Page 42 of Marlin's Faith

Faith…

I was surprised that Hope wasn’t angry with me, at least not about last night. She seemed fairly disappointed in me where Marlin was concerned but instead of one of her classic long lectures on responsibility and how to better behave to her standards, she simply sighed, hugged me, and told me I was on my own to sort it out.

That instilled a whole new kind of hurt and anxiety that I couldn’t quite define. It was like she’d finally given up on me, yet she was still here, lounging in the sun beside me holding my hand. I felt crippled, debilitated, and lost worse than I ever had in captivity. I almost longed for someone to tell me what to do because it was so familiar. I needed familiarity… or did I?

I’d accused Marlin of acting like a crutch as my excuse to set myself apart from him and wow had that backfired on me. I’d hurt him; badly… as was evidenced by his inability to even look at me right now. Every time he had to come up here, to the front of his boat, he would only address Hope, and would try to pointedly ignore me. Of course, it wasn’t like I could speak to him, so embarrassed was I about how I’d treated him. I hadn’t meant it that way, sure, but that was the way it’d come across and as Hope had always told me growing up – that was what mattered. That people wouldn’t always remember what you said, or what you did, but they would always and forever remember how it was you made them feel and I could see plain as day, I made everyone I came in contact with feel awful, despite my best intentions.

I huddled in on myself and stared out over the water, losing myself in the glint of the sun off its surface while the joyful shouts of the men behind us blurred into so much white noise. I had a lot to think about, and Hope pretty much left me to it. Finally, with a sigh, she put down her book and jiggled my hand.

“Lay it on me, Bubbles. What’s going on up there?”

I startled as if coming awake and looked into my sister’s sad, deep brown eyes, “I screw everything up Hope. I don’t mean to, but I do. It’s like everything I touch becomes poisoned and crumbles into so much ash.”

Her face crumbled at that and I scrubbed my face with my hands, “See! That’s exactly what I mean.”

“Oh, Baby, you’re just hurting is all. You’ve been through a lot and we’re all still here, we just don’t know what to do or how to help you.”

“I don’t think thereisany helping me,” I said dully.

My sister sighed and looked about as helpless as to what to say as I’d ever seen her. She finally licked her lips and sat up, facing me.

“I’ve lectured you, come down on you like a ton of bricks and have just generally been this overbearing parent figure your whole life. I was hard on you because I wanted better for you; better for you and Char both,” she bowed her head and shook it, taking a deep breath, “Charity took to the discipline like I did. Like a fish to water, but you? You’re a free spirit like mom and all I was doing was driving a wedge. I can’t take that back, I don’t know how to fix it… Then you were gone and all I could do was work my ass off to get you back so I could have the chance.”

She looked me up and down, searching my face, “You’re still you in there, Faith. I believe that, and I don’t want to mess up again. I don’t know how to do this.”

“Well,” I sniffed, “It was always your way or the highway.”

She laughed, “Damn fuckin’ straight –“she stopped herself. When we were younger she would have called me a hooker, just joking around, but now, now I guess it was the truth. An awkward silence ensued.

“You’reyou, little sister. Don’t let yourself become what they tried to make you. If you wouldn’t let me do it, why let them?”

I blinked and tears spilled out. It was one of those perfect moments where what she said made perfect sense. She was right, and I wasn’t about to argue her logic. I reached for my sister and she reached for me and we hugged fiercely. We were a broken little family of three and far from okay, but at least now we had a chance to make it right. That, and if I had ever doubted it before, those doubts were dashed. My sister Hope loved me with a whole lot more than I could have ever imagined. She’d come to the rescue, had never stopped looking, even when I had all but given up; she hadn’t and that spoke volumes. We may not know how to relate to one another, but we were sisters and that was a bond that would never ever break. This whole ordeal was proof enough of that.

We talked a lot after that, and it didn’t go unnoticed that Marlin found a number of small tasks to come to the front of his boat where we were at. Checking on us, I think. I wanted to get my hopes up that maybe I could fix things with him too, but I’d had those dashed so many times in the last couple of years, I found myself fighting down their rise at every turn.

Eventually there was triumphant shouting and cheering from the back, and I found my fingertips grazing the leather and metal wristband around my wrist, wishing it were a time piece. We’d been out here for a really long time. Hours and hours it felt like, and Marlin appeared again.

“We’re headed back in, might want to pick up some. The wind is bound to kick up once we start moving,” he gave me a lingering look, and the hurt and reservation in his sky blue eyes left my heart sinking. I swallowed hard and nodded softly.

“Okay.”

He disappeared as suddenly as he’d come and Hope knocked her shoulder into mine, “It’ll be okay. You just need to talk it out. These guys don’t know when to quit and won’t let anything lie for very long. They like to get things sorted and done fast so they can get back to enjoying life.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I’m with their leader, and that’s the way he likes it. Marlin is his second in command and I’ve never seen them disagree, so I think it’s safe to assume they’re alike in a lot of ways.”

“How did you find these guys again?”

My sister grinned as she picked up around our area and the boat’s motor rumbled to life, “You sure you’re ready for the whole story? It’s a wild ride.”

I nodded, “We haven’t talked about it much.”

“Okay, so I was looking for that bitch ass roomy of yours that you went to New Orleans with in the first place… She dropped off the radar pretty much the exact same time you disappeared,” she made a face and I did too. That was because the bitch had drugged me and sold me to those fucking animals.

“So anyways, I hired a PI and he tracked her last known whereabouts to…”

I listened to my sister. It was a long story, but by the end, I felt a little more put back together. She had gone to such extremes to save me, all of them had, and I just didn’t understand it. I traced the leather cuff around my wrist and thought about something the boy had told me,“We aren’t all bad guys… men, I mean. There are some of us out there that have our head mostly on straight. I’m sorry I wasn’t exactly one of them.”It was the last thing he’d said, before he’d gone out the door and I’d sat in the rank dark of my little cell, clutching his gift in my hands.

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