Breathless - Jennifer Niven Page 0,133

to the world beyond. I go up the steps, feet splashing in the little dips in the wood. I slip on my shoes, brush the hair off my face, but otherwise I don’t bother. This is me, take it or leave it—wet and rumpled and missing Miah.

* * *

“Claude?” Mom’s voice calls out to me from the end of the porch. She is perched on the edge of the swing, as if she’s been watching for me. I walk over and sit down beside her, a lump in my throat as large as the ocean.

“Everything okay?” she says. And she knows. I can see it in her face.

“It will be.” But my heart doesn’t believe it.

She takes my hand, and the swing rocks back and forth, back and forth, as we listen to the rain.

At 9:53, I feel it. The island is emptier because he’s no longer on it.

* * *

I don’t want to go home yet, so I head to the beach, not caring if I run into alligators or snakes or wild hogs. Under the trees, over the dunes, onto the sand, until I’m beneath the moon and all this sky. I’m too restless to sit. I drop my bag and kick off my shoes and walk. The tide rolls in like thunder and I’m the only one here.

I walk for at least a mile. I’m trying not to look at the lights in the distance, the ones that are the neighboring islands. Because beyond those islands is the mainland, and on that mainland is Jeremiah Crew, who didn’t say goodbye.

The old me would have told myself he didn’t care, that I didn’t mean to him what he meant to me, and that’s why he left without seeing me even though he told me he would come.

But I know it isn’t true.

He didn’t come because—what was it he said the day he was bleaching the bones? I can’t imagine saying goodbye to you.

The waves thunder in. The waves thunder out.

I move to the soft sand high above the tide line. And then, for some reason, I start thinking about my parents. Maybe there’s no one answer to why they had to end. And there’s no one answer to how to make love last. My parents were two people who loved each other for a long time. Until they didn’t. But that doesn’t change the fact that they once loved each other and that they’ll always love me.

I am so busy thinking about this that I almost miss it—the markings of a path leading to the ocean. I tell myself it’s probably a ghost crab or a raccoon. I bend over, studying the path, which is almost like a single tire track, deeper ridges on the outside, fainter ridges on the inside.

My heart starts hammering away, and I scramble to find the start of the trail, which is from a nest up against the dunes. Please don’t let the path end. For some reason, it can’t.

I follow it down, down, down, until it disappears into the water. And maybe the tracks ended before the tide rolled in, or maybe the hatchling made it all the way. I tell myself it made it all the way.

I scan the ocean, as far as I can see, searching for any sign of this brave survivor even though I know it’s long gone by now, and the thought of it out there in the world makes me want to cry. Good for you, I think. I hope you make it as far as Africa.

And then I gaze out at the distant glow on the horizon that is the mainland and think about Jeremiah Crew, who is also out there somewhere. I may never see him again, and the thought of never seeing him again is a cold, sharp knife. But maybe he was right. Maybe it doesn’t matter where I go or what I do or who I know—I’ll always have Claude and Miah, Miah and Claude, forever.

I say, “Jeremiah Crew, I hope you’re on your way to the airport. I hope you get on that plane to Montana and don’t look back.”

* * *

I walk until I find my pile of things and then I drop onto the sand and dig in my bag and pull out two notebooks, one blue and one green. I open the battered cover of the blue one and flip through the pages, reading by the moonlight every word I’ve written since I’ve been here.

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