I have been surviving on barnacles and small shrimp that cling to the raft bottom. A fish actually flopped into the boat one morning; that was food for three days. A recent rain shower allowed two cans to be filled with precious drinking water, which I am rationing, but it’s enough to rejuvenate my cells, my organs, my mind. The body is an amazing machine, my love. With just the smallest nutrition, it can clank back to life. Not full life. Not the life I once knew. Not even the life I had grown to know with the others in this lifeboat.

But I am here. I am alive.

Such a powerful sentence. I am alive. Like the trapped miner still breathing in the hole, or the man staggering out of a house fire. I am alive.

Forgive me. My thoughts go to strange corners. Things are different now, Annabelle. We are still adrift in the vast Atlantic Ocean. There is still nothing but deep water for miles. The Lord still sits a few feet away, trying to comfort me.

But I survive on such meager intake because there is no one to share it with anymore.

I am alive.

The others are gone.

* * *

How do I explain? Where do I begin?

Perhaps with Lambert. Yes. I’ll start with him, because everything starts with him, and all the things that start with him seem to turn bad in the end.

When I last shared news with you, I wrote that he had been drinking seawater. Geri warned us against this, many times, but I suppose at some point Lambert could not help himself. He was parched and all around him was water and more water, and he is used to taking what he wants. He waited until dark, found the bailer, and apparently gorged himself on the ocean as he had gorged himself on so many things in life.

The effect, after several nights, was noticeable. Lambert changed. He grew incoherent. As Geri explained it to me, seawater is four times as salty as regular water, and since our bodies are constructed to balance things, we try to pee the extra salt away. Except we can’t. So the more seawater you drink, the more water you actually expel, while retaining the salt in your body, which means you dehydrate even faster than lying thirsty under the sun. With dehydration comes a system meltdown. Your muscles weaken. So do your organs. Your heart speeds up. Your brain gets less blood, which can make you crazy.

And I suppose, looking back, Lambert did go crazy. He mumbled to himself. He became lethargic and semiconscious. Then, one hot morning, we woke to the sound of his voice screaming, “Get off my boat!”

He was standing over the Lord with a knife to his head.

* * *