During that time, Navy divers retrieved Jacky’s remains—what were left of them—from the bottom of the flooded cavern. After Rad detailed to military investigators how a merfolk had attacked and drowned Jacky, she and Marty were pressured to sign non-disclosure agreements preventing them from disclosing what happened on Demon Island to any other party, private or public. The same day the chief of police of Galle, the district in the Southern Province which had jurisdiction over Demon Island, stated during a televised press conference that “Daily Mirror reporter, Jacqueline DeSilva, and French national, Pip Jobert, were attacked and killed off Peytivu by a rogue shark that had since been captured and killed.”

Pip’s funeral was held in her hometown in France. Marty wasn’t invited, and even had he been, he wouldn’t have been able to attend as he was still prohibited from leaving Sri Lanka. Yet he called her parents the day after it to offer his condolences. They seemed grateful for this and told him something about Pip that he never knew: her birth name was Brigitte. “Pip” was a nickname she’d been given in high school, short for Pipsqueak. In typical Pip fashion, rather than let it bother her, she’d embraced it to the point it became her preferred name.

Jacky’s funeral was a week later in Colombo. While it was covered extensively in the Sri Lankan media, it was a small, family-only affair. Marty attempted to contact her parents, but he was told by the help who answered the phone that they had no interest in speaking with him.

When Rad was released from the hospital, and returned to her house in Cinnamon Gardens, Marty arranged for a top dentist to replace her missing teeth with implants. When the swelling in her gums receded, it was as though she had never lost any of her teeth in the first place. He then hired a live-in physical therapist to get her back on her feet. Rad approached the locomotor training aggressively, spending hours each day performing task-specific, high-repetition movements. With the help of a weight-supporting treadmill, parallel bars, and crutches, she eventually regained enough balance, strength, and muscle memory in her legs to walk unassisted.

Marty visited her each day, stayed the night more and more often, and eventually checked out of the hotel down the road and moved in with her. Their relationship became one of mutual respect and friendship, far surpassing the transactional bond they had enjoyed before Demon Island, and he proposed to her six months after leaving the hospital.