The warning light pinged into life.
Rebekah was heading back out to the forest to look for Johnny, and had been so consumed by thoughts of her brother that she’d overlooked something else.
Gas.
The needle was already below the quarter mark. There might be enough to get her through another day, maybe two at a stretch, but she wouldn’t get beyond day seven or eight on the island without filling up. That meant she had no choice: she had to figure out a way to get the pumps working at the gas station – and that meant breaking more locks on more doors.
The prospect weighed heavily on her and, as she drove, she struggled to stay awake. She hadn’t slept at all during the night because she’d kept hearing the boat – or thought she had – and now the fatigue was like carrying an extra body strapped to her back. Even on the short drive from the store, out to the gas station, she could feel herself drifting, eyes getting heavier, body sinking. In the end, after her head tipped forward for a split second, she decided to pull over.
She crawled onto the back seat.
Almost immediately, she fell asleep.
By the time she woke up it was early afternoon, and the sunshine of the morning had been replaced by rain. It tapped gently against the roof and, for a while, Rebekah lay there listening, wondering what Kyra and Chloe would be doing now. It was Thursday, 4 November, according to the readout on the Jeep’s dash. That meant they should have gone to daycare, or Noella might have had them, or maybe Gareth had taken some time off from work to look after them. Since October, she’d taken the girls to the park every day, so Kyra could kick around autumn leaves. She loved the crunching sound they made. Maybe Rebekah would have been doing that with the girls if she was home right now. Maybe she and Kyra would have been playing games in the living room while she bounced Chloe on her knee.
Maybe.
She wondered what Gareth would do with the girls at night. Would he have moved back into the brownstone, as if Rebekah had never kicked him out? She pictured him in their bed, playing with the girls, making them laugh, the three of them already starting to forget Rebekah existed. She knew it was absurd – she’d only been away from them for six nights – but she couldn’t stop. A parade of images passed in front of her eyes, snapshots of normality in which the girls were grown-up: she saw Kyra on her graduation day with only Gareth alongside her, his hair salt-and-pepper grey; she saw Chloe as a ten-year-old playing soccer at school, looking around for Rebekah and finding only Gareth on the sidelines; and then she pictured a moment, equally irrational, when they forgot her altogether, the mention of her name meeting nothing except blank expressions.
In her head, the girls didn’t remember their mother at all.
Just as Rebekah didn’t remember hers.