Some Kind of Wonderful (Puffin Island 2)

She chose the cliffs.

The sea breeze tangled her hair and shimmered over her skin, blowing away the last cobwebs of sleep.

It was cool, and she zipped her sweater on the second attempt and kicked up the pace.

Her body felt deliciously used, but it wasn’t the sex that kept her mind occupied as she walked, it was the other things.

He’d talked to her.

Under the comforting blanket of darkness, he’d finally talked to her. And he’d said more to her in those few hours than he had in the months they’d spent together when she was eighteen.

Remembering those revelations brought a stinging to her eyes and a pressure to her throat.

It had been a tiny glimpse, that was all, but enough to make her realize just how blind and selfish she’d been back then.

With the naivety of youth she’d thought the past was something that could be shrugged off or left behind, like a piece of clothing that no longer fit. She hadn’t had the maturity to understand how deeply Zach’s past had affected him or to understand how it would impact on his relationships.

She’d thought she’d known him, but she hadn’t known the most important thing of all.

At the time she’d been so damn proud of accepting him as he was. Except that she hadn’t, had she? She hadn’t truly known who he was. She’d allowed him his secrets, hadn’t tried to access those dark depths he guarded so carefully.

The ache in her throat grew worse.

How could she have been so selfish and unthinking?

She’d wanted him, and she’d allowed the dizzy excitement of being with him to cloud her brain and obliterate her common sense.

She’d treated him like a goal, something that could be obtained if she worked hard enough, like an A grade in English. And when her marriage had failed, she’d limped away, blaming him, whereas in actual fact, the blame lay firmly in her lap.

Now, finally, she understood why he found it hard to sleep.

He’d had to stay awake to protect himself.

She imagined Zach, little and terrified, moving furniture against the door, afraid to drift into a deep, defenseless sleep. The thought made her nauseous.

When she was growing up, she’d watched her parents argue and ultimately divorce. She’d lived with her grandmother and seen her father on his occasional flying visits to the island. She’d considered herself sophisticated and mature, knowledgeable about the world. It unnerved her to realize how deluded she’d been.

She’d known nothing.

Certainly she knew nothing about how it must have felt to be afraid for your own safety. She’d never been afraid to fall asleep. Never felt the need to stay awake to protect herself.

Zach had told her he’d been removed from his home at the age of eight.

She remembered being eight. On her eighth birthday her grandmother had arranged a picnic on Shell Bay and most of the island had turned up. Everyone had br

ought food and they’d spent the day playing ball games and scrambling over the rocks.

It had been innocent fun, another happy childhood memory to add to the others, like creating a photo album in her brain. Zach had his own album, his own set of memories, and it made for ugly viewing.

She rubbed at her chest, trying to relieve the ache.

In her job, it took patience and long, painstaking hours to remove the layers and find the secrets of the past buried deep. And the secrets meant little when viewed in isolation, which was why archaeologists constantly clashed with treasure hunters who often removed a find from a site before it could be properly catalogued.

Context.

It was a word she’d used on an almost daily basis over the past few years. Context was essential to building a picture, for establishing a relationship between things. For finding and making connections. Discovering more about a person wasn’t so different. You uncovered the past. You made connections and looked for context.

After that short, telling conversation during the night, she felt as if she’d been given a brief glimpse at the album in Zach’s head. She’d seen dark shapes and shadows but very little detail.