There is still the niggling thought that Finn suggested I leave New York without expecting me to actually do it—as if this were some sort of relationship test I was supposed to pass, but failed. And maybe I am equally to blame for not insisting that I stay. But I also know that focusing on that one moment of miscommunication keeps me from examining a more painful, scarier truth: here on Isabela, there are times I forget to miss him.
I can explain it away: At first, I was distracted trying to figure out how to stay fed and housed. I’ve been thinking of Beatriz, and trying to keep her from cutting. I’ve been literally disconnected because of a lack of technology.
But if you have to remember to miss the love of your life … ?does that mean he’s not the love of your life?
I pin a smile on my face and nod. “I’m lucky,” I tell Gabriel. “When Finn and I are together, it’s perfect.”
And when we’re not?
“Finn,” he repeats slowly. “You know what finning is?”
“Is this a sex thing?”
His teeth flash white. “It’s when massive Chinese fleets fish for tons of sharks. They cut off their fins for soup and traditional medicines—and then leave the sharks to die in the ocean.”
“That is awful,” I say, thinking that now I’ll always associate this with Finn’s name.
Maybe that’s what Gabriel intended.
“That’s the part of paradise you don’t get to see,” he says.
“Am I a terrible person?” I ask quietly. “For being here?”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s been weeks. Maybe I should have been trying harder to get back to New York.”
He glances at me. “Short of growing a pair of wings, I’m not sure how that would happen.”
I lift my gaze. “Natural selection favors wings …”
His mouth curves. “I guess anything is possible. It just may take a few thousand years for you to evolve.”
I scrub my hands over my face. “If you read his emails, Gabriel … ?it’s so bad. It’s killing him slowly to watch all those patients die, and I can’t do anything to help him.”
“Even if you were there,” he says, “you might not be able to do anything. There’s some shit that people have to work through on their own.”
“I know. I just feel so … ?powerless.”
He nods. “I imagine it feels like you’re caged in and can’t get to him,” Gabriel says, “but maybe you’re the only one who sees it as a cage.”
“What do you mean?”
“If it were me,” he says, looking down at the fire, “and if you were the person I love … ?I’d want you as far away as possible so that I could battle the monsters and not have to worry about you getting hurt.”
“That’s not a relationship,” I argue. “That’s … ?that’s like a beautiful piece of artwork you don’t display because you’re afraid it will get damaged. So, instead, you crate it up and stick it in storage and it doesn’t bring you any joy or any beauty.”
“I don’t know about that,” Gabriel says softly. “What if it’s something you’d fight like hell to protect so you can someday see it one more time?”
His words make a shiver run down my spine, so I unzip my sleeping bag and slide into it. It smells like soap and salt, like Gabriel. I lie down, my head still spinning a little from the ca?a, and blink at the night sky. Gabriel does the same, lying on top of his own sleeping bag, his arms folded over his stomach. The crowns of our heads are nearly touching.
“When I was a boy, my father taught me to navigate by stars, just in case,” he murmurs. I hear a catch in his voice, and I think that of all he has told me tonight, the one thing he hasn’t revealed is why he is a farmer, not a tour guide. Plans change, he’d said. Shit happens.
“How bad was your sense of direction?” I say, trying—and failing—for lightness.
The fire hisses in the quiet between us. “Everything you’re seeing up in the night sky happened thousands of years ago, because the light takes so long to reach us,” Gabriel says. “I always thought it was so strange … ?that sailors chart where they’re going in the future by looking at a map of the past.”
“That’s why I love art,” I say. “When you study the provenance of a piece, you’re seeing history. You learn what people wanted future generations to remember.”