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Forty-Five

Huck

When Zoe calls me a second time, I think it’s just to yell at me again and I answer right away to let her. I am not expecting her words.

“There was an accident.” She speaks at a pace that is almost unintelligible, but I manage to catch enough that I’m fully aware of just how serious this situation is.

Ted lost consciousness while he was diving.

Stella found him. He’s being airlifted to a bigger hospital in the northern Keys and Stella’s by herself on the boat.

They’d had a fight. It isn’t good. Even though my mind races, the world seems to slow down.

I text Jim and within minutes he sends the information for a hired car that will take Zoe and Gus north of Marathon to the hospital.

I’m already sliding my feet into my shoes and halfway to the front door before I end the call with Zoe. I’d go with them, I say, but I have another place I need to be.

“Take care of our girl,” Zoe says.

“I will.” I burst through the front door of the rental and race down the lamplit streets, past palm trees and shadows of matching historic houses, through Truman Annex toward the wharf.

I’m not used to running; my lungs burn and I get a stitch halfway; or is it the sensation of my soul wrenching that I’m feeling instead?

I’m not sure. I can barely think as I sprint toward the harbor.

This is exactly what I wanted to avoid. Exactly why I chose to leave, why I carried the troubling truth alone instead of sharing it.

I never wanted to come between Stella and Ted, or strain their friendship, or cause anyone pain.

They are both so important to me—I couldn’t stand the thought of causing them any harm.

Sometimes speaking up, even if it feels right, has heart-wrenching consequences…

I’d learned that lesson the hard way. I didn’t know how to navigate the situation and thought it was better just to put some distance between us all.

Like that was a solution. I’d been running away, trying to prevent the damage. Somehow, I’d managed to make it worse.

None of that matters now.

They fought. She found him.

She’s alone.

I want to wrap her in my arms and keep her safe, make sure she doesn’t blame herself, take away the pain she must feel—let her know that everything will be alright, but will it?

I shouldn’t make promises I can’t keep. That’s what my dad always used to say.

Under promise and over deliver, Henry. You always seem to do the opposite and disappoint.

Even his voice in my head, the words he used to belittle and control me, don’t matter now.

He’s gone, but Stella is not. She’s here, and she may not want me, but she needs someone .

When I reach the Lucky Strike , I’m winded and drenched in sweat.

I almost don’t see Stella at first. She’s wrapped in a wool blanket, curled into herself on the deck, fast asleep in the center of the fallout.

Her hair is a mass of wild pale waves that remind me of how she looked that morning before sunrise on the Iceland beach.

Even then, I’d been trying to prevent something like this from happening.

I was fortune’s fool, I guess. Was this always going to end with Stella, Ted, and me smashed to bits?

If I’d known it then, would I have still talked to her in the bar, followed her around Iceland, come to Key West?

Yes. I would choose her a million times, more than that, more than the collection of freckles on her skin, all the stars in the sky.

I stoop down and even in the dim light, I can see her eyes are swollen from crying, her lashes crusted with salt. My hand trembles as I reach out and smooth the hair away from her face with my fingertips.

She slowly wakes and stares at me, bleary-eyed.

“You’re here.”

“Hi, sweetheart,” I say, my voice low and gentle. She blinks at me, and then her entire face crumples. I drag her into my arms. “I’m here,” I whisper. “I’m not going anywhere.”

It’s hard to see her like this—Stella, the strongest person I know.

She carries a deep hurt from her family, and she never gives up searching.

I’m not completely certain why, but I have a feeling that if she stopped, she’d have to face that they’re really gone.

She blames herself for it; she blames herself for a lot of things she shouldn’t.

And Stella is tough and brave and brilliant and relentless, but she’s vulnerable too.

She’s been broken apart and had to piece herself back together, and sometimes things happen and she takes on water and feels alone.

Ted, Zoe, and Gus have been her whole world for so long.

I wanted to be a part of it. To orbit around her.

I settle for holding her tight while she sobs. This is what I can give her, arms wrapped tightly, quiet comfort, being present. After a long time, she sits up.

“I couldn’t go with them to the hospital,” she tells me. She lifts her shoulders and lets them fall. “What if he dies?”

I shake my head. “I don’t know, Stella.”

“I should’ve known something terrible would happen. You know, my mom used to say that the Elephant’s Heart was cursed. That’s the real reason why no one has found it. They were smart enough not to look. Am I like them, like my parents…putting myself, putting treasure, before everyone else?”

“No.”

“This is my fault. I don’t know what Ted was thinking when he went out on his own, but I do know that he was upset when he left and that’s on me.

Whether what happened was intentional, or he was trying to prove something to me by finding the Heart, it’s still because of me.

None of this would’ve ever happened if I hadn’t brought us here, if I hadn’t forced everyone to go on these stupid treasure hunts year after year. ”

“You didn’t force anyone, Stella. We all wanted to be here. And sometimes things go very wrong and it’s not under our control.”

“You don’t get it. How am I supposed to be okay if he’s not? If I’m responsible for this?”

