"He keeps things closer ta' the vest, now."
Truer words were never spoken, she often thought to herself. Oh, it was easy enough to get a score of jokes or tale out of him; a half-finished concoction of truth, boasting, and his own darkly vivid imagination; but try and get a scrap of clear honesty out of the man. Sometimes he appears up out of nowhere with a new scar, and sits at the head of the Turner's table; but he never sees fit to explain. He just watches everything with dark, shell-like eyes, eats like a horse, and says nothing that doesn't need saying.
Will is easier. Will is a open book lying on a very clean table, with a stone on both sides of it to keep the wind from mussing the pages. Will is written in black ink. No. Will is printed. It's that transparent. Jack could not be contained in a book that way. Maybe a packet of smudged old letters; in a chest at the bottom of the deep. Maybe nothing at all.
Is that why I picked him ? She wonders once, a little horrified at the idea. Is that why I married Will, to read him on quiet evenings, and to set him down again ? Because he will never make me guess at anything, he will always tell me the truth, up front. Is that all I really wanted from the man ?
No. She understands now. She loves him because he is constant, and real, and has never tried to be anything other than what he is, good or bad. He is a rock to build a life upon. And she does not love Jack Sparrow, and could not, she tells herself forcefully, because who could love a passing breeze ? No matter how warm, so matter how sweet, no matter how far it blows.