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I fly. I’ve never run so fast in my life. I don’t know if it’s adrenaline or it’s something that can only happen in a dream, but after I leave Robert I stop feeling the pain in my legs and burning in my lungs. I feel as if I’ve left my body, and instead of running, I’m flying toward the beach.
I cut across the sun-bleached grassy hill, tear down the sandy path, and sprint past the low-lying mangroves. They’ll be gone soon. A flurry of white egrets flies above, their wings stark against the pale blue sky.
Over the pounding of my pulse I hear the crash and roar of the sea. The humid, loamy, tropical-perfumed air I’ve been gasping in lungfuls switches to a clean, salty breeze. Then I crest the final sun-splashed rise, and there’s the indigo-blue sea.
And the row of cheerful cottages.
They’re the same. Little wooden houses in shades of coral, sea-foam blue, goldenrod, and salmon-pink, all of them perched under the shade of palm trees blowing in the wind.
And every one of them is about to be lost.
There’s Essie’s. Half the roof has collapsed. My heart stutters at the sight.
She’s outside, storming around in front of the porch, the chickens flapping about around her. Maranda and Dee are there as well.
Amy’s on the front porch of our cottage. Sean’s in her arms.
“Mom!” she shouts.
And I almost stumble from the leap in my heart at that one word. I sprint to her, drag in a great lungful of hot air, and say, “Another earthquake is coming. This half of the island is going to fall into the sea. Tell everyone. Knock on all the cottages. And then meet me here. We have to get to the hill. Do you understand? We have twenty minutes.”
“Mom. What?” She stares at me, her expression thunderstruck. I have a memory—one where she shouted, “Dad, Mom’s acting crazy!”
“Amy! Please!”
Her mouth trembles. She turns her face away, toward the ruin of Essie’s cottage. “You’re talking to me now? What, one earthquake and suddenly you care again?” She looks back at me, and in her arms Sean reaches out his chubby arms and says, “Mama.”
“You don’t even like me,” Amy says. “Why would you care if we all fell into the sea?”
There’s nothing I can say. Nothing I can do to convince her I care, that I do love her, truly, as much as I’ve loved anyone. I can’t fix the heartbreak of a mom discarding her daughter. I don’t know if I can make her trust me, but I have to get her to act. To run.
“I love you,” I say.
She shakes her head, looking away.
“‘To love someone means to see them as God intended them,’” I tell her.
“Don’t quote Dostoevsky to me.”
I will. I’ll quote him to her for the rest of her life. But first she has to live.
“I see you and I love you. Now, listen to me. This island is going to fall. Everyone will die. Run. Knock on the doors. Tell everyone to run to the hill. Meet me back here in five minutes. Okay?”
Sean reaches for me again, a whimpered, “Mama.”
I step forward then, into the shade of the porch, up the wooden steps, and press a quick kiss to his pink, flushed cheek. Then I grasp Amy and say, “‘Don’t fail me.’”
“Another Dostoevsky! Fine.”
Then she pushes away and runs down the wooden steps, into the sandy, prickly grass lawn. Sean’s in her arms, and she hurries under the shade of the clock tree.
If I could read it I’d know the petals are turning, bleeding to burgundy, counting down the seconds.
Then I look back toward Essie’s cottage.
I suck in a sharp breath.
Aaron strides toward me. His gaze is focused and intent. His features are firm, his expression hard. Amy runs past him, toward Essie and Maranda and Dee.
