“This place is good,” I said. “The aquarium, we have a solid building, definitely have good food supplies.”
“But?” she asked.
“But it’s not sustainable forever.”
She nodded slowly, no surprise in her expression—simply quiet confirmation of something she’d already turned over in her own head.
“I figured that.”
“Eventually, the generators will run dry, or something breaks that we can’t fix. The natural gas runs out, and we’re sitting in the dark eating cold fish out of containers.”
Her gaze dropped to the map.
“So, what’s the alternative?”
I leaned over the map again, sliding my finger slowly up the
coastline, past Massachusetts, New Hampshire, all the way up toward the jagged, rocky edge of Maine.
“I want to head here,” I said.
Sloane leaned closer. About three hundred miles north of us, a cluster of small islands dotted the map like scattered pebbles thrown into the Atlantic. Most of them didn’t even have names, tiny specks of land that barely registered.
I tapped one of them.
“This one.”
She squinted.
“That island’s barely bigger than a smudge.”
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s Finn’s Island.”
She looked up at me.
“And?”
I rubbed the back of my neck, suddenly aware that the next part would sound insane.
“It’s my brother’s island.”
Her expression shifted immediately, the kind you give someone when you’re trying to decide if they’re joking or in the middle of a breakdown.
“Your… brother’s island.”
“Yeah.”
She blinked.
“You’re serious.”
“As a heart attack.”
I leaned back against the table, folding my arms.
“He lives there.”
Now she looked at me as if I’d lost my mind.