The walk wasn’t long, but the wind buffeted them this way and that and Esther was obliged to hold on to her hat, a small-brimmed, dull felt affair that did little to keep off the rain. She faltered as she almost tripped on an object on the path and stopped to see what it was.
The doll lay on its back. Naked. China limbs splayed at unnatural angles. Eyes open, staring vacantly at the sky. A tangled mat of dirty yellow hair strewn with leaves and feathers. Esther stepped over it, feeling as she did, a tingling in her breasts and a spreading warmth at odds with the blustery, chilled air. It was a moment before she realized what it was, bewildered that her body still had the ability to nurture, in spite of everything.
John strode ahead, his steps unfaltering. He didn’t appear to have noticed the abandoned toy, or if he had, had paid it no heed. Angling her chin down, Esther drew her coat in closer, its astrakhan collar soft against her cheeks, her grip tight on the handbag at her elbow.
As if sensing she’d stopped, John turned to look back at her. “Not far now.” His expression coaxed her forward.
She gave him a curt nod and continued on, leaving the doll where it lay. The path ahead wound steeply upward and was pockmarked with shallow pools the color of dishwater. Esther had to watch her step to avoid them. Her shoes were new, barely worn in, not that she cared particularly about getting them wet. The avoidance of the puddles was an automatic action, a force of long habit, like so many were for her now.
A few steps farther on she glanced up, seeing the grasses on either side of them rippling and swaying, pummeled by the unrelenting gusts blowing off the ocean. Westward, cliffs like fresh scars marked where the land ended, rising abruptly as if forced upward from the earth’s bowels. Huge boulders lay scattered at their base, a giant’s playthings. It was a wholly foreign landscape for someone used to red brick, stone, pavement, and wrought iron.
“Nearly there, darling.” John’s tone was meant to encourage her, but it sounded a false note. Ersatz, her mother would have called it. And she would have been right.
Chapter Two
Aitutaki, South Pacific, February 2018
Rachel eased herself from the arms of her lover, sliding from beneath the thin sheet, being careful not to wake him. It was not yet dawn, but a waxing moon cast a glow through the uncurtained window. She located her shift, tossed on the tiled floor the night before, and shimmied it over her shoulders, down onto her torso, smoothing it over her thighs. She twisted her long hair into a knot and worked a kink out of her back, twisting and rolling the stiffness from her shoulders. Picking up her sandals, she tiptoed toward the door.
As she laid her hand on the latch, she allowed herself a single backward glance. He was beautiful: Adonis-like, with skin the color of scorched caramel, dark lustrous hair that she loved to curl around her fingers, and full, curving, skillful lips. Young, as always.
Closing the door gently so as not to wake him, she stood outside the straw-roofed bungalow and gazed across to the lagoon. The moon glistened on the water, and a faint light was visible on the horizon. On a clear night here, the sky was a sea of stars, with the Milky Way a wide belt arcing across the heavens. She would miss these skies more than the man she had just left behind. She checked her watch. Only three hours until her flight.
“Rachel!” The Adonis stood in the doorway. He had woken and found her missing. Damn. She’d lingered too long, taking in the beauty before dawn one last time.
She turned, meeting his gaze. “You knew I was leaving.”
“Yes, but like this? No chance to say good-bye?”
“I thought it would be easier.”
“On you perhaps.” He looked sulky, his lower lip jutting out.
She tried, but couldn’t feel sorry for him. He was young and gorgeous and would soon find someone else. Eager female research assistants would be falling over themselves to take her place. “You’ll be fine,” she said.
The sultry climate of the islands, where a permanent sheen of perspiration covered the skin, together with their remoteness, meant that relationships sprang up as quickly as the plants that flourished here. Generally their roots were as shallow, too.
“Come here?” It was more a question than a statement.
Rachel steeled herself against the pleading tone even as her footsteps led her back to him. Taller and broader than her, he easily enveloped her in his arms. “I’ll miss you,” he murmured into her hair.
“You too.” Her voice was brusque, hiding anything softer.
“Somehow I doubt that,” he laughed. “You have the blood of a lizard.” He released her and placed his palm below her collarbone. “There is a stone where a heart should be.”
They weren’t entirely unfair comments and she didn’t have time to argue with him.
“Stay in touch, eh?”
She gave a noncommittal shrug.
He kissed her forehead and hugged her once more before releasing her. “Au revoir, Rachel. Travel well.”
She almost raced along the path to her bungalow in her haste to get away.
* * *
An hour later, she burst through the doors of the tiny airport and dumped her backpack at the check-in counter. “Kia orana, LeiLei,” she greeted the woman waiting to take her ticket.
“Kia orana, Rachel.” She gave her a smile that split her face. The island—atoll to be precise—was small enough that Rachel had gotten to know most of its permanent inhabitants in the time she’d spent there. LeiLei, who did double duty checking in passengers on Air Pacific and mixing fresh coconut piña coladas at Crusher Bar—both with equal enthusiasm—was a favorite.
LeiLei examined her ticket. “Flying home?”
“Something like that.” The real answer was a complicated one. Growing up in a military family, Rachel had been to six different schools by the time she was twelve, moving from place to place, leaving friends behind and being forced to make new ones almost every year. She still remembered the name of her best friend when she was five. Erin. Could still recall the curly hair that never stayed in its pigtails and the swarm of freckles across her face. The two of them had been inseparable from their first day in Mrs. Norman’s kindergarten class, sitting next to each other, spending every recess and lunchtime together. Rachel had cried as though her heart would break when her parents told her they were moving away. The next time it happened, she made a deliberate decision not to give her heart to people or places again. It was undoubtedly part of the reason she was still a rolling stone.
Home had, for a few years in her teens, been Pittwater, at the northern tip of Sydney. Accessible only by boat. She’d loved those years living with the rhythm of the tides, never more than footsteps away from saltwater, so it came as no surprise that after graduation she sought research postings on islands or waterways.
It was on Pittwater that she learned to drive a small aluminum boat powered by an outboard motor that passed for transportation in that corner of the world. At fifteen, she was part of the tinny tribe, ferrying herself and her younger brother to and from the high school on the mainland and racing their friends across the sheltered waters, something they’d been expressly forbidden to do. She learned to pilot the tiny boat through pouring rain and bustling gales, as well as on days where barely a breath of wind rippled the water’s glassy surface and none of them hurried to lessons.