J.M.J.
Author's note: Thanks so much for reading and reviewing! The final chapter will be out October 17. God bless!
October 15 – Sunday
It was proving to be an exceptionally pleasant October. There were days with chilly temperatures and rain, but there were also plenty of days with sunshine and enough warmth for being outside to be comfortable. It was refreshing to able to be outdoors without sweltering temperatures and getting eaten alive by bugs, which was why Tony was outside as often as he could manage.
It was early evening now, and supper would be soon. Tony and Maria—his sister closest in age to him, being a couple of years younger—were on the front porch, talking. Maria was catching him up on the events in their extended family while he had been gone. With as many cousins as they had, there was always someone getting engaged or having a baby or moving.
"Of course, I don't think anyone had anything as interesting happen to them as you did," she commented after a while.
Tony chuckled. "I hope not." Then he paused and became a little more somber. "How was it here?"
Maria hesitated, looking up at the street as an excuse to buy a few seconds. As it turned out, it bought her more than that. "Say! There's Phil!"
Phil was walking down the street, and as he reached the Prito house, he turned up the walkway. He greeted his friends before sitting down on the porch steps.
"How are you doing?" Maria asked him. "You know, I haven't really had a chance to talk to you since you've been back."
"Yeah," Phil said. Then he shrugged. "I'm all right, I guess."
"That doesn't sound very convincing," Maria replied. "Is Bayport just how you remembered it?"
"We weren't gone that long," Phil protested. "Summer vacation from school is almost just as long as we were gone."
"True," Maria conceded, "but you don't usually have dramatic, life-changing experiences over summer vacation."
"Who says it was all that life-changing?" Tony pointed out. "It would have been if we would have been stuck there forever, obviously, but we're back now, so…"
"It changes how you look at things," Maria insisted.
"I guess," Tony admitted, "but that's changing all the time, anyway." He glanced down at his still-bandaged hand. He hadn't said everything he was thinking, and he knew that what he had said hadn't been worded as well as he would have liked.
"How's your hand?" Phil asked him.
"I have to have surgery on it," Tony said ruefully. Then he quickly added, "But that's okay. I want it to heal right. It's just that the closest thing I've ever had to a surgery was getting my wisdom teeth pulled, and that was bad enough."
"No kidding," Phil agreed. "Do the doctors think it'll be okay after that?"
"We'll see," Tony replied. "I doubt it will be as good as new."
"I'm sure it will be fine," Maria insisted.
"You were the one saying that things aren't the same now as they used to be," Tony teased her. "That probably goes for my hand, too."
"That's different."
"In some ways," Phil agreed thoughtfully. "The only thing you can do about that is to go along with what the doctors recommend. Everything else that's changed is something you can fight against or accept for what it is or try to channel it in a different direction."
"Yeah," Tony agreed. "That's kind of what I was thinking a minute ago. I don't think that if things are different now, that has to be a bad thing."
"I hope not," Maria said.
"You never did answer my question," Tony reminded her.
"Yeah, I know," Maria replied. "I was hoping you'd forget about it and I wouldn't have to answer. It was hard here. And confusing. I mean, most people were saying that there wasn't much chance, you know? That we needed to accept that, because that's what the facts pointed to. But there were a few others who made it sound like we were awful for 'moving on' so soon, as they said it. But it wasn't really like that. We were trying to accept what was most likely to be true. But then it turned out that that wasn't even true, so it was all very confusing."
"You just didn't have all the facts," Phil pointed out. "You had to work with the facts you had at the time. It would have only been wrong if you were still insisting that we were dead even after you knew differently."
"I guess so." Maria shook her head. "It still seems strange, though, like the world got flipped upside down."
"Maybe it's just because the world was upside down and you didn't realize until it got turned right," Phil replied.
"Is that how it was for you when you realized you really were going to be rescued?" Maria asked.
Tony nodded. "I'd say it was a pretty accurate description."
"In a lot of ways," Phil added.
HBNDHBNDHB
"Move your phone a little this way, Iola," Chet requested. "She's only going to be able to see half my face like that."
"Maybe that's all the more she wants to see," Biff teased him.
"I feel like I'm being squished," Iola complained good-naturedly. "I'll be glad when you both get your own phones again."
Her brother and Biff were sitting on either side of her on the couch in the Mortons' living room, both trying to be in the frame on the video call that they were expecting any minute.
"I'll be getting one sometime this week," Biff said. "It sure is a pain having to replace so much stuff—cell phone, driver's license, credit cards. It would have been nice if those guys hadn't had to dump everything overboard."
"You can't really expect a bunch of murderers to be too considerate," Chet replied.
Iola shook her head and squirmed a bit, not caring much for this line of joking. Before any more could be said, however, the phone rang and the video call came through.
Katina was calling, with her parents acting as translators. She seemed delighted at finally having a way to understand the boys, although she admitted to being overwhelmed by suddenly being back in a world that she had barely had a chance to get to know.
Iola didn't say much during the conversation, since it wasn't her, primarily, that Katina had wanted to talk to. In fact, she spent most of the time thinking. Things could have turned out so much worse. The boys could have been stranded on that island for years instead of a few months, like Katina had been. In that case, they would have still been there now, and Iola still wouldn't know what had become of them. But then, if they had never reached that island, Katina would still be stuck on it. Those criminals would still be out there, taking innocent children away from their homes and families and subjecting them to even worse things than Katina had been through. Maybe, strangely enough, everything had turned out the fest way it could have.
HBNDHBNDHB
Laura couldn't help feeling a bit anxious as she watched her sons eat supper. She had been used to them having hearty appetites, and so she found it a bit concerning that since their rescue, they mostly just picked at their food. They tried to assure her that nothing was wrong and that her cooking was even better than they remembered; it was just that after months of eating nothing but fruit, vegetables, and fish, "real food"—as Joe put it—was a lot more filling than it used to be. Yet they were both so thin.
"Are you boys sure you're feeling all right?" Aunt Gertrude asked them, and Laura knew that she wasn't the only one who had noticed.
"Of course we are," Joe replied quickly, flashing a grin toward her. "This meatloaf is great."
"You're certainly not eating much of it," Aunt Gertrude insisted.
Joe shrugged, but he didn't offer any argument. There was no need to, Laura reflected; the boys had explained before now. Yet it wasn't like how Joe used to be to not push back in a situation like this.
"It's just as well if you don't finish," Laura said abruptly. "I have a surprise."
She stood up from the table and went into the kitchen, leaving the rest of her family looking at one another in puzzlement. She came back out a few minutes later, carrying a cake with candles on it.
"Whose birthday is it?" Fenton asked her.
"Yours, of course," Laura told him with a grin as she set the cake on the table.
"My birthday was at the beginning of August," Fenton reminded her.
"I know, but we didn't feel much like celebrating then," Laura said. "I thought we should make up for that now."
"Definitely!" Joe replied. "We wouldn't to miss Mom's cake."
"That was one of the worst things about being on that island," Frank added to levity.
Fenton chuckled. "We do have a lot to celebrate, don't we?"