thewordofweb | [For Trisha]

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trisha mcfarland

[For Trisha]

The truth of the matter is simple if you care to break it down into words that could belong in any book. I found the information on the bookshelf and I vanished in a fit of pique. Then I came back and neither Skinny or Grant could help me. And I still am too chickenshit to talk to Joe about it. I've barely just told him I love him, how can I possibly manage to ask him if he's willing to be enough for me to give up the rest of my life on the ocean for him?

Beyond that, I feel weary and broken. I've been spending the days to myself and even now as I go to fetch supplies to stock up the Homestead, my eyes are red and my cheeks are pale and wan, the result of too many hours spent shouting at the sea, screaming to a God who never listened before, shedding angry tears and feeling hopeless.

I just want to get in and out and as I descend the stairs past offices and beds, I just pray that no familiar faces can see my startlingly unfamiliar one.

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The smile dropped from her face as she saw his expression. Not the second one, not the smile she didn't believe, but the first one. The haggard one that made her tummy fluttery. "Web?" she asked hesitantly, stumbling toward him. "What's wrong? Joe? Is it Joe?" she asked worried. Joe had disappeared. Joe was gone or maybe they'd said the wrong things to each other and they'd split like Mom and Dad.

I can barely take each question and I nearly falter and break, but I need to be strong. "Joe's fine," I exhale. "Sweetheart, Joe's okay," I promise, because that is the one small thing that's okay. Me? God help me, I'm anything but, but when it comes to safety, he's okay. "He's just back at the Homestead baking off cookies from his two-day over-production."

Her tense posture relaxed as he confirmed it had nothing to do with Joe, but she was still worried. "What's wrong?" she repeated, stepping closer and looking up at him. Grandma McFarland would say that Webster looked like a goose had walked over his grave.

My breath catches as I stare at her, feeling like I'm going to break right in front of a kid and she doesn't deserve this, but all I can think about is what if I do die? What if I leave her behind? My eyes go bleary again, tears forming and I gape at her with my mouth open. "I've had a really bad couple of days," I admit with a choked sound that could either be sob or laugh.

"Web," she said, catching his hand in her small fingers. "It's okay, Web." She didn't really know what was wrong, but she did recognize a grown man about to cry, even though she didn't know just why.

And that's all it takes for the straw to break my back. I stumble until my back hits the wall and I slide down to the ground, pressing the heel of my palm against my cheek to try and stop myself from crying, from looking like a broken-down fool in Trisha's view. "It's not okay, Trisha. It's not okay and I don't know it's ever going to be now."

Trisha took a step backward, her face a mess of confusion and hurt, as if he'd lashed out at her instead of falling away in pain. She bit her lip, holding back sudden threatening tears. After a good thirty seconds she put one foot forward and then the other until she sank down to her knees beside him. Carefully she put a hand on his shoulder. "How come?" she asked bravely, not really sure she wanted to know.

I don't want to burden her with this, but I feel like it's going to explode out of me if I don't say something, anything, words of any kind. I lean a hand over to rest atop her own and fight to offer a tremulous smile, not knowing how to explain this to her. "You know that sometimes, sometimes bad things happen to people? I just found out what happens to me," I finish in a very small voice.

She placed her other hand over his, shifting closer to him on her knees. She nodded and gnawed on her lip in worry, staring at him with eyes that knew very well what that meant. The world has teeth. "What do you mean, what happened to you?" she asked. "What happened?" Her voice sounded very small in her ears.

My breaths are shaky and I stare up at her through bleary eyes, the tears falling down my cheeks without my even realizing it. "I don't survive for very long back home." Each word feels like a millenia to speak and my stomach turns for speaking them. "One day I go out on the water and I never, ever come back. I never come back to my kids."

Trish sucked in a breath at the news and shook her head as if in denial. "What do you mean? You d-die?" Everyone does kiddo. You were lucky weren't you? "Web..." she begged softly. "Web, don't cry. You're not. You didn't. It's a lie," she said with only half confident conviction.

