’d have to continue enduring Neri, and I honestly didn’t know how long I could withstand her, but I also had nowhere else to go. No other people I would rather be with now that mine had been taken.
“No. I don’t wish to go.”
“Good, you’ll stay with us then.”
“Jack...what are you proposing here?” Anna asked quietly. “He’s illegal. He can’t just slip into society unseen forever. Eventually, they’ll come for him.”
“Not if we make him legal,” Neri piped up. “Get him a passport. That sort of thing.”
Is that even possible?
My father had never spoken of what would happen when we got here. Only that we did.
Jack glanced at his wife and daughter before finally saying, “I’m proposing a week.”
A week?
How could seven days seem like both a lifetime and a single second?
“A week to heal, regroup, and then figure out where to go from here. Anna is right that your situation here is precarious. People are close-knit in this town, but if they’re told you’re with us right from the beginning, you’ll be safe enough. No one is out to hurt anyone with gossip or narking, but you’ll have to stay under the radar.”
“I understand.”
“You can stay with us for a week. You can take the guest room and have our absolute word that we’ll keep you safe, but...I will ask for one thing in return.”
My gaze flickered to Nerida, then settled on her father. “What thing?”
Jack saw me look at his daughter, and his jaw clenched briefly. “You work for us.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’ve been meaning to hire a deckhand for a while now. We’re marine biologists that do all the grunt work but not so much the lab work: hunting and gathering data, if you will. We send off samples to those who request them, so it’s not a boring inside job I’m offering. It’s laborious and worthwhile and we’ve made do up to this point, but it would be extremely beneficial for us to have someone on deck while we are beneath the waves, monitoring, recording, providing what we need, etcetera.”
“I...” I ran both hands over my face. “I don’t mean to seem ungrateful, but I don’t think I can step foot back on the ocean, sir.”
“Jack. Call me Jack. We’ve discussed this. And I’m well aware it won’t be easy, but you can’t avoid the sea your entire life. Especially if you’re planning on making Australia your home. We’re surrounded by it, if you haven’t noticed. The ocean is part of our culture, and you’ll stick out like a sore thumb if you don’t embrace it like the rest of us do.”
My heart pounded.
The ground beneath my feet seemed to roil and swell, mimicking the waves that’d stolen everything.
“Try for one day,” Anna said, sharing a silent conversation with Jack before directing her words to me. “One day to see if you can forgive the sea. We’ll show you what we need help with and then, tomorrow night, you can make the call. Stay a week and prepare to leave. Or stay a week and embrace this new country as your own.”
