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I am going to miss waking to the sound of his voice more than, perhaps, anything.

“That’s a good one,” I say when he is finished.

“Right?”

“Is it on the list?”

“No.”

The water in the vault was knee-high when we last left—it will be higher again now. Several of the lower shelves are submerged, there are containers floating listlessly. I wonder what this family intends to do with my husband. If they have decided his cell shall become his grave, too.

“The lower storage area will start to fill up soon,” I say.

Orly frowns. What do I mean?

“Down the air shaft. Water will start getting in there. It’ll fill up. So if there’s anything down there, you and your dad should think about moving it now.”

He flushes a little, then nods. He is bound to be confused by my pointedness, but I don’t think he will read the subtext behind the words; he is far too trusting to think I wouldn’t be up-front about what I know. Orly jumps off my bed and I hear his feet slapping down the stairs.

I rise and stand by the window. Though it’s morning, it’s almost dark enough to be night. Birds whoosh by, pinwheeled by the wind. There comes a rolling grumble of thunder. The storm has not abated, instead it seems to be gathering steam. It might be as violent as the night I washed up here. It might be worse.

I dress warmly, protectively. Mentally I am arming myself. I don’t know what I am going to do today, but I am going to do something.

There is a kind of mewling coming from the walls. An animal whimper. It is not the first time I have heard strange noises drifting to me on eddies but it is the most substantial. I press my hands to the stone and follow the grooves with my fingers. The sound comes again, a little louder: there is a creature in pain. I am able to trace it down the staircase to the bathroom.

I knock on the door. “Fen?”

“Who’s with you?”

“No one, it’s just me.”

I hear a scuffle and the door opens. She’s already moving back to the empty bathtub, where she sits hunched over, in bra and undies.

“What’s going on?” I ask, closing the door behind me.

“Lock it.”

I do. “Fen. What’s—are you okay?” I sink down beside her. Her face is puffy, she’s been crying. There is some blood in the tub.

“Don’t be nice to me,” she says.

“Does your period always hurt like this?”

She nods.

“Have you taken painkillers?”

Another nod. “We don’t have any pads left and I keep bleeding through tampons so I have to stay here.”

“Okay. Do you want the shower on? Might help with the cramps.”

“I’ve already had my shower minutes.”

I turn on the shower, getting the water nice and warm for her. We both watch as the smears of blood trickle away down the drain. Her underwear gets wet but she doesn’t mind.

Someone knocks on the door. “Piss off,” I yell, and they do, I guess.

“Does yours hurt like this?” she asks me.

“It did at your age. I remember feeling crippled by it. It gets less painful with time.”

“Thank god. Having a baby is not worth this.”

I smile. “Most women would say it is.”

“But not you.” She says this like a statement but when she looks at me, I can see it’s a question.

I shrug, can’t bring myself to meet her eyes. I am starting to realize my answer isn’t as simple as it once was and there is a hidden world of pain here for me.

“I thought I was pregnant,” Fen says abruptly and now I do look at her, I stare at her in shock.

“When?”

“Before you came. I wasn’t. It was just late.”

The question is very loud between us, but I don’t ask it. It’s not my business.

She asks it for me. “Don’t you want to know who?”

I don’t reply.

Fen starts to cry again and I get a bad feeling in my guts.

“Let’s just get you sorted,” I say briskly. “We can get some cloth for you to use instead of a pad. And I’ll get you some more painkillers.”

“I need to tell you who.”

I meet her dark-brown eyes. “No you don’t, darling,” I say.

Because she is seventeen and he is forty-seven. Whatever happened, she is not responsible for it.

Fen lets her head drop onto her knees and she cries hard and long. I stroke her shaved hair gently, letting her get it out. There is trauma here, I can hear it, and I can hear relief, too, maybe that it’s over, maybe also that I finally know.

When she is spent, when all the tangles within her have unspooled into the porcelain tub beneath her, she rests her head wearily against the wall. I sit crammed in between the sink and the bath, watching her. She says, “I’m so sorry.”

I just shake my head. “You don’t need to be.”

He is the one who will be sorry. I could kill him for it. For hurting her. For the affair too, I suppose, but far more for choosing to have it with a child. I could watch him drown. Maybe I will. It is clear, now, why he’s in a cell.

“Have I ever told you about my husband?” I ask her.

Fen frowns, searching my face, unsure what I’m doing.

“Hank is a narcissist,” I tell her. “He is very good at convincing people he cares about them. But in reality his whole world is just—himself. He can’t think beyond that. He can’t feel beyond that. He’s charismatic and clever and this allows him to collect people. A lot of people have fallen under his spell and there’s no shame in it.”

