Page 19 of Marlin's Faith

“No, not going to do that. You were out there too.”

“Fine, whatever, I just don’t want to hear from your ass for at least three days about babysittin’ fucking tourists. You got it? I’m takin’ Faith to some shrink an hour inland and down tomorrow. Not sure how that’s going to go.”

“You’re fuckin’ crazy putting your ass through this shit again, you know that, right?”

“No, Man. I’m right where I’m supposed to be, doin’ what I’m supposed to be doin’. Never been more sure of it.”

“I’m worried about you, bro.”

“Not your job, Johnny.”

“Yeah, then who’s is it?”

“Mine.”

10

Faith…

I was too warm and my mouth had a funny metallic taste in it. I was comfortable though, and I didn’t want to get up. Still, my bladder demanded I move, and eventually it won. It always did.

I sucked in a deep breath to chase back the cobwebs and opened my eyes. I nearly crossed them to see what it was crammed and blurry in my field of vision, all pink, white, and yellow.

I backed my head up on the pillow and frowned. A pink iPod with white headphones coiled neatly next to it, a creamy yellow mini post-it note clinging to the controls.

Play me, Faithwas written in a spidery scrawl on the post-it in black ink. The writing unfamiliar to me. I sat up on the bed and looked around the darkened bedroom. No one was there, nothing stirred… I felt my forehead crush down in a frown.

I looked around the room again, just to be sure, before I plucked the headphones off the smooth cotton pillowcase. I spent far longer than was necessary uncoiling them and tucking them into my ears before I plugged them into the little player. I read and reread the note before plucking it from the front of the little clip and touching the little triangle button to make the thing play.

My breath caught, and stilled completely as the first leading strains ofHope Never Diesspilled from the earbuds. The person playing the guitar was masterful, the notes solemn and quiet, building and subsequently building me up, surrounding me, tucking around me like an old and familiar blanket, or really, bandaging some of the broken bits of me. Holding me together again, just enough to allow me to mend.

Marlin.It had to be. No one else knew what this song did to me,for me, in those darkened nights of desolation and ruin. I stared out of the floor to ceiling obsidian glass, at the faint glimmer of silver as the water lapped upon the shore and let the music soothe me some more. My nap had done me some good, calming some of the disquiet of earlier, and I was glad for it. I let my fingertips idly play with the band of leather and metal around my wrist and thought about what the boy said to me back in the rank dark of that awful storage unit.

There are still good people out there, Faith. You gotta believe me…

Finally, my body wouldn’t be ignored and Ihadto get up and take care of business. I set the little music player and headphones aside on the end of the bed and dealt with the unpleasantries of being human.

The giant house was so quiet. I stood in the middle of the room, near the forgotten packages from our shopping trip and listened carefully, for any signs of movement, people talking, anything to let me know who was here. Nothing but the air-conditioned hush and hum of electronics came back to me. The distant sound of music lured me back to the end of the bed where the little iPod still played and I clipped it to the hem of my tee, slipping the headphones under my hair and back into my ears. I backed it up to the beginning ofHope Never Diesand figured out how to put it on repeat before I went in search of whoever else might be in the house with me.

I padded barefoot out the bedroom door and down the hall, lightly slipping down the stairs, all the while Ashes & Embers playing soothingly in my ears. The living room was just as dark and vacant as the rest of the house, the only light on in the kitchen. I went that way and spotted him on the other side of the sliding glass, sitting in one of the chairs at the massive back patio table. He had his broad back to me and absently raised a cigarette to his lips, head turned to the side. He sucked on it, the tip flaring orange in the night.

He turned his head sharply at the sound of the slider opening behind him, relaxing when he saw it was only me. I slid it shut and hugged myself. It was warm out here, I just felt… I don’t know, exposed? When I stepped outside. I padded along the warm flagstone of the back patio and drew even with his chair. He looked up at me, and squinted a bit in the light cast from the windows behind us.

“You doin’ okay, Baby Girl?” he asked me and I smiled, a little sadly, but then again it was the best I could muster these days.

“This was you, wasn’t it?” I asked plucking at my tee just above where the little music player was clipped to my hem.

He twisted in his chair some more to get a look at it and smiled, before grimacing. His face was revealed to me more with the motion, the light falling along the left side. A raw and angry scrape, puffed with swelling and turning ripe with a bruise adorned his left cheekbone and I stepped forward quickly, rounding in front of him, to keep him from having to hold the awkward pose.

“What happened?” I asked and grazed the injury with a light touch. He flinched back from it and reached up, gently capturing my hand with his much larger one. It was warm and calloused where it wrapped around mine, the knuckles scraped, bruised and swelling much like his face. The sight of it made me shiver. He immediately let me go and I tucked it into the crook of my arm guiltily. Of course, he didn’t want me touching him.

“Business meeting,” he grumbled and I felt my eyebrows go up.

“I don’t want to know,” I said faintly and pulled up a chair of my own to sit across from him.

He smiled thinly, “Sorry, Baby Girl. Nothing bad. I own a business with my younger brother. We have a… unique business model, bein’ blood and all.”

“I see.”

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