Chapter 3

During the long flight back to Honolulu, there was ample time for conversation with Sally. However, I soon learned that she was a woman of few words.

Well, no surprise there. She had spent the past twelve years of her life on a tiny island with only her parents for company. And for the past weeks, she had been all alone.

But I wanted to talk. I had all sorts of ideas about what should come next in Sally Gervais' life. As a twenty-year-old, she didn't exactly need a guardian. Certainly not a male guardian only a few years her senior.

But clearly she would need an enormous amount of assistance adjusting to her new life — whatever shape that life was going to take.

"Are you well?" I asked her. The seaplane's engines were noisy. We had to raise our voices considerably to be heard.

"I am well," she said. She didn't elaborate.

"Did my e-mail messages responding to yours — did they come through?"

"I received no messages from you. Nothing. Nothing until you came for me."

"You must have been ... terrified," I said, "being alone like that for so long."

"I was not terrified," she said. "I knew that someone would come for me at some point."

"Yes. But — not knowing when..."

"I was not terrified. There was food and water, and shelter."

"Yes." I subsided for the moment.

"Would you like something to drink?" I asked a little later.

"Yes I would, please."

I got each of us a Coke from the plane's cooler, opened them both and handed her a bottle.

"I remember these!" Sally said.

"Cokes?"

"Yes! From when I was a little girl!" She drank deeply from the bottle, smiled delightedly and said "Ahhhh!"

"You could do a commercial for them!" I said.

"A commercial?"

"Yes! You know — an advertisement on television, extolling the wonders of Coca Cola!"

"Yes," she said, vaguely. "Yes. I remember the television."

"We will be staying for a couple of days in Honolulu," I said.

"All right."

"Then I planned to take you back to San Francisco. You should talk to the lawyers at my father's firm. They are in charge of your family's assets. They can advise you; help you."

"All right."

"Are you planning to go to college?" I asked.

"My mother was supposed to bring me back, to go to college. Three years ago. Four, almost."

"Yes. But you are still a very young woman. You could still go to college."

"Yes."

"It will be difficult for you, for awhile," I said.

"What? What will be difficult?"

"You know — adjusting to life in such a different environment."

"Yes."

"A world with three people in it, and now, thousands of people. Noise. Cars. Big buildings."

"But. I remember The World," she said. "I was only a child, but I wasn't a baby. I can remember."

"Yes, of course you can. Still, there are many differences."

"Has the world changed so much?"

"You have changed," I said. "You were an eight-year-old child, with a mother and father to look after you. Now you are a woman of twenty, alone in the world as far as I know."

"Yes. It's true I have no close relatives."

"And you're going to be alone in a world that is unfamiliar to you. It's as if you were away on a spaceship and now you've come back after a long voyage."

"I'm not a complete stranger to the world," she said. "My parents taught me a great deal. I will adjust."