Faraway Cay, Saint X

Appropriately, the sandy inlet where Alison Thomas dies is as familiar as it is exotic, as ordinary as it is touched by the supernatural, at once one thing and another. In short it provides the perfect backdrop for a death that never in the end entirely resolves itself in a single, handy reality. Among the island’s numerous inlets, Faraway Cay, despite actually being the closest to the Indigo Bay resort, is the least visited owing to its particularly treacherous ridge of black rocks between the beach and the surf as well as the herd of vaguely threatening feral goats that have taken over the beach and live off the wild sea purslane that grows along the edges of the beach. The tourists much prefer the island’s other beaches that are far more visitor-friendly. Hence Faraway Cay is both close and distant. When Alison...