AllFreeNovel
Share Us
And then Joel let out a choking sob, and suddenly it was all real again.
And it was very far from a game.
Two days since we saw the Over Easy, and I think we are all starting to get seriously worried, though everyone is trying to keep it together in front of the others.
By day we’re keeping ourselves busy—catching fish, trying to patch up the villas. Santana’s leg is looking better, and that’s something at least. But the question we are all asking in secret is the same one: What do we do if it doesn’t come back for us?
No one has had the courage to say it out loud yet. I think we all know that once we voice the suspicion, it will become real. I haven’t even told Conor my fears, but I can see them in his eyes, and I know he is doing the same—trying to stay strong for me.
But the question is there, beneath the surface, eating away, and it’s worst at night when it becomes unignorable. What will we do if it doesn’t come?
CHAPTER 14
WE HAD ALMOST finished our makeshift dinner of curling sandwiches, cheese, and charcuterie from the fast-warming fridge, the shadows were lengthening, the mosquitos were whining, and the sun was beginning to set, flaming, into the peach-colored sea, when Conor brought the subject up again.
“Guys, I think it’s time.”
“Time for what?” It was Santana who spoke. With Dan’s help she had limped down the path from the villa to the cabana, and was looking surprisingly okay, though I kept glancing nervously at her thigh. I don’t know what I was looking for exactly—signs of infection, perhaps, though what that looked like, I couldn’t have said. Now I remembered that she hadn’t been at the discussion earlier.
“Time to… to bury them,” I said, with a glance at Joel, who had his head in his hands. He had barely touched his food.
“But… surely we can’t?” Santana looked puzzled. “Should we leave the bodies for… I don’t know. The police or something?”
“This ain’t a crime scene, woman,” Bayer said angrily. The pain in his shoulder was evidently nagging at his nerves, and he had been snapping and growling at everyone. Even terrified, Bambi-eyed little Zana had been called a stupid cunt when she knocked his bad shoulder accidentally, handing him a sandwich. Conor had said nothing, but I had seen the muscles in his jaw move as he gritted his teeth to stop himself from replying. Now Bayer had been drinking—beer was one of the few liquids we had other than water—and I could see he was spoiling for a fight.
“It’s not a crime scene,” Santana said spiritedly, “but they’re both unnatural deaths and I’m assuming that means they’ll have to be autopsied.”
“For Christ’s sake!” Joel broke out, as if he couldn’t bear to hear it anymore. I thought that for a brief moment this afternoon he had managed almost to forget about what had happened to Romi, kid himself that she was on the boat back with Nico and the others. Now it was coming horribly back to him.
“I’m sorry,” Conor said. There was sympathy in his voice, but also firmness. “And you’re right, Santana, but we can’t just leave the bodies there. That’s not dignified, and more to the point, it’s not safe.”
“What do you mean, it is not safe?” It was Angel who asked, looking up from where she was lying, stretched out on the cabana banquette. In the setting sun, she looked unbelievably and incongruously beautiful, her long bronzed limbs glinting in the deepening red-gold rays, and if you looked away from Santana’s leg and Bayer’s arm, you could almost believe this scene was a still from a holiday brochure. Tropical Paradise. Happy ever after.
“I mean, we don’t want to attract predators or disease.”
Joel got up and left the table. I could see him pacing about at the far end of the cabana. Conor lowered his voice and spoke to the rest of us, trying to keep quiet enough that Joel wouldn’t hear what he was saying.
“Between the insects, the birds, and the heat, if the boat doesn’t come soon, there won’t be much left of either of them to autopsy, and this island isn’t big enough for us to ignore a rotting corpse.” Angel made a grossed-out face, but Conor ignored her and carried on. “They’ll both be in a better state if we bury them somewhere now, with dignity. We can show the authorities where they are when they find us, if it comes to that point.”
“I think Conor’s right,” I spoke up reluctantly, trying to keep my voice quiet enough that Joel wouldn’t hear it. “We can’t just leave them. And I kind of think…” I swallowed, looked up the terrace at where Joel was standing, his silhouette dark against the evening sky. “I think maybe it would help Joel come to terms with it.”
WE BURIED THEM on the edge of the beach at sunset, the producer first, and then Romi after, pulling her shrouded body gently out of Joel’s hands, as if he couldn’t bear to let her go, and lowering her into the hole with as much dignity as we could manage.
The sun was just dipping beneath the horizon, and the bats were beginning to swoop low across the peach-colored sky, as Joel threw the first handfuls of sand onto her body. Zana, Santana, and I had done our best with both women, wrapping them in all the bed sheets we could spare, rolling them around and around to try to protect them from the elements as much as possible. The sand on the island was soft, and even without proper shovels, it had not taken Joel, Dan, and Conor long to dig two shafts deep enough for graves.
Now we all stood around in the dying light, as Joel wept, and each of us tried to think what to say. Somehow with the producer it had been easier; she was a complete stranger to all of us, and though we all felt a terrible compassion for her lonely death, without a name, it was hard to make what had happened to her seem real.
But with Joel standing there, his face streaked with dirt and tears, it was impossible to forget that a flesh-and-blood person lay at the bottom of Romi’s grave—someone who had been vibrant and alive and loved only twelve hours ago.
In the end it was Santana who spoke, clearing her throat and stepping forward, looking down unflinchingly at the body.
“I didn’t know you well, Romi, but I wish I’d known you better. I could tell you were a person who loved life, and I am so sorry that your time here was cut short so cruelly.”
There was a moment’s silence, and then Dan stepped forward.
“Romi, you lit up the room in the short time I had to know you, and I’ll always remember your smile. Rest in peace.”
Angel said a short poem in French, at least I assumed it was a poem, and then took a shell she had picked up from the beach and tossed it into the grave.
