Page 94 of The Elements

“I promise,” he confirmed. “I’m a skinny fucker, that’s all. And I want to bulk up. You’ve seen the protein shakes. And the weights. I want to build some strength, that’s all.” He smiled and looked a little bashful. “Like, I wouldn’t mind, you know, having a—”

“Having a what?”

“Like, you know. A girlfriend.”

“Oh. Right,” I said. “Of course. And you need muscles for that?”

“Well, they don’t hurt. We live in Bondi, for God’s sake. You’ve seen what the guys there are like.”

“So when I asked you on the plane about whether there was anyone you’re interested in?”

“Let’s just say I have a few options,” he told me, and I burst out laughing at the cheeky expression on his face.

“Lucky you.”

“I mean, if you need any tips…”

“Yeah, thanks,” I said. “I’ll know who to call on.”

We finished our tea and finally he yawned, saying that he was tired and should go to bed.

“But when we get back to Sydney,” he added tentatively, “maybe we could all spend some time together. Me, you, and Mum. When she’s traveling through, I mean. Would that be OK?”

“Of course. I think it would be a really good idea.”

“And Furia too?”

I nodded. “Of course. She’s part of our family.”

He stood up, came around the table, and leaned over, hugging me, something he hadn’t done in more than a year, before walking away and closing the door to his room quietly behind him.

After the burial, when everyone else has made their way to the new pub for drinks and sandwiches, I find myself wandering around the graveyard, reading the names on the headstones and studying the dates. Some go back a hundred years or more while others are more recent.

It’s a fine day, the sky is cloudless, and I feel a welcome sense of calm. The woman I’d noticed earlier in the back row is standing before one of the plots, laying flowers, and she turns to me as I approach her.

“A sad day,” she says, the standard greeting on such an occasion. “He gave a lovely service though. Ifechi, I mean. We were lucky to get him. Lucky to keep him for so long too. He’s been a good friend to me.”

I glance toward the grave that she’s tending.

“My son,” she says before I can ask. “Evan.”

“He died young,” I add, noticing that the poor boy passed away before the age of twenty-five.

“He did.”

“You must miss him.”

She nods, as if she hardly needs to express how much.

“I met Vanessa, you know,” she says. “A long time ago now, of course. And I won’t pretend that I knew her well. But I always remembered her.”

“You were on the island back then?” I ask.

“Oh, I’ve been stuck on this island since I was first brought here as a bride. I thought of moving away after my husband died, but I couldn’t leave Evan on his own.”

I glance at the stone again and am surprised that his is the only name inscribed on the granite. Evan Keogh. It rings a bell somewhere in the far corners of my memory, but for now I can’t place it.

“I didn’t let them put his father in here with him,” she says, guessing the question that’s running through my mind. “He’s somewhere over there, in the far corner.”

She nods toward an area where the graves are far less well tended. I can’t help but wonder what led her to separating the pair.

“He died young too,” she adds. “Well, for these times anyway. In his early sixties. Only a few weeks after Evan, as it happens.”

“What happened to him?” I asked. “If you don’t mind me asking.”

“To Charlie? Someone hit him with an axe.”

I blink, uncertain that I’ve heard her right.

“I’m sorry?”

“I said, someone hit him with an axe,” she repeats.

“It was quite the story at the time, although it probably wouldn’t have traveled to as far away as wherever your accent is from.

He had the head nearly separated from his body, would you believe.

No one ever found out who did it. It was during the tourist season, so it was probably some ne’er-do-well from the mainland.

Someone with a grudge against him. He’d made a few enemies in his time, had my husband. ”

“So he wasn’t caught?”

“You’re assuming it was a man.”

“Well…” I begin.

“But no, whoever did it covered up their tracks very well. In the end, the Gardaí had no choice but to leave the case unsolved. It’s one of life’s little mysteries.”

She smiles, as if she’s explaining the conclusion of a crime novel she enjoyed.

“Right,” I say. “That must have been very upsetting for you.”

“They tried to pin it on me,” she continues.