“Is that why you married him?” Fen asks. There is recognition in her eyes, as though this is all making sense to her.

“Yeah, I suppose so.”

“Why didn’t you leave, when you realized it?”

I think about this. “I think it suited me to be with someone I knew would never look directly at me.”

She breathes out. Then says, “But you’re so nice to look at.”

It makes us both smile. I lean over the bath to hug her. All I can hope is that having some understanding of who Hank is will help her process this.

I tell Dom and Orly that Fen has bad period pain and won’t be joining us today. Dom says she can just take some Advil and be right, I tell him to shut up. Orly moans about us being down another set of hands—three is not nearly enough—but his dad replies that three is what we are, so we’d better get moving.

Dom drives the Frog, while Orly and I follow behind in a Zodiac. The rain is heavy and fat, it falls hard, and from the look of the black sky it doesn’t plan on going anywhere soon.

From the mouth of the tunnel we can see water rushing like white water rapids. Dom says simply, “This is our last trip. And you’re waiting out here.”

Orly doesn’t argue. “Better make it count then, guys.”

As Dom and I wade down through the freezing water I think of Hank. I wonder if Dom means to drown my husband; I wonder if I might let him. I have never been so angry.

All the ice on the walls of the vault has melted away. It takes a lot of effort for Dom and me to move through the freezing water; we are slow, and it feels pointless if you stop to think, so we don’t think, we keep on. We carry our containers to the floating pallet we’ve tied with a rope to the chamber door so it doesn’t float away. We don’t look at labels, we just take from the pile Orly instructed us to focus on. With every container I carry, I contemplate a plant species that may survive because I forced myself to keep going, to keep moving through this freezing water. I can’t feel my feet. We don’t think about what’s getting left behind; there will be time for that later, a lifetime for it.

When a second crack opens in the wall, letting a deluge pour free, Dominic shouts that it’s time to go. That entire wall is about to give way and the cave we are in will crumble.

We steer the floating pallet out through the chamber doors and up the tunnel. The water is around our waists now, already higher than when we entered this morning.

“Dom,” I say as we wade through the dark. Because maybe there won’t be many more chances.

“Yeah?”

“You need to talk to Raff and Fen.”

“About what?”

“Whatever it is that they want to talk about.”

He looks at me, understanding. This is a very weird time to have this conversation and I think he understands the why of that too. “I don’t know what to say to them,” he admits.

“Then just listen.” I let go of the barge for a moment so I can reach for him, reach for his cheek. “Okay?”

Dominic nods. “Okay.”

At the mouth of the tunnel I think of the man we’ve left behind, waiting and alone. I make a decision, I make several. I can’t let my husband drown. No matter what he’s done, that’s not a thing I can do. I will come back for him.

We load the boats, heads ducked against the battering rain and wind. Orly hunkers down in the back of the Frog, trying to take shelter, while his dad and I run back and forth like mad things. “Get going!” I shout to Dom when we’ve finished.

He nods. And then he pulls me against him and kisses me.

I can feel in it a farewell. He knows something. He might be planning something. He has done bad things. It doesn’t matter. I put all of myself into this kiss, I cling to him. If this is our last, I hope he feels within it the days, hours, minutes left in my life, I hope he knows I am giving them to him, every one of them.

He says, “Get in the boat. Please.”

I pull back from his lips. My heart is a wild thing.

“I can’t leave him to die,” I say.

There is no surprise in his face. He has already worked it out. “You don’t have to,” he says, so calm. “You just have to get in the boat.”

“Why did you do it?” I ask. “He and Fen—”

“He tried to kill her,” Dominic says. “He held her head under the water.”

I stare at him.

“He is dangerous, . I couldn’t tell you where he was because I could never be sure you wouldn’t let him out. Or that Fen would be safe from him if he was free.”

The cold is working its way up from my numb feet to my guts, my chest, my mind. I have rage in my heart for what Hank has done, at the thought of the ways he has hurt Fen and broken apart this family. But somehow I also have pity for his sickness, which has transformed him. He needs help. He needs treatment and medicine. He needs to get away from this island.

“We still can’t let him die,” I say.

“You don’t have to,” Dom says. “But I can.”

“Dom,” I say, squeezing his hands.

“I’ve thought a lot about what I’d do if the vault flooded before the ship came. I was going to hand him over to the authorities, but nature’s decided for me.”

“If you do this,” I say clearly, “if you make me part of it, there will be nothing left for you and me. Do you understand? We won’t come back from it.”

His eyes close as though he is in great pain. “Row,” he says. He looks at me. “I’m sorry. Truly. But I have to protect my daughter.”