Page 137 of Fated

There was no tsunami.

No.

Instead there was an aftershock.

It struck off the coast of the island.

And then the soft, sandy soil that composed half the island’s geology—it fell into the sea.

It’s happened in history. Entire islands swallowed by the ocean. It happened a few hundred years ago in the Caribbean. An entire city was consumed by the water in seconds.

An earthquake hits and then the vibration in the sand causes liquefaction.

And suddenly, something that was solid—sand—becomes liquid.

Or at least it acts like a liquid.

And so, on Christmas Eve two years ago, all the people on the island were buried in the sea. It happened in seconds. The ground was solid and then it wasn’t, and the homes, the boats, the people, they fell into the deep, deep sea.

Robert once said other people die, but not McCormick.

He was wrong. Not even Aaron could survive this.

And he couldn’t save anyone else either.

“Why did I come here?” I ask, the sun beating down on me, the hollow note of the gulls’ calls echoing in the wind.

“Don’t know,” Odie says. Then he clasps my arm, his callouses rough. “Don’t stay out too long. The mosquitos are bad this year.”

He turns to go, to walk back along the rough, newly carved shoreline, toward the last skeletal remnants of Charlestown.

“Odie?”

He pauses. When he looks back I begin to shake, my hands vibrating with all the waves of emotion I’m not letting out.

“Yeah?”

“Why would I love someone if all along they knew they were going to leave? Why would I love someone when it turns out they were already gone?”

He looks at me then, his eyes shaded, his figure weathered and worn by the wind and salt of the island. I don’t know if he loved anyone. I don’t know anything about him, except that he sat on the road with his stop sign and played solitaire in the shade of a tree. How stupid, to know so little about someone when they’re the only person who has known who you loved, who maybe loved who you loved too.

“Why?” he asks.

He considers the cold granite, immovable, casting its shadow over me. He considers the wind bending the trees. He considers my hand, shaking against the stone.

“I suppose,” he says, “you just couldn’t help it. Mostly, we know loving means losing. But we still do it ’cause we just can’t help it.”

I take my hand from the granite, clenching my fingers in a tight ball. “I thought this time I couldn’t lose. I thought I couldn’t be left. But he was already gone before it even began.”

He rubs a hand down his grizzled face. “You talking ’bout Robert?”

“No.”

“McCormick then.” He nods.

“I wonder if I can save him. If I can save them all.”

Odie shakes his head. Then he points at the sun sinking into the dark, depthless sea. “Don’t stay out too long.”

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