I held him there for only a second, but it was long enough for his body to go limp as the last of the air bubbles escaped the corner of his mouth and the water turned red.
Though bigger than me, his body felt light as I lifted him. As if his soul was already gone. When he surfaced, his eyes were open but he wasn’t looking at me. At least not in this world. And the voice I’d heard ten thousand times, I could hear no more. I dragged him to shore and laid him on the sand, where the waves washed over his ankles. That’s when I noticed his hands. His crossed arms lay flat across his chest, and yet his fingers were speaking loudly enough for heaven to hear: “2–2.”
“It is finished.”
I pulled him to me and cried like a baby.
The Coast Guard wrapped the girls in blankets and started IVs in three of them. Having known Fingers, the captain of the ship waded into the water to help me lift his body off the sand. One of their guys offered to let me ride alongside Fingers while they piloted my Whaler back to port, but I declined. Marie’s body was out there somewhere.
I had failed.
I followed the current and beached the Whaler. The sea would do one of two things: bury her in the depths or lay her body on the shore. Hours later, as the sun dropped behind the edge of the water, with both salt and blood caked on my skin, I stood at the water’s edge and unfolded the letter. The weight of it drove me to my knees, where the waves washed over my thighs.
The words blurred:
My Love,
I know this letter will hit you hard . . .
I thumbed away the tears, walking the shore until daybreak. Reading the letter over and over. Each time hurt worse. Each time her voice grew more distant.
The tide washed her ashore as the sun broke the skyline. I pulled her limp, pale body against my chest and cried again. Angry. Loud. Broken. Her body in my arms. Skin transparent and cold. I could not make sense of my life. Either what it had become or what it would be. I was lost. I kissed her face. Her cold lips.
But I could not bring her back.
The rope around her ankle had been cut with a knife, telling me she’d changed her mind somewhere in the darkness below. Though gone, she was still speaking to me. Still clawing her way back. We lay there as the waves washed over us. I pressed my cheek to hers.
“You remember that night I found you out here? Everybody was looking for you but nobody thought to look that far out. But there you were. Floating six or seven miles out. You were so cold. Shaking. Then we ran out of gas a mile from shore, and I paddled us in. You were worried we wouldn’t make it. But I had found you. I could have paddled the coast of Florida if it meant we could stay in that boat. Then we built a fire and you leaned in to me. I remember feeling the breeze on my face. The fire on my legs and the smell of you washing over me. All I wanted to do was sit and breathe. Stop the sun. Tell it to wait a few more hours. ‘Please, can’t you hold off just a while?’ Then you placed your hand on mine and kissed my cheek. You whispered, ‘Thank you,’ and I felt your breath on my ear.
“I was nobody. A sixteen-year-old shadow walking the halls. A kid with a stupid little boat, but you made me somebody. That night was our secret, and seldom did a day pass that we didn’t see each other. Somehow you always found a way to get to me. Then my senior year, you were the only one who thought I could break the record. Forty-eight seconds. I crossed the line and the watch showed ‘forty-seven-point-something’ and I collapsed. We did it. I remember the gun going off but I don’t remember running. I just remember flying. Floating. A thousand people screaming and all I heard was your voice. It’s all I’ve ever heard.
“I don’t know how to climb off this beach. I don’t know how to walk out of here. I don’t know who I am without you. Fingers said to forgive you but I can’t. There’s nothing to forgive. Nothing at all. Not even the . . . I want you to know I’m sorry I didn’t find you earlier. I’m real sorry. I tried so hard. But evil is real and sometimes it’s hard to hear. I wish you could have heard me. So before you go, before . . . I just want you to know that I’ve loved you from the moment I met you, and you never did anything—not one thing, ever—to make me love you less.
“My heart hurts. A lot. It’s cracking down the middle, and it’s going to hurt even more when I go to stand up and carry you out of here. But no matter where I go, I’m carrying you with me. I’ll keep you inside me. And every time I bathe or swim or take a drink or walk through the waves or pilot a boat or just stand in the rain, I’ll let the water keep you in me. Marie, as long as there’s water, there’s you in me.”
As the sun rose above me, I called in the Coast Guard. The helicopter landed on the beach, and when the crew offered to take Marie from me, I declined. I carried her into the bird myself, crossed her arms, pressed her head against my chest, and for the first time since I found her, I uncurled her fingers and slid my hand inside hers.
They could hear me crying over the sound of the helicopter blades.
Chapter 1
A week passed. I ate little. Slept less. Most afternoons I found myself staring out across the water. Days ticked by. Both Marie and Fingers’ last will and testament stipulated they be cremated. Which they were.
While Fingers had asked me to spread his ashes at the end of the world, Marie had chosen a spot a bit closer to home. In her final letter, Marie had asked me to spread her ashes in the shallow water just off the island where we played as kids. For a week, I clutched the urn in my hands and watched the tide roll in and wash out. High tide. Low tide. High. Low. But I could not convince my legs to carry me out into the water. So, despite Marie’s final wish, I returned to my house and placed the urn on the kitchen table alongside Fingers’ ashes, which I had placed in his signature orange lunch box. An odd pair and a strange sight. A purple urn and a bright-orange box. I stared at them. They stared back at me.
For another week, I orbited them like a moon. Daylight. Darkness. Daytime. Night.
Fingers had taught me all I knew. Found me when I was lost. Patched me back together when all the king’s horses and all the king’s men could not. I had been Ben Gunn; he had been Jim Hawkins. I had been Crusoe; he had been Friday. In my darkest moment, I had awakened on a shoreline, a castaway with sea foam and fiddler crabs tickling my nose. I could not rescue myself and did not speak the island language. Fingers lifted me from the sand, brushed me off, fed me, and taught me how to walk again. He rescued me when I was beyond rescue. His impact was immeasurable. The absence of his voice deafening.
Life without Marie was like waking up in a world where the sun had been removed from the sky. I kept her letter close. Read and reread it ten thousand times. Set it next to my face when I lay down to sleep so I could smell her hand, but it brought little comfort. I could not turn back time. Nor could I, no matter how hard I tried, wrap my head around the finality. It didn’t seem possible. It wasn’t. How was she gone? The picture of her alone, terror-filled, a rope around her ankle, leaving this world consumed by shame and regret, was tough to stomach. I had exhausted myself in the search. Spent all I had. Come so close, and yet failed so completely. When she needed me, I had not been there.
Maybe that hurt most of all. I’d spent my life rescuing the wounded, and yet I could not rescue the one I loved the most.