“Staying here isn’t no kind of real life anyway,” he added, but his eyes had something wistful in them as they traveled back over the island. All at once Luce understood why he looked so sad. The muttering spirits that lived in this place might have tormented him, but they had also brought his dead wife closer to him than she’d been in many years. They’d crooned to him in Alyssa’s voice, day after day.

No matter how badly he wanted to escape from this place, it also must cut his heart to go. It had to feel almost like he was abandoning the woman he’d loved, or at least the last vital traces of her, the final scraps and fragments of her spirit. It didn’t matter if he knew that wasn’t really the case and that what he’d heard wasn’t Alyssa at all. The feeling of it would still tear at him.

Luce waited quietly while he stared back toward the woods. His head was cocked, and she knew he was listening as hard as he could. Just in case Alyssa’s voice spoke to him, just one last time.

The breeze stayed silent.

∗ ∗ ∗

“I’d say south,” her father said after a while. “Don’t know why, but I feel like that’s our best bet.” He was looking away from her, trying to hide the pain on his face as he shoved the raft out and clambered aboard.

Luce was surprised. “Not east? We’ll hit the coast of Alaska eventually.”

“I’ve got this feeling the islands are gonna be closer. Don’t want to wear you out, dragging this damn raft.” He was trying to smile, but Luce could see how hard it was for him, and just for an instant she wondered if she had even done the right thing.

“I’m going to be under water a lot,” Luce warned him. Suddenly she felt so awkward that the prospect of whipping along below the surface came as a relief. “You won’t see me a lot of the time, but I won’t drown.” He only looked at her quizzically, his cinnamon eyes wry and sweet and sad. Luce slid deeper, and the ropes binding her to the raft went taut. Blue emptiness opened in front of her, distant milky clouds. She glanced back over her shoulder and found him staring at the island again. “Yell if you see any orcas coming.”

He spun to look at her sharply; orcas obviously weren’t something he’d thought about. Luce didn’t want to discuss the possibility that she might be ripped apart in front of him and she dove, staying just below the surface.