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It didn’t add up.
Ash had loved sharks. He was utterly obsessed with them. Shark week was a whole event at their house that he never missed. He’d record every documentary, watching them over and over until he could recite shark facts verbatim.
He would have loved diving there.
Did he get to see any of it?
Huffing out a laugh while I blinked away the sting in my eyes, I couldn’t help my smile. Asher and Zali were as crazy as each other. Zali wasn’t scared of the shark we’d seen—I was sure she’d gotten out of the water just to shut me up—and Ash would have tried to pet the damn thing.
Back when we were kids, our snorkels were practically attached to our faces. Ash had made sure Rosa and Roe knew exactly what he wanted for his tenth birthday. He started his campaign on his ninth birthday and then spent every day for a year after that reminding them that he wanted to do the scuba course. Roe was the first to buckle under his son’s pestering power. Instead of a party, we did the scuba course.
I missed Ash like crazy. It was as if a piece of myself had died with him. I missed the way he laughed—his giggle was infectious. He effortlessly pulled everyone into his orbit. In a room full of strangers, he was everyone’s best friend. Ash made people feel good about themselves. He made them smile. He lived loud, drawing people into the light with him even if—like me—they preferred sticking to the shadowy corners where they wouldn’t be noticed. But as much as I grumbled about his popularity, I would never have given up that precious place as his best friend. He gave me the safe space to be myself.
And I missed the innocent kid I’d once been.
I couldn’t say a proper goodbye to him. His body was still out there somewhere in a watery grave, missing its foot. We’d reunited them, scattering the ashes from their otherwise empty coffins at Jumpinpin. But it didn’t make it easier.
Inhaling a cleansing breath of the ocean air surrounding me, I rubbed my stinging eyes and forced my vision back to the screen. Focussing on the report, I kept reading, pouring over page after page, taking in the minutia.
Huh.
The wreckage from the yacht had washed up on the north-eastern side of South Stradbroke Island. That was forty or fifty clicks north of Cook Island, well outside the search zone. Even at the most northerly point of their journey, they should have been twenty kilometres south.
It was unknown precisely when they’d gone missing. Had they been at Cook Island for as long as they’d said? Had they come back early because of worsening conditions, only for tragedy to befall them? There had been no further communication with the coast guard. By the time Point Danger had tried to hail them, Roe had reported them missing—he hadn’t spoken with Rosa in forty-eight hours and hadn’t been able to raise her on the radio or mobile phone either.
Scrolling up a few pages, I double-checked the weather and swell records for the time they were supposed to be away. Set out in black and white, a neat table in the report confirmed exactly how conditions had worsened. The swell got progressively bigger. The calmest day was the one they’d set out on. By the time they were due back, it was over three metres, or twelve feet on the old scale.
Why was the wreckage so far north? They were moored at the city marina—the quickest way to get back from Cook Island was through the seaway. Locals didn’t just make the mistake of missing it and choosing Jumpinpin instead. Sure, there were people who would have braved it in those conditions, but I doubted Rosa would have done so in a relatively new yacht with a kid onboard. She was experienced enough to know exactly when to keep away.
The only other explanation was that the winds were strong enough to blow the wreckage north against the southerly flowing Eastern Australian Current.
Maybe it wasn’t a mistake. Maybe they’d decided to cruise up to South Straddie instead of going to Cook Island. But 8:00 a.m. was a late start for Rosa. She loved watching sunrises on the yacht. I remembered many mornings when she’d dragged us out of bed and up to the deck, where Asher, Zali, Flynn, and I would lean against each other to stay upright as we were blinded by the sun slowly stretching its rays out over the Pacific.
Zali also told me about her dad’s regret that he’d agreed to work rather than start their few days on the yacht. They’d fought that morning, and Rosa had dropped a likely kicking-and-screaming Zali off at her aunt’s house.
That’s why they were late getting out. That’s why only Rosa and Asher were on the yacht. Ash would have been nagging his mum non-stop to head straight to the reef, especially because of the turning tide and, according to the coroner’s report, deteriorating diving conditions for the remainder of the day.
Just like I didn’t believe for a second that Rosa would have risked crossing the Jumpinpin bar, there was no way she would have made a wrong turn, especially when she would have had the coordinates for the reef plugged into the GPS system.
And why would they have checked in at Point Danger?
The only possible explanation was that something happened on the way back and the wind carried the lone piece of wreckage north of where the yacht actually went down.
I took another look at the table outlining the weather and swell conditions. Typical for that time of year, it had blown from the north, then it shifted to blow from the east. Unless it was blowing from the south, atypical for that time of year but not unheard of, the wreckage wouldn’t have ended up where it was found.
Could someone have towed it in? Could they have seen it floating and pulled it up to the beach so that it could be properly disposed of? Anything was possible, but my gut told me something wasn’t right.
Something wasn’t adding up.
Twelve
Tristan
I
couldn’t believe that this day had come. I’d never thought it was possible. I’d all but given up. But here I was, wrapped around Ezra, the big spoon to his little one. We were sharing a pillow on Zali’s bed. She was tucked into Ezra’s arms. Flynn was wrapped around her, his leg pinning one of hers down. Still fast asleep, only their deep breaths broke the lap of the water against the hull.
Dawn was breaking the horizon, the sky outside turning from the inky black of night to the grey-but-soon-to-be-brilliant-blue of the morning. I was torn between finding Ryder and making sure he was okay and staying put so that I never had to let go of Ez.
