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About halfway home I decide I’d better not let the fucker drown. Rowan’s right. I don’t want her to bear the same loss I have. I don’t want to carry his death or meet his ghost. Most of all, I do not want the violence of it to scare my daughter any more than it already has.

The only way back in, now that the vault is too dangerous, is down the shaft, which has been rusted shut for many years and will require an angle grinder to open. I look through the curtain of rain and can barely make out the black inflatable boat up ahead. They’ll be drenched in that thing; I should have made Orly ride with me but he loves being with Rowan—he senses an ending the way we all do. At some point very soon our lives together on Shearwater will be over.

I have been preparing myself for the day she’d find Hank. I don’t know if it will be the ruthlessness of the captivity or all the lies I told her, but one of them will end us. I saw the horror in her eyes, felt the retreat within her. I knew it was coming and yet I did not realize it would feel so bad, so ruinous, I did not realize there could be no preparation for this kind of pain. It is really fucking sad that it should take loss to know the precise quality of love.

As I reach our beach and drive the Frog up onto the sand, I can make out the reflective red lights on the back of the quad bike, already halfway up the hill. I will let them come back for the seeds in my boat, while I go straight for the tools to get the son of a bitch out.