But there was one thing she couldn’t bring herself to sort out.
Roxie.
As much as it hurt her to admit it, the second Hain and Lima came off the ferry, the dog would put Rebekah at risk. Lima knew what Roxie looked like – she had attacked him and he’d never managed to locate her afterwards. He’d tried to shoot her, and failed. He’d searched for her, and failed. In all probability, as long as he didn’t see her, he wouldn’t even consider her: he’d just assume Roxie was dead, unable to survive by herself through the hard winter months.
Rebekah wavered for days, thinking about all the ways in which she could take Roxie with her, in which she could attempt to hide her, but as much as she’d grown to love her, Roxie was an animal, and that meant she was unpredictable. Unpredictability would get her caught.
It would get her killed.
And so the night before the island reopened, the evenings lighter, the air a little warmer, Rebekah called Roxie into the bedroom opposite the one they’d been staying in. In it there was a bed full of blankets, two big bowls of franks and a bucket of water. ‘I can’t do this in the morning,’ Rebekah said quietly. She had tears in her eyes.
Roxie looked at her, at the food.
‘I can’t even stand to do it now.’ She dropped to her haunches and held out her hands, and Roxie came to her. ‘I love you, Rox,’ she said, her face buried in the back of the dog’s neck. ‘Without you, I never would have made it this far.’ Roxie turned her head and tried to nuzzle Rebekah’s jaw. ‘I’ll come back for you …’
I promise.
But there was a reason she couldn’t say the last two words out loud: she couldn’t promise. She didn’t know if she’d make it back. In all the preparation she’d done for when the ferry docked, all the things she’d repaired, all the ways in which she’d tried to disguise the fact that she was still alive, there was an unspoken truth that she could never quite bring herself to face: she’d survived five months, almost entirely alone, on an island one hundred and one miles from anywhere – and, by the next morning, it might all have been for nothing.
By the next morning she might be dead.
Crying, Rebekah stood again.
And then she locked Roxie inside.