It's not doing much for me because I've already resigned myself to this inevitability and I let out a soft gasp of air, sucking it in past my teeth, wishing I could tell her otherwise. "It's not a lie, Trisha. It was my obituary. As real as anything else you can read here. I'm going to ..."

I close my eyes tightly, back losing some of its stiffness.

"No you're not!" she exclaimed. "You can't. You're here with me and Joe and everybody. It's not real here." As she spoke she tugged on his sleeve, desperate for him to believe it and to believe it herself.

I look up at her with weary eyes, wishing that were true and that's the issue. What is going to happen here? Here, where it's already the future. What if I'm bound to go out there and die? Worse, what if I never get to go out there again. "I'm sorry, Trish," I mumble, words sticking together. "I can't promise that."

Trisha's frown grew. Nothing she said was making any difference. She didn't know the answer. She knew people died and had faced the certainty of her own death and kept on walking, but that part of her was locked away, hidden away, and she didn't know how to tell him. Her face screwed up and she slipped her arms around his neck. Everyone dies she heard and for once she echoed the voice out loud, almost choking on the sound as she tried, in vain, not to cry, "Everybody dies," and then she added in whisper close to his ear, "I might've." She didn't know why she said it, and wished she could take it back, hoped he hadn't heard.

Reflexively, I cling on tight when she hugs and hold her in a hug and I hear what she says. I hear it and it only shakes my foundations all the more. "What?" I ask, breath trembling and words small as I ask the single word, staring at her. "Trisha...wh..."

"Is that why you have nightmares?"

She shook her head back and forth, her forehead resting at the curve of his neck as she hugged him tight. It wasn't. She'd been to tired to be scared, too thirsty, too hungry, but mostly too tired. "I don't dream about that," Trisha said quietly. She might just as easily have said, 'I'm not afraid of that.' It meant the same thing. But aren't you?

Desperately, I latch back, clinging because I have nothing else to do and I need to hold onto something. "I can't stop thinking about this," I admit, voice raw and low. "I don't want to die, I don't want to leave you and Joe, I don't...I don't want to die before I turn forty."

"T-he thing is from home right?" she grabbed for the idea and held on. "So if it's from home it's not gonna happen if you're here. You just gotta stay here, Web," she reasoned desperately. "It'll be okay as long as you don't go away."

That brings up yet another disturbing notion. If I do go home, if I make it to forty here and go home...there's nothing for me. If I vanish, there becomes no world to exist for me and I give her a waterlogged look, resting my head to hers. "Grant seems to think it could happen as soon as tomorrow here, way time works. That...that maybe it's just lurking for me."

"You won't!" she said more confidently than she felt. She knew now first hand how fast the island could take someone away. She could be gone tomorrow and right back into the woods...right back to facing The God of the Lost. "You can't..."

I'm so tired and I'm already breathing shakily, so I just wrap my arms tight around her and hug her as close as I can. "I don't want to lose you, I don't want to lose Joe, I don't...I don't..." I nearly stammer out in desperation and panic. "I need you so much."

Trisha hugged him back tightly in a silent agreement. She didn't know what he wanted or needed from her, but he was one of the people here she needed. Her forehead found the curve of his neck again as she pressed close.

I just adjust and slide down the wall until I can wrap my arms tightly around her and just try and staunch the flow of weariness and tears that seems eager to escape me. "I love you, Trish. If I don't say it enough, I do. I love you."

"I love you too, Web. But... but I donno what to do," she told him helplessly. She wanted to make him feel better or convince him that it was wrong, that nothing would happen, but she couldn't.

I don't know either and that's the problem. I'm helpless and still shaking as I curl her in close and keep mumbling in German over and over again, words that she won't understand, but ones that comfort me. "Just, let me say I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. If I leave you, when I leave you, I'm so sorry."

At first she thought she didn't understand because he was mumbling, barely forming the words, but with his mouth close to her ear she realized that she just didn't understand the language at all. She hugged him tighter, not knowing what the words meant but knowing it was either stay here and close or go. Run. Find Joe or just hide. But she didn't go. Wouldn't go unless he asked her to.

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[For Trisha]

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