Page 71 of The Island

What choice did she have?

Alki Beach

It is good to have the ocean at one’s back.

Why is it good, Dad?

It gives you heft, sweetie. It gives balance to a mind adrift on change and harassed by the irrepressible new.

What?

Doesn’t matter. Listen. Listen to me, now. Your mother. Don’t let them say things about your mother. She loved you. She would never do that to herself. It was an accident.

Was she drunk?

No. It had nothing to do with that. It was an accident. An accident. Yes…

Dad, are you OK?

Sorry. Of course. This is about your mom. Let’s think about her.

Dutch Island

The heat was everything. The heat was incredible. The heat was destroying her cell by cell, killing her, as it would kill all of them.

This was all her fault.

Dad had been reluctant. Please, she’d said. Everything we’ve been through. With Mom. Good for Owen. You know how much he loves animals. Please. Let us come with you for once on one of these things. It’s Australia. Like Disney World but better. Everything magic. The animals. The people. The landscape. The accents. A complete escape.

It had worked. Then they just had to convince Heather. Heather hadn’t wanted to come. She was worried about bushfires. She didn’t like snakes. She didn’t have a passport. But Dad wasn’t going to take two kids to Australia by himself.

And it had been awesome.

The desert.

Uluru.

Everyone had been so nice.

This island, too, had been her idea. Hers and Owen’s. Dad hadn’t wanted to come.

But Dad had come here because of the koalas for them. It all led back to her.

Alki Beach

A boat called a Zodiac.

The moon was part of the real zodiac.

The word moon came from the word for “mother.” Mrs. Taggart said a lot of languages shared the same root. Even in Latin, where the actual word for “moon” was luna, they had the related word mensis.

Zodiac, moon, mother.

Dutch Island

Ocean at her back, sun overhead, the sound of them over there on the spinifex, as they’d called it.

She wasn’t stupid.