The boy tapped his finger on my screen, smearing water, arguing some more.
I couldn’t follow their fight, but finally, the girl sniffed. “Hair dark in photo. But guess is Sunyi.”
Her older brother smirked, his chin shot in the air with victory. Looking at me, he said, “Sunyi. White hair now.”
My knees weakened. My body tingled. I didn’t know if I wanted to cry or jump for joy. “So…you’re saying the man in this picture is here?”
The boy shook his head, a big grin on his face. “No.”
“No?” My eager nervousness bounced around in my blood with nowhere to go. I felt sick. I wanted to grab the boy and shake him. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, he not here.”
“Where is he?”
“In water.”
Was that code? A sentence that didn’t do well with translation?
I cocked my head. “In the water?”
The boy rolled his eyes at my slowness. “Yes. Water.”
“No.” His sister grabbed his bicep, pointing at the horizon. “Here.”
Spinning around, I stood too fast.
My head swam, my fingers dropped my phone, and the heavens opened their torrent.
A sheet of water fell from above, a heavy wet curtain doing its best to block the truth.
But it was too late.
I’d seen.
A fishing boat haphazardly made its way to shore. A basic craft with nets bunched at the end and a balancing pole keeping the long boat upright, slapping against the chop. The captain stood at the back with his hand on a long mechanism leading to an engine beneath the surface, while two men sat in the middle, dripping with rain, not caring they were as wet out of the water as they would’ve been in it.
Three men in total.
Two of them had black hair.
And one had a shock of sun-bleached white-blond hair.
A man I would’ve recognised anywhere.
After four long years, Jacob Wild, I’ve found you.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Jacob
* * * * * *
GODDAMN THIS STORM.
I was exhausted. I needed to rest. But with this monsoon, my hut would leak, my roof would pound, and the much-needed sleep I dreamed of would be non-existent.
Not for the first time, I thought about leaving.
I should’ve left months ago when the wet season started and the temple in the bay cried with raindrops more often than gleamed with sunshine.
But I had nowhere else to go.
Nowhere else I could be left alone, anyway.
The men here had grown used to my presence as I’d camped on their beach. I’d hitchhiked through Bali, seeking the quietest spots, and found this place purely by luck.
The fact that it had a temple dedicated to the dead seemed too much of a coincidence to leave.
For a week, I’d watched the locals depart at dawn and return at dusk with stingrays and crab and fish.
They worked just as hard as I did. The only difference was they worked the sea while I worked the land.
I’d aimed to stay a couple of weeks, pay my respects, and carry on wandering, but they had other plans. I couldn’t remember exactly how I’d begun working with them, only that I did. One afternoon, I’d ambled over to inspect their haul, and the leader shoved a basket of dead fish in my arms.
I hadn’t shoved it back.
Instead, I’d followed the procession into their village and gave the basket to a teenage girl who proceeded to gut, scale, and dry them on a string.
That night, I’d been invited to dinner, tucking into banana leaf-wrapped rice with a chargrilled fish from their fire. Afterward, they’d shared their pipe with me, and the heaviness of silence that filled my bloodstream as the marijuana smoke filled my lungs gave me peace for the first time since my mother died.
I’d slept without nightmares that night, beneath the stars outside my tent.
The next day, a man nudged me awake with his foot, and I’d found myself on a boat, bobbing on the unforgiving sea, my skin burning from sunshine and my hair steadily turning white.
No one had mentioned I didn’t belong.
No one asked me to leave.
And so, I stayed.
I stayed one month, then two, then three.
I was now as much a fisherman as I was a farmer, and I didn’t struggle against the new career fate had given me. I embraced it because it gave me purpose again.
And each night, the pipe was passed around, and the smoke helped soothe my damaged soul.
The drug kept memories away and banished the girl who haunted me—quietening my guilt, my pain, and the knowledge I’d done something unforgivable.
When I’d written to Aunt Cassie last month, heading into town for supplies and having a drink at a local hotel, I’d almost included a letter to Hope.
But I had nothing to say.
No apology to utter or news to deliver.
Our friendship was over.
Four years was a long time, and I hoped it’d distanced her from my mother’s death and the awful ending between us. For me, it felt as if it happened yesterday, but that was why I’d made my home on the beach belonging to the temple of the dead.