Page 115 of Hate Wrecked

The media wasa whirlwind after we returned. We told them everything, shared details about our months on the island and the events that occurred after the men arrived.

In return, we were told the stories that were shared about us. I had never called home before my flight, but I had checked in. Due to a mix-up, the headcount was accurate for my flight. I was a ghost who never made it to their destination.

Rowan had been fighting with his mother about his career and his happiness. They hadn’t spoken in a month, so she didn’t know of his plan to take off to the atoll. A series of mistakes and miscommunications left us lost.

Butch, Chuck, and Domet spent time on the atoll. They had sailed there to plant marijuana on one of the southern islands. While they were there, a couple arrived. Captain Daniels was with the men. He had taken up with the wife—Cathy Verne—becoming obsessed with her. The husband became friends with Gerald. The Verne’s had sailed to Elderslie many times. When the husband found out about the affair and what the men were doing, he threatened to tell the authorities when they sailed home. Butch had killed him. Cathy became hysterical, and Captain Daniels choked her after finding out the other men had had their way with her over the weeks.

After they left, Chuck ended up in jail for a while due to a bar fight, delaying the men’s return to the island after Captain Daniel’s told them about his find in Hawaii. He had hoped to ransom Rowan to Desi, but when I stepped onto his boat, he thought he had a bigger prize.

I made up with my mother. I’d read her manuscript on the island—not the entire thing, because it hurt too much to see her as a real person, a bleeding soul like my own—but when I returned, I devoured the whole thing. I told her about Asa, how he’d come onto me in the laundry room. I told her how sorry I was for staying away for so long. She told me how sorry she was that she had lost herself for years.

I spent weeks at her new house, with my sisters, before going home to Katonah.

There was a bidding war for Rowan’s book about our time on the atoll. He resigned as my mother’s bodyguard and started writing with a fervor that I was entranced by. He let me read every page, let me help him, let me put music to the pages. The songs were only for us, but it opened me up.

I built a studio at the house in Katonah.. My mother told me she wanted the property to be mine permanently. It’s a relic of a life she had with my father, one that no longer fits her. But it fits me, completes me, brings me alive.

I renovated one of the rooms for Rowan—his own home office with a view of the land. It’s solid, no water for miles except the pond in the distance. Sometimes, I see him walk out there with Garfield, put his feet in the cold, and look into the sky.

One night, he comes in as dusk settles over the land. I’m on the front porch with a guitar, a notebook by my side, and Garfield curled up on the rug just past the front steps. Rowan takes his usual seat, the one next to mine. We often remain like that, two notebooks: one for lyrics, one for words the world will read.

Sometimes we don’t do anything, just listen to Mazzy Star, or watch the stars shine in the quiet.

It isn’t the life I thought I would have. It’s the one I wanted, one that I thought about as I lay on the hood of my car with him, surrounded by too many sounds and too many lights. Haunted by a home that never felt like one.

When Rowan closes his eyes, I reach for him, threading my fingers with his.

“How’s it going?” I ask as Garfield paws at my knee.

I hear him swallow, catch him looking my way from the corner of my eye. He reaches over and rubs the cat’s head after he curls up in my lap. “Slow.”

I look him in the eye. “Is that bad?”

“No,” he smiles. “I like slow. I need slow.”

“Me too,” I answer.

He glances at my guitar. “And yours?”

“Slow.” I smile. “Slow and beautiful, and mine.”

He brings my hand to his lips and kisses the ring there. “You were right about this place, you know.”

“What about it?” I ask.

“It is a place for it.”

“For what?”

“For being happy.”

I laugh. “Didn’t believe me?”

The wrinkles around his eyes show when he smiles again, and I have never seen anything more beautiful. He’s all white teeth, shaking head, hand through his auburn hair. “There are less brutal places to start over,” he laughs. “And maybe I wanted to tempt fate.”

“Tempt fate to what?” I ask.

He turns my way, reaches for me. Garfield jumps down, and I move to Rowan, crawl into the chair with him. When his hand finds the fin necklace at my neck, I shiver. “Maybe not tempt fate. Maybe I wanted to beg it.”

I kiss him then, slow and sure, and when we become desperate, I pull away, pressing my forehead to his. “Beg it for?”

“Beg it for your love to wreck my heart in the best way. Even if I was foolish enough to think it was stone. That hate wrecked it first.”

* * *

---