And now Callie is burrowing up to me and holding on to Tara, who is holding on to both Callie and Emily. And Emily is crying, and now I’m crying too.
And Greta is alone. And though I have no way of knowing, when I look in her eyes, I just feel that she’s looking for Bobby, waiting for him to come back. And then Tara looks over at Greta, then Callie looks over at Greta, and then they both let go of us. They go over to Greta, and one after the other they touch her on the shoulder, and the expressions on their faces don’t change: They set their mouths in lines; they still won’t look. But my face changes, and Emily’s does too. I see the way I feel reflected in Emily’s face: We’re alive. We brought our sisters home, and they found new sisters, real sisters, and then their home got blown up. And despite that, they saved us. And now we’re here. And we all need each other now. Regret, and awe, and fear, and pride, and terror—it’s all mixed up there.
And then Ted collapses.
FOUR DAYS LATER, and Ted is barely breathing.
Stan, we’re not so sure. He’s piloting the boat, refuses to teach me or Emily how so that he has an excuse to be stuck there at all times. We’re going south. We haven’t spoken in two days. Nobody knows what to say, and Stan won’t talk. He checks the rigging, he leaves a steady course to check on Ted for a couple of minutes at a time. He checks our course, he checks on Ted. He checks the engine, he checks on Ted. Ted, who carried us all here. Ted, who saved us from a bear.
Ted, who sometimes scared the hell out of me, is dying. No part of me wants to believe this, but what choice do I have? We can’t pretend anything anymore. We stopped having that luxury when we saw plants carrying babies bursting out of the ice while our government tried to blow up an island.
I don’t know why it’s happening, and I really hope I’m wrong. But what I think—what I feel—is that Ted is maybe going to die soon. And I don’t know what’ll happen to Stan when he does. I don’t even want to imagine it. These past couple of nights, Callie has come to sit with me on the deck while I watch the stars dance across the water, somehow without drowning. Emily tries to talk to Stan, and when that doesn’t work, she comes and sits here too.
I want to try to tell you what I think about when I sit here and look out.