“You could go back to practicing medicine, couldn’t you?”

“Maybe.”

“Would you want to?”

“I don’t know. When I came home from France, I didn’t understand why my life was saved when so many others weren’t. A part of me wanted to die, too, because living with their voices in my head, their final moments playing over and over again, was infinitely harder. But now, it seems like there should be something more than death. Like maybe there is something else I am meant to do while I am on this earth.”

“You saved us.”

“No. You saved yourself. You would have done what you had to do to protect Lucy. I happened to be there at the right time.”

“I’ll kill him.” The words come out louder than I intended in the quiet, dark night, but I have never meant anything more. “God help me, if he comes after me and Lucy, if he tries to hurt her, to take her, I will kill him.”

John is silent for a beat, and I wonder if I’ve horrified him with my honesty, if he’s not equipped to handle the fury inside me burning bright and sharp.

He leans forward and kisses my forehead, his voice in my ear.

“He’s never going to hurt you again.”

* * *

—

When I wake the next morning, John is gone, and the nurse tells me he went to get some food and will be back shortly.

“You’re healing well,” she informs me. “That baby of yours is doing fine, too. They’ll let you all go home soon.”

I’ve been so focused on recovering, on what will happen if Tom finds us; I’ve thought little of what happens next, of where we will go when we are released from the hospital. I’ve still heard nothing of Aunt Alice, and based on the scene John described and the pictures of the hurricane’s destruction that fill the newspaper, I can’t imagine returning to Islamorada.

At the same time, Key West isn’t home anymore, either, especially if Tom is alive.

“You have a visitor,” one of the nurses announces. Her eyes widen slightly. “A new one. A man.”

My heart pounds. “Did he tell you his name?”

“He said his name was Matthew.”

She returns with a man dressed in a pair of overalls and a white shirt.

I recognize him instantly from the Sunrise Inn—he worked behind the front desk for my aunt.

The expression on his face, his hat in hand, tells me everything I need to know.

“She’s gone,” I say.

“Yes.” His voice cracks over the word.

Tears well in my eyes, spilling onto my cheeks.

“What happened?” I ask.

“We were hit hard. The inn wasn’t strong enough to hold up against the wind, the water. She ran out to check on you, to make sure you were safe. The roads were already washed out when she set out, and she had to turn back. We waited out the storm in the inn; there wasn’t anyplace to go.” His eyes swim with tears. “Only two of us made it. The rest—”

He wipes at his brow.

“I loved that woman. Your aunt. Worked for her for almost a decade, when your uncle was still alive, and after. I always thought there would be time to tell her. To get her used to the idea. I knew she cared for me, but I didn’t know if she felt the same way, if—” His voice breaks off. “I would have traded places with her in a heartbeat.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“She loved you,” he says. “Used to show me all those letters you sent her. She was so proud of you.”

I can’t speak through the knot of unshed tears clogging my throat.

“There’s some money,” he says. “A life insurance policy. Five thousand dollars. You’re the beneficiary on the policy.”

My jaw drops. It is an unimaginable sum.

“She paid it faithfully every week. Knew she wanted it to go to you. She was proud of you, but she also worried about you. She didn’t like Tom, and with your parents gone, you wouldn’t have anyone if something happened to her. She wanted you to have options.”

“I can’t—”

“She told me what you were running from the night you came to see her, the night before she died. That you wanted a fresh start for yourself and the baby.

“That inn was her life. No one would blame you if you wanted to take the insurance money and go, least of all your aunt. But if you don’t, if you wish to stay and rebuild, I’m happy to do whatever I can to help out. She owned the land the inn was on, and it’ll be yours, too. People around these parts loved her. That inn she built meant something, gave people jobs, gave them a chance. It would be a shame to see her legacy wiped out by the storm.”

Tears spill down my cheeks. It’s hard to envision a world without Alice in it, the letters we sent back and forth a constant in my life. If I am to be comforted by anything, it is the knowledge that she is surely with her beloved husband now, that she is in a better place. And still—it seems wrong that she is not here.

“I’m staying up at my sister’s in Miami while we wait for them to let us go home,” Matthew adds. “I’ll leave you the address in case you need anything.”

“Aunt Alice—are there plans for a funeral? I’d like to be there when she’s laid to rest.”

“She lived her whole life in Islamorada. She shouldn’t be buried anywhere else.” He swallows. “Her husband was buried on the edge of the property. She’d like to be buried with him.”

* * *

—

When I lost my parents, I felt a profound sense of sadness, but it was still early enough in my marriage that having Tom beside me was a balm. I don’t remember him being particularly kind, but I remember taking comfort in the notion that I belonged to someone. I was no longer a daughter, but I was a wife, and in that, I wasn’t alone.

But now Alice is gone, and I have no living family save my daughter. I have left my husband. I belong to no one.

Is this how Alice felt after her husband died? Her letters to me were filled with stories of the life she’d built in Islamorada, and I always admired that she’d forged her own path rather than following in the expectations others had for her.

Sometimes I can’t understand the way this world works, why good people like Alice are taken while others are saved in spite of their wicked ways.

All of the emotions of the past few days flood me, and once I start crying, I can’t seem to stop, as though a valve has been turned on inside of me.