Page 87 of Totally Shipped
“We're taking you home, miss,” one of the coastguards tell Key.
“To my mami?” she whispers.
“Yes, miss. And I’m sure she is going to be very happy to see you. Very happy indeed.”
Once we are all loaded in, the boat roars away from the island. The island that was our home for so long gets smaller and smaller, disappearing into the sea haze.
I’m not sad to see it go. What I want to see is Keyara getting back into her mother’s arms. I want to see Thea and Daisy getting the medical care and support they need.
And for us all, somehow, to live happily ever after.
LEANDER
All of us have been hooked up to IVs full of fluids.
It’s fucking crazy how much better I feel from just this one clear bag of liquid. We’ve been offered sedatives, but everyone refused. The only thing we all wanted was food. Real food.
“Just a little at a time, Key. Your tummy is going to have a hard time if we eat too much too soon,” Daisy tells her.
Key pouts, and I fully empathize. We have just been given bowls of tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches. The taste is mind-blowing, with flavors and textures that I never thought I’d ever eat again.
“But I want more,” Key complains.
“Eat too fast, have a pain in the ass,” I tell her.
That cheers her up.
“Swear!” She says with a grin. Then, she immediately crestfallen. “I forgot the swear jars. Now I don’t know how much you all owe me.”
“It’s alright, you can just give us your best guess and then we’ll pay up. We trust you.”
“You’re going to owe me the most, Uncle Leander.”
Yeah, I’m not fucking surprised.
Daisy, with Thea attached to her boob, keeps drifting off to sleep. The crew don’t have any diapers onboard, but for the first time, Thea is wrapped with a perfectly white hand-towel covering her bottom. Over the thrum of the engines, Commander Penny fills us in our presumed deaths.
“The Mary-Mo life raft was found, and there was a massive search of the sea and surrounding islands that went on for two weeks. After that everything got scaled down.” He looks at us, his eyes full of pity, “You had traveled further than anyone could have anticipated, compared to where the raft was. I’m so sorry.”
“Do our families know we are alive?” asks Killian.
“No. It’s going to be a media circus when the announcement happens, so the Embassy decided to keep things quiet and work with you to get in touch with your families yourself.”
That’s going to be a weird conversation. Who will I call? Jasper or Malcolm, probably. Not Mom or Dad. I’ll call Malcolm; he’s the most together of us all.
It’s odd that the coast guards think Daisy is Brooke. It means Brooke must have kept up the pretense of being Daisy all this time. Shit is going to get complicated. It’s all going to be complicated. We can’t split up now, we just can’t. We all belong together. The idea of handing Keyara back to her parents is wonderful and terrible all at the same time. Will Killian go back to New York? Where will Daisy and Thea want to live?
Do we stay on Samoa?
It’s all giving me a headache, and I wearily lean my head against the gently vibrating table.
The next thing I’m aware of is bustling all around me. I sit up and groan, I feel so stiff and achy. Rex is snoring gently on a couch, but no one else is around. On the table next to my head is a pile of clean clothing.
Clean clothes! Fuck, maybe I could have a shower!
I pick up the clothing and wander out of the small cabin. It’s so fucking odd to hear voices I don’t recognize, and to walk on something cool and smooth. A sailor comes up to me.
“Can I help you?”
