Epilogue
Exactly thirty-six hours later, Jack and Elizabeth stood in the same spots at the helm, hot sunshine on their shoulders as the ocean glittered around the ship.
Elizabeth squinted, to which Jack grinned.
"Is that —?"
"Yes," he answered readily.
"Really?"
"Yes." He leaned his head over her shoulder and pointed to the left side of the small island. "The vegetation is starting to come back."
Elizabeth laughed. It was their island. Their little rum runner's island with no rum. And Jack was exiling Beckett there.
Jack was inclined to follow Barbossa's example and let Beckett drop off the side of the ship from a plank of wood, but it would seem that Margaret insisted on delivering him to the island. Jack proclaimed he was already giving the bastard a pistol with one shot, but at some point during their argument, she swayed him to afford this last luxury.
Yet, as the rowboat departed from the Black Pearl, Elizabeth could not help but wonder why they were marooning Beckett on this island when it had a reputation for second chances.
Margaret stood six feet away from Beckett, wind gently lifting her loose hair as the sun beat down on the small cay.
Her eyes studied him intensely, and he involuntarily remembered a time when there was a provocativeness to them, slipping around the corner in that dove grey gown. In the thick heat of Africa, it had reminded him of the cold, English snow clouds. All that was years gone by now, in a time and place he did not understand anymore.
Beckett sensed how carefully she was weighing her last words to him. When he thought she might speak, she drew another breath, held it a moment, and a listlessness veiled her.
"Her name is Jeanette."
Beckett waited for more. Margaret remained perfectly expressionless.
His brow flinched when she turned away. Margaret climbed aboard the rowboat without another word, and Pintel and Ragetti ran it into the water. Beckett's features further distorted as he staggered toward the retreating rowboat.
"Margaret," he called, pausing as the water lapped at his calves. "Who is Jeanette?"
Margaret saw it. Far away as they were, she saw him lift his eyes from the clear water and watched his pupils dilate. She heard the exhale of innocence lost, of his world changing forever. He wrenched his jaw shut as he slowly seethed himself into a rage she had not seen in years.
"Margaret! Come back here!"
His voice broke over the warm shoal like a crack of thunder.
"Margaret!"
She had to look away. Several moments after she did, the sound of a gunshot severed the air. A piece of the rowboat exploded into splinters just before her, and they screamed, Pintel and Ragetti nearly capsizing them.
"What the bloody hell!"
Margaret's head snapped back up. A smoking flintlock was in Beckett's hand, and he pitched the gun into the water with a barbaric cry. His squandering of that last mercy angered her, but she allowed pity in the lines of her face.
"I will find her! Do you hear me?!"
His veins were exploding with an anger that would not be patiently masked or disciplined away; it was furious and hot, every muscle in his body coiled as his voice tore from his throat until the rowboat was back at the Black Pearl. He didn't recognize this blinding mania, and though exhaustion had set in, he just kept erupting.
"I will find her!"
No, you won't, Margaret thought as she held vigil over the island from the stern of the Pearl. That's why I told you.
Soon, the island disappeared in the setting sun, swallowing him in silence.
Hours later, Beckett lay quiet under the emerging stars.
"Her name is Jeanette," he whispered to them.
As he counted the constellations, he wondered if she could lie as well as her mother.