Wreckage (13 page)

It took two hours using fragments of bamboo to dig a hole deep enough so that animals couldn’t dig her up. The sand kept cascading back into the pit until I was sure we’d never be done. Finally, we hit wet sand and then the digging was quick. No one talked.

Kent insisted we have a memorial service for both women lost in the crash, but Lillian declined to say anything after we dumped piles of sand over Margaret’s stiff body. She clutched a gold chain entwined in her fingers and hugged Margaret’s bloodstained coat as if it could bring Margaret back from the dead.

Kent said a few words about Theresa before his voice cracked and he said he was going to hunt. Lillian sat down in the sand beside Margaret’s grave and closed her eyes. I don’t know if she was sleeping or praying but I didn’t think that was a good time to interrupt.

She’s still gazing out over the ocean as though she could find her house if she looked hard enough. I know I have to break her out of it or else she’ll fade away and leave me alone, here, with him. I can manage life on this rock with her, or maybe even alone, but not without her and
with
Kent.

Now is my chance to have that talk.

As I walk up to her, my palms start sweating. Her stitches look even more raw and tender up close. I want to reach out and put my arm around her and warm her goose-pimpled skin but instead I stand beside her, crossing my arms to ward off the wind. I wait for her to notice me but she doesn’t.

“Lillian.” She blinks once but still doesn’t turn. “Lillian. Kent made dinner. It looks delicious, fish and some other stuff. You should come and eat, there’s enough for all of us.” I think she shakes her head but it could be the wind in her hair. “Please come, Lillian. We’re worried about you.
I’m
worried about you. Please, eat with us.” A tear runs down her cheek and traces the sharp outline of her jaw. More follow in rapid-fire succession.

“I know you feel alone but, as selfish as it sounds, I need you right now.” I take a step closer. “If I don’t have you, I might lose it too.”

I let the words hang out there like laundry drying in the wind, and then pretend to look out into the ocean too. Maybe, in all her staring, she’s found something more than nothingness to focus on. My stomach grumbles loudly, the few hunks of coconut tumbling around. There’s real food back at the fire and the survival part of my brain tells me to leave and claim my share of the food before it’s gone. But I can’t abandon her again like last night, when Margaret was dying.

“I wish they’d put that in your file,” Lillian whispers through a sniff.

“What? That I’m a selfish jerk?” I glance at her sidelong.

“No, I wish they’d told me you were such a good person.” She looks up at me and there’s a little smile cracking through her mask of sorrow. I can’t help but return it, remembering when I’d first said those words on the plane, before the crash.

“I guess we’re even.” I point down the beach to camp. “Let’s eat.” The sea breeze pushes us inland. Lillian shivers but I’m not cold. I’m warmed by the light I managed to reignite in Lillian’s eyes.

CHAPTER 13

LILLIAN

Present

“We started off digging a hole a short distance from camp,” Lillian explained, trying not to laugh at the sour pucker on Genevieve’s face. “Everyone used it but after a while it was too gross so we filled it in. When we moved to the lagoon there was a new rule—don’t ask, don’t tell. As long as it was more than thirty feet from camp or water, you could pick for yourself. That worked a lot better.”

“When I asked about personal hygiene,” she interrupted, swallowing loudly, “I was asking more about bathing, laundry, soap substitutes . . . that sort of thing.”

Apparently it only took a few potty stories to unnerve the unflappable Genevieve Randall. Lillian loved it. She’d tell a hundred more if it made the reporter gag like this one did.

“So you
don’t
want to know what we used as toilet paper?” Lillian asked, fluttering her eyelashes innocently. Genevieve pressed her lips together. Maybe it was better that Jerry hadn’t come down yet or they’d both be laughing.

“No!” Her voice pitched up with a slight edge of panic.
This woman is clearly not a mother
, Lillian thought. Brief memories of Josh and Daniel’s potty-training years flashed through her mind.

They’d been such babies when she’d left on that infamous trip, only five and seven years old, but when she came home they were a solemn seven and nervous nine.

They were waiting for her, surrounded by a flock of cameras and encircled by Jill’s arms. At first glance, Jill looked the same as the day before Lillian left, when they’d gone for coffee together. Jill joked around telling Lillian that she should take a picture of the cabana boy in each location and e-mail it to her so she could get the “good parts” of the vacation vicariously.

Everything from her short red hair spiked toward the sky, to her super-stylish dark skinny jeans and loose gauzy purple shirt hanging nearly to her knees, screamed “original.” That’s what Jill was—original. Lillian always felt very white bread next to Jill’s seven-grain, but differences aside, they were best friends.

Three steps forward and Jill came into focus. Her prominent cheekbones stood out dramatically and dark half-circles created smudges under her eyes, barely disguised with makeup. Each arm stuck out from under her loose shirt, scrawny and white like bones, one draped around Josh and the other around Daniel, making Jill look like a giant purple bird protecting peeping chicks. Like they were
her
chicks.

Jill would never try to take her children from her, right?
But seeing them like that, intertwined, intimate, Lillian felt like she’d lost them forever.

Jerry squeezed her hand reassuringly. He was watching her again. It seemed like he was always watching her. The weight of his assessment was a heavy load—heavier than the stares of the press and the gawking public.

