Waving at the woman in the iron-on pug sweater with Celia.
They’d met Leona upon docking Hubert at the pier. She’d shown them around the island, from the cove to the levee, a holdover from pre–arctic melt times, even though she’d been under no obligation to do so, or to treat the girls like her own. Yet she had, and as she jogged toward them, the sand beneath Kasey’s feet liquified and her mind sank. If it hadn’t been for Leona, Celia might not have returned to the island. Might not have snuck out, poisoned herself again and again—not that Leona could have known, which only angered Kasey more, to see the grief on the woman’s features when ignorance still protected her. She started to back away, but then Leona’s arms were around her, her voice by her ear—“Oh, Kasey”—and Kasey’s vision darkened, a memory dragging her under. Midnight. A knock on her door. A whisper—Still up? Her sister’s heartbeat against her brow. You belong here.
“The boat,” Kasey managed to choke out.
A nod against her shoulder. Leona released her, and Kasey noticed something troubling about the scene other than Celia’s absence from it.
“Where’s your mask?” Not just that, but antiskin. Goggles. Leona was wearing no protective gear.
“Didn’t Act tell you?” asked Leona. “The island’s safe.”
Act. The familiarity of the nickname did not slip by Kasey unnoticed, nor did the ease with which Leona took them both by the arms. As they walked down-shore, Kasey thought back to all the times Leona and Celia would chat on the couch while Kasey fiddled with Leona’s teachbot—a gift, Leona explained, from her sister. Had Kasey missed news of Celia and Actinium’s relationship then? Or had Celia deliberately kept it from Kasey because she knew Kasey’s shameful secret—that she had trouble remembering Celia’s boys?
Which was it? she wanted to ask Leona, followed by How is the island safe? But whatever questions she had were blasted away when they reached the cove and Kasey saw it.
On the rocks before they curved into the cove. Tugged out of the tide’s reach.
The boat hadn’t made a lasting impression before. Now the sight of it speared Kasey. She stopped in her tracks, her inner world grinding to a halt as the world outside continued to roar with the wind and the sea. A squeeze of her arm—“Take as long as you need; I’ll be in the house”—and Kasey found herself left by Leona. Alone with Actinium.
“I can wait at the house too.”
Kasey shook her head. Last time, she’d said Celia would have wanted him here, but the truth was, Kasey did too, needed Actinium here to remind her that love was pain, and pain was approaching the boat when all she really wanted to do was retreat from it. With every step over the brine-slick rocks, she realized she was no better than the people at her party. She half expected Celia to spring up from the hull and say “Surprise!” until the very end, when Kasey was practically upon the boat, the unequivocally, indisputably empty boat.
She crouched beside it. She refused to think of it by its painted name. To her, this was a thing, the hearse that’d delivered Celia to her watery grave. If it were sentient, she’d want to hurt it, but it wasn’t, and it was already damaged, bow dented and gunwale half gone, evidence of the abuse it’d suffered at sea. Had Celia suffered? Had she known hunger? Thirst? Or had it been quick? Kasey hoped it was. Hoped it was the death Celia had wanted, as foreign as the concept seemed. As the waves shattered on the rocks around her, she felt Actinium’s presence at her back. He remained standing. Kasey appreciated that. If he knelt too, and contributed his grief to the space, she’d actually drown.
Rising, she wiped the sea spray off her otherwise dry face.
As promised, Leona was waiting back in the house. “We’ll have it transported to the eco-city,” she said as Actinium and Kasey came through the door and into the fuel-bar, where two kettles were going on the stove.
“Keep the boat here,” said Kasey. The island was classified as private domain, prohibiting non-residents from holoing in. That, along with Leona’s lack of an Intraface, would offer her ample protection from the press.
“Then we’ll send it over to Francis,” said Leona. “He’ll patch it up, make it good as new.”
He could destroy it, for all Kasey cared, but she nodded for Leona’s sake—then stiffened.
Voices. Inside the house.
Peeking into the living room, she was taken aback to see the Wangs, Reddys, Zielińskis, and O’Sheas with their twins. It was literally the island’s entire population, minus the temporary vacationers and old Francis John Jr., the handyman who lived in the woods. The couch was crammed, the overflow sitting on the floor, spread with grandmother Maisie Moore’s monogrammed towels, everyone huddled around Leona’s small holograph projector and none, to Kasey’s growing dismay, wearing masks.