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Kit promised Madison that she could come back to Hemlock Island until I can leave. Screw school. We’ll worry about that later. Shecan be with me from March until December if that’s what she wants, or she can go back and forth, ifthat’swhat she wants. Because it must always be whatshewants.
That might be the hardest part of this. I will not say I’ve lost Madison. I came so close to actually losing her that if I ever even think those words, I’ll mentally slap myself so hard I see stars.
I have done what I set out to do: protected her future. And if I might not be as big a part of that future as I dreamed? I finally got my daughter back… and then lost her? She comes first. Her choices come first, and my mission is to ensure that if she doesn’t want to spend summers here with me, then she will never,ever,feel pressured to do so. This is the best gift I can give my daughter. Freedom.
After Madison and Jayla were airlifted to the hospital, there was the unavoidable police investigation. We couldn’t cover up what happened here. That is to say,wecouldn’t. The entity who did all this, though? She absolutely could cover it up, and it was in her best interests not to have her guardian dragged off to prison, so that is what she did.
Sadie’s and Garrett’s bodies were found a few days later, washed up onshore with the remains of the boat. We explained to the police that there’d been an argument Saturday night. Sadie had wanted me to tell Madison the truth—that Sadie was her aunt—and I hadn’t thought it was the right time. Sadie had already been angry with Kit for running to his ex-wife’s rescue. After we went to bed, Sadie and Garrett must have left on my boat and had a horrific accident, given the damage to the boat and to them.
As for John Sinclair and Rachel Rossi, no trace of them remains on the island. They are literally gone, the earth of the island having opened to take them in.
I won’t mourn them. I won’t even dwell on the horror of their deaths. The spirit of this island might hold me responsible for what happened, but that is bullshit. Here I will finally find the confidence to say something was not my fault.
If the spirit’s issue was that we were wrong to build here, I’d have agreed, but that is not her grievance, and so I do not take responsibility. Nate came to the island because it was part of him, and I am furious that his family lost it to pay for critical medical care, but I did not steal it from them and he never, in any way, made me feel as if I had. I did not force him to come here either. I did not kill him. John Sinclair and Rachel Rossi did, and they have paid the price.
Like his killers’, Nate’s body is gone. Taken down into the island, where he will never be found, and Iwillmourn that. I will never stop mourning the boy who loved this island and who’d been nothing but good and kind—to me, to Madison, to the island itself. I will mourn Sadie, too, but the biggest tragedy here is the death that came at the hands of ordinary people with ordinary greed.
The police investigation has already moved on. There was a storm. Garrett and Sadie were caught in it on the lake and died in a horrible boat crash. Jayla and Madison were caught in that storm here and were badly injured. No one is to blame except nature itself, and that is truer than the authorities will ever realize.
Kit and I have spent the past week here together, alone and coping, reunited and planning. Kit’s planning. Endless planning, almost frenetic, as he filled page after page with ideas and solutions. I will spend three-quarters of my life on this island, and he can’t do anything about that, but he can make it easier for me, and so he will.
Part of me wants to tell him to step back and breathe. I put myself into this situation, and I will figure it out. But he wants to do it, and if that alleviates any of his own misplaced guilt over what happened, then I will not stand in his way.
Kit has covered every contingency in a three-page list of actionable items. Buy a satellite phone. Get satellite internet. Get our ham radio licenses as a backup. Replace all the watercraft. Buy a second small motorboat for backup. Buy a floatplane so he can come and go easily. Get his pilot’s license. Increase the solar array. Build a storage unit to hold enough food for months, just in case. Also a greenhouse.Also a backup water-filtration system. Oh, and a dog. As soon as Madison is up to it, she’s going with Kit to get me a poodle puppy.
The list goes on, and I love Kit for it. I love him even more for all the promises he makes to me. He’ll move in and work remotely when he can, boating or flying back when he can’t. Whenever Madison needs—or wants—to be on the mainland, he’ll act as her guardian—she’ll be off to college soon enough.
We will work it out. That’s his mantra. We will work this out, and we will be together.
Is he right? Can we make a marriage work under these circumstances? Oh, I know he’s not going to be able to run the company as remotely as he hopes. That’s fine. The pandemic taught us that being together endlessly—just the two of us—doesn’t work, however much we love each other’s company.
Beyond that, though, can we make it work? I hope so, but I also hope that, if it doesn’t, I will have the strength to do what I vow to do with Madison: set him free. Never make either of them feel obligated to share my prison cell.
And I need to do something else, which is what I’m working on this morning.
I can’t see Hemlock Island as a prison cell.
I must recapture my love for this island, despite what happened here. I must move past my anger and grief and forgive the entity. Forgive the island.
I am the guardian of Hemlock Island, in a way I don’t yet truly comprehend. I have made a sacrifice I don’t yet truly comprehend. There will be moments—days—weeks—when I will rage against my fate. When I will curse this island and want to storm from its shores and say to hell with the strangers who set foot here after me. But I won’t, because I made a vow. A real and cognizant vow this time, and I must come to terms with it.
No, I must come torelishit. To see this not as a sentence but anopportunity. I have spent half my life giving things up, convinced I don’t deserve them. I could see this as giving up my hopes and dreams… or I can see it as seizing new ones.
I have Madison. I have Kit. I have Jayla. I have my island. I won them all back, and if Madison or Kit or Jayla ever drifts, I will be grateful for the time I had with them. And I will always have my island. Hemlock Island and I are tied together in a bond I must cherish as much as I cherish the others.
I dreamed of the day I would be able to write full-time. I dreamed of a life where I spent my summers holed up on this island, lost in my words and my worlds. I have that now, and if it is not how I wanted it? Well, I have spent my life remolding my dreams to suit my reality, and this one should be easier than most. Don’t focus on what I’ve lost but on what I’ve gained.
As I circle the island, the sun beating down, time seems to shift and sway, and I see myself walking this path in ten years, holding Kit’s hand. Is it just us? Is there a child or two? Is such a thing even possible under these circumstances? That remains to be seen, but for now, I see us, growing older and growing closer as we walk this path for the thousandth time.
Ten more years pass, and I’m walking it with Madison, older than I am now. Is someone with her? Someone as dear to her as Kit is to me? Perhaps, if that is her dream.
Ten more years, and I’m with Jayla as she visits. We’re two friends approaching their twilight years, walking this path together as she tells me everything new in her life and I revel in her happiness.
Ten more years, and then ten more, and I am an old woman walking this path alone, a dog or two snuffling in the woods alongside me. Are there loved ones in the background? Kit at the house, making lunch for children and grandchildren as I walk? Maybe that’s too much to hope for. But in that vision, I see something that makes me smile. I see a crone picking her way along that path. The wise oldcrone of the island? Or the wicked witch of the north, a figure mainlanders use to scare their children into steering clear? Either suits me fine.Bothsuit me fine.
I will be the wise crone, and I will be the terrible crone. I will be what the island needs me to be, and I will be what I need myself to be, and most of all, I will be happy.
It won’t be easy, but Iwillbe happy. This place deserves that.Ideserve that.
As I pass the old oak, I bend and pick up an acorn. Then I press my fingers to the ground, and when I close my eyes, I swear I feel the spirit of the island peacefully sleeping. I take another acorn, and I walk to where Sadie fell for the last time. I bend and dig a small hole and I put in the acorn. Then I plant the other beside the huge oak for Nate, forever bound to the spirit of this island.
I put the acorns in, cover them up, and take a moment to reflect before I rise and continue along the path, seeing what my island needs from me today.