“Are you ready to see the boys?” Jerry whispered. “Look how excited they are.”

Josh had grown four or five inches at least. His sandy-blond hair was long, hanging over his ears and into his eyes, curling up at the ends. If Lillian had been home she would’ve cut it a long time ago but, she had to admit, it did give him a little bit of a swagger.

His gangly limbs were hidden by a long-sleeved dress shirt, probably purchased specially for this occasion. The vertical green and gray stripes elongated his already impossibly long arms, alerting her that he was a child ready to burst into adolescence. Every part of him seemed to scream, “YOU MISSED THIS.” His adult front teeth were fully grown in, too big for his smile. How many times had the tooth fairy come?

How dare she come when I wasn’t there?
Lillian thought, angry that life went on so easily without her. She suddenly hated the tooth fairy, with her fancy little wings and magic wand. Lillian shook her head to refocus.
Don’t be crazy, Lillian. Be normal. Normal.

She didn’t remember how to be normal anymore. Jerry had to assist her with the buttons on her blouse that morning and help fix her lipstick in the car on the way to the airport. During that ride he had tried to fill her in on every second of the boys’ lives that she’d missed, like he was the babysitter and she’d just returned home from a night out on the town. Lillian was always the expert on her own children but now she felt like a spectator to their lives.

She glanced over to Jill’s other side where little Daniel’s face was half covered by the billowing purple shirt. He fit nicely in the curve of Jill’s hip, like he was used to finding comfort there. When Jill shifted her arm, the top of Daniel’s head popped out and Lillian forgot to be jealous. When she’d left, her kindergartener had hair the color of the sand on her island, so light brown that in the summer the sun bleached the tips blond. But in the past twenty months it’d turned dark and covered his head in a crown of mahogany curls.

Jill tapped him on the shoulder and whispered something that made him look right at Lillian. When their eyes met, she held her breath. He had her emerald eyes, or at least the way they used to be, bright and merry. His little pink lips curled up into a bashful smile. Clutched in his delicate fist was a sign written in multicolored markers and crayons that read W
ELCOME
H
OME,
M
OM!
If only that sign was true, that they really could welcome her back into their lives.

The noise around them began to filter in, a crowd, and someone calling her name, drowning out the whoosh of her own heartbeat.

“Lillian, LILLIAN!” She heard it again. She scanned the room for another familiar face in the flood of strangers pushing against the flimsy black ribbon barricade. There was a wall of color, balloons and flowers, blurring in the mass of people and a collage of faces, smiling and calling her name, yelling happy words that didn’t make any sense.

Their eyes pushed at her skin, their shouts hurting her ears. A woman shot her hand out beyond the restraints, reaching toward Lillian, tears streaming down her face. What did she want? What did they all want? This was too much all at once. Too many people, too much excitement, too much expectation. She had to escape.

Wiggling her fingers, she tried to force her hand out of Jerry’s, thinking semi-logically that running while holding hands would be impossible. She considered the tight metal buckle around her ankle; there was no easy way to slip the stupid shoes off. Why hadn’t she worn gym shoes rather than the flimsy sparkling sandals someone put on her this morning in Guam? Even her old Nikes that hadn’t made it off the island would be easier to run in. She needed to run.

The plane they’d exited was gone, on its way to Chicago. Even if she could catch a plane, where would she go? She couldn’t go back to the island and live there alone; too many memories haunted that place. And there was no way in hell she’d set foot in the hospital room she’d been trapped in for the past two weeks. There
was
one other option. David. He’d know what to do.

The idea of talking to him calmed her like a Valium. Planning it out in her mind, she could get as far as California, walking off the plane and seeing his smile and falling naturally into the safety of his arms. But how could she explain that after dreaming of coming home for so long, now she felt entirely out of place? She could imagine his scowl when she admitted that everyone would’ve been better off if she’d never been rescued at all. That thought was more painful than everyone staring at her from the crowd. She’d rather stay here than make David hate her more.

Jerry put an arm around her boney shoulder, barely touching her skin. “Those boys missed you so much.” His breath smelled of spearmint Life Savers. He always sucked on them during landings and takeoffs to help relieve the pressure in his ears. The memory made Lillian lean into his embrace and smile. “Should I call them over?” he asked, as if he didn’t feel the tide pulling them under. She wanted to say no but she nodded anyway, wondering if it was possible to drown on dry land.

Jerry gave the boys a big wave and Lillian leaned against Jerry, so afraid that they’d shake their heads and turn away. Daniel had always been afraid of strangers and Lillian was sure she looked like a total stranger to him now. But as soon as her sons heard their names, they let go of Jill, rushing toward Lillian.

“Mom!” Josh’s big boy voice called and it sounded so familiar.

“MOMMY!” Daniel shouted as he ran, his legs blurring beneath him. She braced for impact just before they collided. Daniel hit first, wrapping his arms around her legs, and Josh second, throwing his arms around her waist. The force of their collision blew out all that doubt that had been weighing her down, and instead of falling deeper into the hole she’d been digging for herself, she finally saw a tiny pinprick of light showing her which way to start climbing.