“On account of it being our axe. But sure the only fingerprints on it were Charlie’s, and he was a big man.

I said it to the Gardaí at the time, I said do you think a fragile thing like me could lay a fella like him low? I wouldn’t have the strength for it.”

“No,” I say, wondering whether I’ve run into the local lunatic. “I imagine not.”

She takes my hand and speaks quietly. “I’d have had to have a fierce hatred in me to build the strength for such a deed.”

I stare at her, and at last she releases me and her tone changes, as if none of this conversation has even taken place.

“She was kind,” she tells me then. “Vanessa, I mean. There was a day, oh a long time ago now, when poor Evan went missing. He was only a boy at the time, around sixteen, and the whole island thought he had drowned. She brought me a cup of tea when I was standing in the dunes, my heart sinking in fear, and, unlike all the rest of my neighbors, she wasn’t being ghoulish about it. ”

“She lost a daughter to drowning herself,” I tell her.

“Yes, I heard that after she left, when we all found out who she really was. I expect that’s what made her so considerate toward me. Mothers recognize each other’s pain.”

“And your son?” I ask. “Was that how he—?”

“Oh no. He returned safely that day, although maybe he’d have been better off lost to the water considering how his life played out for him afterward.

There are times I think it was a miracle that I held on to him for as long as I did.

Sometimes I feel as if God has been punishing me my entire adult life but, no matter how hard I try, I can’t understand what I ever did to offend Him.

It’s not fair, is it? Life. You’d wonder whether it’s all worth the bother. ”

She shakes her head sadly, then places a hand atop her son’s gravestone, before walking on with a sigh, her head bowed as she makes her way toward the gate that opens onto the laneway and that in turn, I assume, leads to her lonely home.

The sun is setting.

I make my way down to the beach and watch the waves as they lap toward the shore. Before me is the Atlantic Ocean, sweeping southeast in the direction of Tierra del Fuego, where it will make the bend for the Pacific and travel onward toward Sydney, Bondi, and home.

A sound from behind makes me turn, and I watch as Rebecca makes her way toward me. She’s barefoot in the sand, and I’m glad that she’s come alone. Taking her place next to me, we both remain silent for a few moments, staring out toward the horizon.

“I remember when my mother told me she was coming here,” she says eventually without any preamble.

“And how angry I felt. The trial had just ended, of course, and we’d had such a terrible year.

I felt she was abandoning me when I needed her most. It’s why I punished her.

Blocking her number and unblocking it repeatedly.

And then, one day, I just showed up out of the blue. She was so surprised to see me.”

“She talked about that,” I reply. “The night we met for dinner before our wedding.”

“Did she? I don’t remember.”

“Yes.”

She turns to me now.

“Thank you,” she says.

“For what?”

“For coming here. For bringing Emmet. It never even crossed my mind that you would do such a thing. When I saw you in the doorway of the pub, I couldn’t believe it.”

She reaches out and we take each other’s hands, recalling the good times we shared over the years, the laughs, the nights out, the jokes, the hangovers, the work conversations, the tears, the confessions, the traumas, the love.

“I don’t want to have the same distance with him as I had with her,” she says, sighing deeply as she turns back toward the waves. “I need to spend more time with him.”

“You do.”

“I’ve told myself that I wanted to protect him. From me. From all the anger inside me. But last night, the way he took care of me… Furia told me that you told him.”

“You’re not angry?”

She shakes her head. “No,” she says. “Not at all. If anything, I’m glad you did.”

“I told him about me too.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“It was the right time. He’ll go back to Australia changed, I suppose, but perhaps in a good way. You’ve done a good job, Aaron. Better than I ever did. He’s lucky to have you. I’m lucky that you’re our son’s father.”

I feel tears form behind my eyes. It is so peaceful here, just the two of us. It occurs to me that, after Emmet, Rebecca remains the most important person in my life. Someone who I would—quite literally—travel halfway across the world to support.

“I noticed you chatting with Furia,” she says after a moment, smiling.

“Yes, I made a pass, but she was having none of it.”

She laughs.

“You’re happy together?”

