So he did recognize her, at least in some confused way. He just didn’t believe that what he was seeing was really his daughter. Very gradually and gently Luce turned her head a little farther. Her stomach clenched so tight it felt like wadded foil, nauseous and aching. Anything she said might send him running again, but at the same time she couldn’t let the opportunity to finally speak with him slip away from her. “If you’ll talk to me,” Luce said softly, “I’ll tell you about the tail. I’ll tell you everything that’s happened to me, and then we can try to figure out how to get you out of here.” And at last she turned far enough to meet his eyes.

She knew he must have heard her—he just wasn’t that far away—but from the blank look on his face it seemed as if she hadn’t spoken or as if her words were meaningless. His eyes slipped around, always focusing just over the top of her head or just to the side of her face. He looked tired and much older than Luce remembered. Gray knots mixed with his matted brown curls, but his warm cinnamon eyes were still the same. Clouds gusted across the sun so that his face flared with golden light and then dimmed again, and for a minute he hunched there unspeaking.

“I’ve been waiting for you to knock it off,” he said at last. “Bad enough you take Luce’s voice and torture me with it all the time. I know how completely I let her down without that! But now using her face, too . . .” He shook his head. “It’s too mean. It’s just too damned cruel. I’m about ready to starve myself to death so I don’t have to see this anymore!”

Luce’s eyes burned with tears. “You never let me down! I won’t let you say that you did.” It was horrible to realize that her presence on the island was tormenting him this way. “Dad, I know you don’t believe it, and it is hard to believe that I found you like this, but it’s really, really me! I’m your daughter, Luce. Lucette Gray Korchak. My mother was Alyssa Gray, and you loved her so much, and she died when I was just four, and we were both there with her when it happened . . .”

Did he hear her this time? Something sparked deep in the vacancy of his eyes.