“Mind if I stay up here with you?” Kane asked. The boy shook his head again. Kane sat on the gun mount beside him. He felt the heat off the old metal, and there was something comforting about it. The sea remained rough, but from their vantage point it was hypnotic. No traces of the life it had swallowed.

Eventually Connor said, “Is it true? Did he kill Petra and Lauren?”

“I think so.”

“I should have done something. I should have seen.”

“There’s not always something you can do.”

“Why did he do it?”

“Because he wasn’t who he said he was, and when you’re in that situation you can get desperate.”

“Who was he?”

“I don’t know exactly. It’s possible he didn’t know either.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that people can be more than one person at a time. It doesn’t make anything less real or less true. The time you spent with him, I mean.”

Connor considered this. Eventually he turned to Kane.

“You’re not who you say you are either, are you?”

The assertion took Kane by surprise, even after everything that had transpired. In the chaos of the preceding few hours he’d overlooked the extent to which he’d abandoned all cover. Edward Pearce had departed the island for good.

“No, I guess not.”

Connor seemed on the verge of asking more but must have thought better of it. Kane looked to see how Anne and Carina were doing, down on the jetty. They hadn’t moved. Long plumes of smoke unfurled across the sky behind them. He thought of Anne watching the sunrise from outer space and couldn’t match it to the woman bent over her daughter’s body. No sign of any help arriving. The only thing now was to wait. Wait and try to stay sane.

“They would have gotten on the dinghy,” Connor said.

“I don’t see how they would have managed that.”

“You don’t think? They might have been okay.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Will I be arrested?”

“No. I think people will say you did the right thing.”

They were silent for a while. Finally the boy said, “So will we leave here now?”

“I imagine so.”

Connor took a breath and shut his eyes. Kane watched the sea. It could have been his imagination, but he thought he saw the ship begin to turn away. He thought of the men on board staring at the island, at the volcanic peaks gaining color, at the miracle of the whitewashed church and the jumble of fever graves, and realizing there was nothing there for them. That the ocean had its dangers, but you could move through it and you would find life elsewhere, and whatever that involved it would be less threatening than the lifeless rocks.