He sighs. “It doesn’t mean she doesn’t love us, Caroline.”
“No. It means she doesn’t love you.”
“Now, you don’t mean that.”
No, I didn’t mean it, but I’m more angry than tired now, and I don’t feel like telling him the truth anymore.
“You scared the hell out of me,” he says. “You know that?”
I decide to grace him with a glance. He takes my hand and doesn’t let go even when I’ve looked away again. “What happened?” I ask. The curiosity is too much not to ask.
“Mister Lochana found you washed up on shore,” he says. “He thought you had—well …” he says, looking away. “He got me and we brought you to the hospital.”
“Then that’s the second time Mister Lochana has rescued me,” I say—but I think of the woman in black, waiting for me beneath the waves.
My father doesn’t say anything for some time. He only sits and holds my hand. “Your mom and I both love you very much. We made mistakes—but we tried to do the best we could.”
“I know.” And I do know. I know he tried, and he’s still trying, and he’ll still make mistakes sometimes, because he’s a human being, and I’ve learned now that this is what human beings are always destined to do. Including me. I tell him that I love him, and he smiles like that’s the best news he’s heard all day and puts an arm around me and kisses the side of my head. He tells me that my mother has come to visit a few times. He asks me if it’d be all right, if she came in to see me. I tell him absolutely not—it would never be all right. He just kisses the side of my head again.
I stay in the hospital for an entire two days before they allow me to leave once again. The island of Saint Thomas has been battered. The ten-dollar ferry is in the middle of the road, and palm trees have fallen to the side. People walk in the street, cleaning up clutter. My father has tied his blue boat to waterfront. He hasn’t touched that boat in over one year and six months now. It bobs up and down with every passing wave. We step onto it, and he rows me across the clear blue water, the way he used to when I was a child. I think I might still be a child now, after all.
Our house is still standing, the same way it always has been. Maybe the storm couldn’t see us here on Water Island either. We go inside, and absolutely nothing has changed, which is disappointing and thrilling all at the same time. My father tells me that my mother has called again. That she wants to reconnect with me—be a part of my life.
“Well, she shouldn’t have left my life at all.” That’s what I say to that.
My father only nods like he agrees.
I’m eating breakfast at the table when my father sits down beside me with the mail. He opens each letter individually, and my heart begins to beat faster despite itself, even though I already know there won’t be any postcards in the pile. My father picks up one letter, then pauses—and stretches out his hand to me.
“It’s for you.”
I look from the letter to him, then reach out to take it carefully. This is the first mail I’ve ever received. I think it must be a practical joke. But then I read the corner address, and see that the letter was sent from Kalinda Francis from a town in Barbados.
I hold the letter with shaking hands.
“Aren’t you going to open it?” he asks.
I almost shake my head and hand the letter back to him. How easy that would’ve been, to not have to read a single word sent by Kalinda Francis. But instead, I nod and scrape my chair back and excuse myself from the table, walking to my room and closing the door. I open Kalinda’s letter and read it quickly first, eyes flashing over her jumble of words, before going back to the beginning once again. The letter says:
My dearest Caroline, I’ve agonized over the way I left you, but I couldn’t bear the thought of saying good-bye. I was too afraid. Will you ever forgive me? I’m back home with my mother and my seven siblings. My father has continued his carpentry. My mother claims that she will never let me leave her sight again. This makes me happy, and it also makes me so happy that you’ve been able to meet your mother again. This was at least a happy ending, wasn’t it? I so wish that ours could’ve been a happy ending as well. But maybe it still can be, one day. I love you, and I will continue to love you forever, and even if we never see each other again and when we’re fully grown adults and I have married someone else, I’ll think back to the time I spent on Saint Thomas and fell in love with Caroline Murphy. I hope you can think of me in the same way, and when you remember me, you only think about how you’d fallen in love with Kalinda Francis. But even as I write now, I can’t help but think that it would be an atrocity to let our ending come like this. I’m on Barbados, and you’re on Water Island, but we’re both still alive. Think about how amazing that is, Caroline. An infinite number of universes and an infinite amount of time, and we were able to meet each other. We could have been born millions of years apart, but we were able to meet each other and fall in love. That’s a true miracle, isn’t it? Maybe it doesn’t have to end this way.
I’m not surprised by any of these words. I expected her to tell me that she loves me, and that she misses me, and that she