“I don’t have an answer, but I actually understand.

I know it’s not the same, but that fight with my dad that I told you about, the one at the conference where I told him off and had security kick him out…

” I swallow. I can do this. I can admit to her what I’ve done.

I run my hands through my hair. “He died on the subway ride home from the convention center. I couldn’t even protect myself without doing damage. ”

“Huck…”

“And this situation…I am more to blame than you are. I should’ve just been honest and stayed away. But I couldn’t. My weakness set this in motion.”

She hugs her knees to her chest and shakes her head. “Why did you come back?”

“Because I love you. I love you more than anything or anyone I’ve ever known. I could go, be sent away, leave a hundred times over and I would never not go back to you. I would follow you anywhere. They all would follow you anywhere, even if you didn’t ask.”

She turns to me. “And that makes it better?”

“You don’t see. You make it better. You made my life better just by appearing, by being in it, and I know the others feel that way too.”

She sniffs and nods sadly. “He said he loves me. But you knew that.”

I look down. “Yeah, I did…”

“You knew in Iceland. Like you wrote in the book.”

She finally read it, but this isn’t how I’d wanted it to go when I wrote it.

I hadn’t thought it through. I wanted to confess how much I loved her, how I wished I’d stayed.

My eyes are starting to sting and I squeeze them shut, willing myself to keep it together.

I’m worried about Ted—even though we argued and fought, I still care about him.

He’s my friend. But I’m also afraid for Stella… she’s already been through so much.

“I didn’t want to leave you,” I tell her.

“I just…I could tell how much Ted cared about you, and I owe him so much. I spent my whole life being told how stupid I was, how everything I did was wrong or not good enough. Ted was the first person who didn’t believe that.

He’s never given a fuck what anyone thinks, other than you, honestly.

The day I told my dad I wanted to be a writer, he laughed in my face.

That night, Ted and I went up to the roof at school and came up with the character of Clark.

He was the guy we thought we’d be when we grew up, not like my dad, somebody brave and special.

I didn’t write him then, not for years. I kept trying and failing, and Ted cheered me on.

He pushed me. He encouraged me to write what I knew…

Clark. So you see, he’s the reason why I’m an author.

Everything good in my life—even you—is because of Ted.

How could I get in the way of his happiness?

I couldn’t. I had to step aside for him, even though it meant sacrificing my own happiness.

That’s the thing; he’s wild and reckless, but he will do absolutely anything for the people that he loves, and I owed him the same. ”

Stella nods. “That’s true.”

“There’s really no one like him. He makes me so fucking angry sometimes; you know he clocked me in the jaw and knocked me clear off the boat earlier?

Doesn’t matter. I love that guy.” My voice breaks a little at the end.

A tear rolls down Stella’s cheek. “Maybe if I’m being totally honest, a piece of me believed that if you had to choose between me and him, I wouldn’t stand a chance. ”

“What made it different this time? Is it different? You really meant to stay in Key West?” Her voice is quiet.

“Yes, I stayed. I ran here. You’re like gravity, Stella, impossible to resist.”

“Yeah, well, gravity is also what makes planes fall out of the sky.”

“No one said I was good at analogies.” I give her a wry smile and take her hand in mine.

She leans her head on my shoulder.

“You asked me if this time is different. Do you think it is? Now that you know everything…does it change things?”

Stella is quiet for a long time. A gentle breeze lifts her hair from her neck. “I don’t know.”

My heart gives a squeeze in my chest.

“I don’t know if I want to keep searching or walk away from this thing I’ve shaped my life around.

If I’m completely honest with myself, I think maybe I was always searching for the Heart because I thought if I found it, they’d have to see, and they’d come back for me.

If I stopped searching, I’d lose them too, for good.

It seems so ridiculous now after everything that’s happened. I want to fix things with Ted.”

I nod. I don’t know what to say.

“It doesn’t change things between us.”

“I understand.” I breathe a sigh.

She reaches up and cups my face with her hand.

“I think I loved you even before we met, Huck Sullivan, and I still do, with my whole heart. I’m not sure that there’s anything that could ever change that.

I may be afraid, and lash out or push you away, because I don’t know how to do this, but I know that I love you. ”

I press my lips to her forehead, her lips.

“What’s going to happen now?”

“We wait until you’re ready,” I tell her, “and then we get in a car and go to the hospital.”

Stella looks over at me.

“I know you’re scared, but we’re going to face this together.” I wasn’t sure what I could say before and wanted to avoid promises I couldn’t keep, but now I’m feeling hopeful for the first time. Against all odds, she loves me. I just know. “He’s going to be okay,” I say.

“How do you know that? I’m not sure, and I’m the optimist between us.”

“Oh, I’m a realist. Teddy is too full of spitfire and sass to die on us. He’s going to outlive us all, irritating us with his antics until we go before him. He’s going to live just to give us a hard time about this next season.”

“I don’t think I’m ready yet.”

“Then I’ll just sit here beside you until you are.”