LUCY STABBED HERSELF repeatedly during the night with daggers of regret until she’d bled tears of remorse, desperately trying to drown her despair.
She’d laid atop the swaying bed on a white duvet that felt more like tree bark than goose feathers, staring up at the darkness for hours, with frightening recalls of earlier events and future uncertainty, her clammy skin cycling through chills and sweats.
Now, as she stood gazing out through the tiny porthole in her claustrophobic cabin—a newly formed habit, like gambling, her mind spinning promises of winning cherries while turning up nothing but losing lemons—she trembled. Fear, it seemed, had been replaced by hopelessness and anguish. Trevor was dead, which she now realized was the source of her downtrodden sense of self-confidence. She rubbed her forehead, refusing to cry. 𝘍𝘪𝘳𝘴𝘵 𝘚𝘢𝘮𝘮𝘺. 𝘕𝘰𝘸 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘦𝘳-𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘯𝘦𝘥-𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺-𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘯𝘦𝘥-𝘥𝘦𝘢𝘥. She thought of Jayson coming to her rescue. She’d never forgive herself if anything happened to him. The only silver lining was the stationary view through her porthole of a flat barren island where a partial rainbow had formed in a post-tropical storm; its pot of gold hiding somewhere in the midst of reddish-brown corrugated-looking reefs and rocks, and a small vessel bouncing across the waves, heading straight toward her.