“We are.”

“I’m glad.”

“Thank you.”

“She gave you what I never could.”

She doesn’t reply, but I can tell from her expression that she knows I’m right. I’ve spent so long lying to myself about what went wrong between us that it’s time for me to face the truth.

“All those years we spent together,” I say, “you needed more than my words. More than my endless romantic gestures. You needed someone who would touch you. God, it’s not like you didn’t tell me often enough.

” I take a deep breath and just say what needs saying.

“You needed sex. You needed to feel loved in that way.”

She nods.

“I did, Aaron.”

“I’ve spent years telling myself that it was the other way around. That it was you who didn’t want to touch me. I’ve lied to myself, to my therapist. Because I couldn’t face it. I’m that thing that Emmet talks about.”

She frowns. “What thing?”

“The unreliable narrator.”

“It wasn’t your fault, Aaron,” she tells me. “It was hers. I won’t even say her name.”

“I know. You begged me to seek therapy, and I refused. I should have listened. I’ve never allowed myself to truly believe that I didn’t have a part in all of that. To accept that I was the victim. I’ve never given myself a chance to heal. And that wasn’t fair on you. Or Emmet. Or our family.”

“It’s not too late,” she tells me, putting an arm around my shoulder and pulling me close.

“That woman destroyed a piece of you, and you can’t allow her to keep doing so.

She’s in prison for the rest of her life, and you’re only forty.

You have more than half your life ahead of you, all going well.

Emmet told me that you’re still single.”

“I am.”

“That there hasn’t been anyone since I left.”

“There hasn’t.”

She steps away now and looks me directly in the eye, placing her hands on my arms.

“I’m going to tell you something now, Aaron,” she says. “And I want you to listen. Because I mean it. Because you’re my friend.”

I nod.

“You deserve to be loved.”

When night falls, I find myself back on the beach, alone on the sand. It’s dark now. The moon is out. Stars stud the sky. I close my eyes and take a deep breath of the cleanest air that has ever filled my lungs.

Slowly, I take off my clothes and walk naked toward the water, wanting to plunge deep down into the waves.

I stay beneath the surface for as long as I can before bursting through the surface, gasping for air.

I brush the hair out of my eyes and look back toward the island.

I’ve swum a little further out than I expected but, while I may be a terrible surfer, one of the benefits of living in Sydney all these years is that I’ve become a strong swimmer.

The water is calm too, so I know I’m in no danger.

In the distance, smoke is rising from the chimneys of the cottages where fires have been lit.

But I’m not ready to return just yet, so float on my back, looking up at the blackness above me.

I think about my conversation with Rebecca from earlier and know how right she was.

Freya Petrus stole so much of my life, and I simply can’t allow her to lay claim to another minute.

I refuse to be her victim any longer; I want to be her survivor. But how?

It’s then, out of the night sky, that a voice seems to whisper in my ear. The voice of a woman I met only a few times and whose body is now settling into its eternal coffin, deep in the earth of a church graveyard no more than a couple of miles from here.

Don’t go home, Aaron , she tells me.

Not yet anyway.

Stay here. Stay on the island.

For a few months. Perhaps even a year. Move into the cottage.

Heal.

Grow strong.

Allow Rebecca and Emmet the space to find each other again while you’re away. And when you’re ready, when the time comes, go back to Australia and start over.

And yes, I tell myself. This is exactly what I will do. I’ll tell them both in the morning and hope that they’ll be happy for me. A year at most. Rebecca can base herself out of Sydney during that time, and when she’s away for work, Emmet can stay with Damian’s family. They’ll be happy to have him.

I must remain on this unlikely rock, this final outpost of human life before the Atlantic Ocean stretches toward America, and prepare for my second life, one that I will embrace when I feel the strength and confidence to do so.

I plunge back down now, blocking out all the noise of the world around me, but keep my eyes open, staring into the dark black depths of the water, feeling the tug of the earth, the fire within me, and the air that remains in my lungs.

I’m not there yet, but one day I will be. At one with myself, at one with the universe, and—finally—at one with the elements.