“During challenge four?” I asked gently.
“Yes, the mirror,” Hop replied. “I saw my future, and I didn’t like it. When I go back home, I’m going to be a new man.”
“That challenge was bad for me,” said Mei. “I saw the faces of the men who used to come into my room every day and night. I was nine when I was abducted and made to work as a prostitute. The mirror made me understand that as a child, I felt like I took the spirit of those men deep inside me and that I became just as ugly.”
Louelle and I reached out to Mei, hugging either side of her.
Yolanda bowed her head, suddenly crying. “I don’t want to go back to being who I was. But what if I’m just no good at being anyone else?”
Richard winked. “Chin up, buttercup. When I become a pilot for real, you can become my co-pilot. Imagine that, huh? Pilot Yolanda, stepping off a light plane in Saudi Arabia, tossing her beautiful hair around in the breeze. And none of the rich sheiks can say a darn thing about it. Because she’s about to fly their asses somewhere.”
Sniffling and drying her eyes with the heel of her hand, Yolanda grinned.
Thomas stirred the dregs of his soup, looking for a moment like a child who didn’t want to finish his dinner. He wasn’t far off being a young child—I’d found out he was just sixteen. “Now that I’ve kicked the drugs,” he said, “I’m going to study to become a chef. I wanted to do that before my mum died. I’ve given my dad hell over the last two years. But I’m going to do things right, now.”
“Yay, Thomas.” Yolanda clapped her hands together.
Louelle toyed with a spoon, spinning it back and forth. “Good on you, Tom. What I’m going to do is ride back to my town with my head held high, all guns blazing. There’s been a heap of whispers and gossip about me over the past fifteen years or so. But my husband and kids have stuck by me, and I owe it to them to be a wife and mom they can be proud of. I lost my job a year ago—but I plan on getting that back now.”
“Here! Here!” Cormack raised his glass of orange juice.
“What about you, Evie?” asked Louelle, dipping bread into her soup. “What are Evie’s plans once she ditches this place?”
I breathed in deeply, feeling the air grow heavy in my lungs. “First thing I’m going to do is to go and stay at the beach for a few days with my husband and kids. Just that. Doesn’t matter that it’s winter back home. Then I’m going to tell him everything. If at the end of it, he hasn’t served me with divorce papers, we’ll buy a little house.” None of it sounded real as it left my lips.
“Sounds like a perfect plan,” mused Louelle. “I’m lucky my husband didn’t divorce me. And that my kids still talk to me. I was a librarian. Fell off a stepladder putting a stack of books away and did damage to my hip bones. From that moment, I became addicted to painkillers. I’d feel so high and on top of the world, I’d even drive around town like I was on some kind of racetrack. Thank God, my kids are teenagers, and they’d grab the wheel from me. I started drinking, too, when the doctor started restricting the mount of painkillers I could have. I embarrassed my family constantly, and the days just slipped past me. That’s not gonna happen anymore. It’s all too precious. I didn’t grow up in a happy family, but I’m going to make damned sure that my own family is a happy one.” She nodded firmly. “Okay, who’s next? Spill.”
“Well, I’ll be moving on out of that Las Vegas drain,” said Richard in his American drawl. “Maybe I’ll get out of Las Vegas altogether. Too much temptation. Don’t know where I’ll go. But I’ve got a few business ideas. Watch this space, people. Ah, look at Cormack mooning about Kara, like a puppy that got left behind. You have to let that one go, son.”
Cormack lifted his chin. “Lots of lasses back where I’m from.”
“Yes, but you’ve got your mind stuck on one particular lass,” Richard pressed.
“Okay,” Cormack admitted. “There’s something about her I can’t stop thinking about. I’m going to convince her to give me a shot if it’s the last thing I do.”
“Your bucket list is looking a bit sad, my friend,” Richard joked.
“I’m nothing if not passionate. We Scots are a wild bunch. Whatever I go after, I’m all in,” said Cormack. “Maybe we should all meet up again somewhere in six months and see how we’re all doing. And we’ll reminisce about the old days. At the monastery.”