But first, all they needed was for me to confirm that this island was the island. I gripped Ned’s hand tightly, my stomach in knots as we flew over the ocean. I tried not to look down, tried not to think about the last time I’d made this journey—albeit by sea, not air.
When I laid eyes on the island, seeing the aerial view for the first time, I gasped. I saw the falls from there, the cliff where Harry had died. I saw the top of the cliff house, an entire side of it previously unknown to me, that hadn’t been built into the cliff and looked like an actual house. On the far side, there were four small boat slips with matching boats in them, and farther down, there was a landing strip for what must’ve been a private plane or jet, though neither was there.
There had been so much on the island that we had no idea about, confined to our small campsite on the beach.
If we’d explored more, could we have found the plane or the boats? Could we have escaped or radioed for help? The questions haunted me. Why didn’t we try harder?
The helicopter began to descend, ready to land on a clear patch of beach as it threw sand up everywhere, creating a funnel cloud of sugary-white. I heard the engine cut off, and we waited for the two others to land before our door was thrown open. The detective climbed out first, holding out his hand for me to come with him. I did, Ned following closely behind me.
I tried to hold back the tears, my upper lip curling as I walked along the sand. I nodded, telling him this was it without the words I couldn’t seem to muster. Police were swarming now. I saw another helicopter flying across the island, headed for the house. We walked along the sandy shores, and I saw that James’s body had indeed been removed, all signs of its existence wiped clear. Our campsite was gone, too. All traces of the home we’d built had been removed.
“House is clear,” I heard a voice say over a radio. I needed to take them to Harry’s grave. To tell them where James’s body had been when we left. There was so much I needed to do, but all I wanted was to stare at the water, to feel the sand between my toes, to have a final goodbye to my friends and—
I stopped short, my breath catching.
Please. Please. Please.
I tried to make sense of what I was seeing. The detective had seen it, too. Him, too. A flash of skin beyond the trees. The detective reached for his gun, but I shook my head.
“No,” I said, my voice barely a whisper. Time stood still as I watched him emerge from beyond the trees, brilliant dark hair, bare tanned chest. He walked with a limp, but the wound had healed.
He made it. Somehow, some way, he actually made it.
He squinted, his hand over his eyes, and I watched the recognition flood his face. I looked back at my husband, an uncertain yet somehow knowing look in his eyes, then forward at the man I believed had given his life for me. Noah looked dumbstruck for a moment, then crossed his arms over his chest, a smug grin growing on his face. I saw the tears glinting in his eyes even from where I stood.
“Do you know him?” Detective Armbruster asked, his gun still at the ready.
“I do,” I whispered, tears filling my own eyes. “It’s Noah… He’s alive.”
I didn’t know how it was possible. In fact, I was sure it was impossible. But it was true. All that mattered was that it was true.
Now, as I look back on that day, I know that Harry had been wrong about one thing during our stay. The berries he’d told Ava were poison hadn’t been, or at least hadn’t been enough to kill Noah. I now know the story of how he floated back to the shore after our captors’ plane had taken off, how, by some miracle, his wound healed and he managed to make a shelter near the waterfall. How he’d waited a year for someone, anyone, to find him. I know that he spent every day thinking of me. Loving me. Expecting and hoping I’d return for him someday. Or, at the very least, hoping I’d have a good life because of him.
But back then, that day, I didn’t know any of that. Except that I had a choice to make, and I was ready to make it. It was the same choice that Noah had given me in nearly that same spot a year ago. Him or me? This time, I didn’t have to think. I didn’t have to weigh my options. Finally, I knew what I wanted. I looked back toward Ned just once, an apology in my eyes.
And then, barreling toward Noah as fast as my legs would carry me in the burning hot sand, I chose.
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Acknowledgments
If I were stuck on an island, it would be this group of loving, brilliant, and patient individuals I would want stuck there with me. (Sorry, not sorry, friends!) I owe them all my thanks.
First and foremost,
