Many a night Sparrow would babble and babble. She couldn't have sworn about the exact topics keeping him busy, but he probably went on and on about the ocean, banalities, loaded dice, passionate nuns, betrayal, meaning and purpose – and freedom. Often times until Tara would simply fall asleep.
His father, on the other hand, was a silent man. But he played like a waterfall.
Whenever Edward had a moment to spare during the day, or the dim moonlight drew him into the night on his terrace high above Shipwreck City, as it did tonight, he'd play.
Poochie lay quietly at his feet, listening to the guitar as though the concert was for him alone.
Teague could be a great storyteller, Tia and James would often benefit from it, yet he usually preferred to express himself through music. And so, regularly well after dawn at that, the warm tones of his guitar strings would cascade through the salty air, gentle and yet so present. Down into a Caribbean scenery lit by hundreds of lanterns that few eyes ever had the chance to see.
The repurposed wrecks everywhere, woven on and into each other, always joined by new parts, were an even more unique sight – and clearly more inspired than the clumsy naming of the island and place itself.
However Shipwreck Cove, in the middle of the crater of a dead volcano, deserved its name. Each year more timber burst because of the sharp cliffs within the Devil's Throat, but there was no other way into the Cove. It made this place as safe as it was dangerous. The narrow passage kept many a sailor from tormenting their ship through this needle's eye.
But by no means enough. The place kept growing – with every new batch of free building material, once the bodies were recovered …
"Take a seat, dear."
Teague had noticed her, he always did. The old chair creaked a bit as he turned to regard her, the guitar in his arm, his face lit by candlelight.
Every wrinkle and scar told of a life lived to the fullest. Jack and he were so much alike and then again, not at all. Both of them were intelligent beyond doubt, but only Edward was at peace with himself, emotionally … Spiritually … Now and then, at least.
Tara believed it to be a sign of age, and in a way it also meant there was hope for the father of her children – even if it didn't even matter.
He wasn't there. He'd probably never be. No, Teague was the only constant for her children that had not gone with the tide.
Even his guitar was a testament to that. A symbol of steadiness, he'd always cherished it. It wasn't because he couldn't get himself another instrument, nor was it convenience – no, pure sentimentality. Edward adored exactly that sounding body, the old wood and precisely that shimmer of the pearlescent details that he'd fallen in love with so long ago. He remained faithful to the instrument – probably quite contrary to the behaviour with his own family at the time.
His son, at least, had rarely ever seen him, Tara knew that. Perhaps Teague's silent apology for this very fact was now the way he cared for his grandchildren …
Like a waterfall, she thought again as the notes kept flowing through the Cove's night air, undeniably breathing even more life into it. Shouting and laughter could be heard from every corner, gunshots, breaking glasses – but also Teague's guitar. Right there, high above the pile of wreckage and improvised rooftops of the town.
"Are you playing anything in particular?" she asked when she sat down next to him. Along with him she focused on the many yellow lights below the wooden balustrade where she now put her feet up so that eventually they were both stretching in the chairs rather than sitting.
"I'm doing what Jackie always did best," he replied, directly looking at her.
Both these things were unusual.
When he played, he preferred to blank out everything and everyone around him, including her.
And he never spoke of his son anyway. It was like an unwritten law between Tara and him, but in the end, laws did not govern here …
"Improvise," Tara finally said, nodding bleakly.
The now calm waters that surrounded the place on all sides reflected the crescent moon in the distance. And yet, the ocean could not be like the sky – the moon within it was not the same.
"Are Tia and James asleep?"
"Yes." Tara let the sea air flow deep through her lungs. "It's been a long day," she admitted.
"Did you sing them to sleep?"
"They wanted to hear stories today."
"And about whom?"
She paused for a moment – long enough to leave the question be because Teague knew the answer anyway.
"If only I'd sung …"
"My mother never did," he remarked, smiling at the thought. "Neither told stories, actually."
"Grandmama? Well, we went to see her daughter, your dear sister, today. Ace was there, too. Charming as ever."
"Why won't you just shoot Ace – how many times do I have to tell you?"
"He brought chicken liver for Poochie. He doesn't deserve a bullet. Isn't that right, Pooch?" It wasn't long before his furry head was right in front of her and his wet snout in the middle of her cheek. "It's all right," she chuckled, "I know you liked it, but no need to share – I don't want any of it …" The dog finally lay down next to her, careful to stay close to her scratching hand.
"Don't buy from Hazel," Teague growled. "Old cutthroat …"
"That's what your grandson seemed to think as well, yes …"
"Was he trying to borrow again?" Teague chortled. "You won't get that out of him, it runs in the family to gloss over sins …"
"What's even family," she sighed.
Teague stopped playing his guitar for a moment – highly unusual – to turn his full attention to her.
"Dear, I know you would rather not hear it," he began, "and I wouldn't either if I were you. But they want to know what family is, too. Who family is. They both keep asking me about him. More and more regularly."
"We are their family."
"Aye," Teague confirmed, but it almost sounded like a question. "And yet that's only half the truth, ain't it?"
She briefly closed her eyes. Of course it was.
She realised that this moment, this conversation, had to come. It was inevitable, even overdue. It had not escaped her either that terse excuses were no longer enough for Tia and James.
"So what do you tell them?" Tara looked at Teague, a mixture of impatience and emotion bubbling up – as though she hoped he might provide adequate wording for her, too. "What should I say?"
"What do you answer a child," Teague only asked the counter-question himself, "whose father doesn't even know of its existence?"
It was not a direct reproach to her, not a direct one to his son – and yet he criticised them both at the same time.
"What do you want me to do, Edward?" She directly addressed him, yet wasn't she rather asking herself? "It's been years, and since then, he's been swallowed up from the face of the earth –"
"Oh, that's typical for him – but you never were …"
"What?" She sat up in her chair. "What are you trying to tell me Edward, don't wrap it up in riddles."
He nodded before gripping his guitar again to let his fingers dance across the strings.
"He wasn't swallowed up more than usual," Teague then murmured to her intently, "but you were, by the Cove. And his twins right along with you …" His brief smile was as comforting as his words were true and painful. "You know, Jackie is Jackie," he continued while playing, "and since you loved him, I'm sure you're aware that in the end he's actually constant in his unsteady nature. He disappears when he's troubled, but when something's important to him, he'll always come back. Like Poochie. He couldn't even stay dead, the Locker didn't keep him, you know. And he came right back to you, didn't he? He'd always come back. Just not here. He hates this place. That's partly my fault …" He sighed. "I know that's one reason why you came here. Couldn't blame you, and less did I ever have any intention of even voicing that fact – but Tara …" He paused again to look at her. More urgently than usual. "They're a part of him. Jackie is a part of them. And they won't stop asking."
"Didn't he ask about you, too, back then?"
She wanted to bite her tongue, Teague was only trying to help – she, on the other hand, thanked him with a rhetorical slap in the face …
"Oh yes, he did. Constantly and deftly." Edward resumed his song, gazing out into the night. "I wasn't a good parent. For quite a long time, he didn't even know for sure whether I was his father …"
Tara inched a bit closer. "But you were his –"
"Indeed, but I wasn't ready." He kept on playing. "I didn't want the responsibility. I loved his mother, and I loved him, too, but I loved them best from a distance." For a moment there, their silence weighed heavy despite the guitar, but Teague finally added, "He was foolish like me. Daring like his mother, more manipulative than the devil himself in discussions – just a damn clever little fellow, even if he liked to play dumb. I was incredibly proud of him. But I could never tell him that. At the time I was too distracted to think about sadness in children's eyes, but stories repeat themselves, Tara. And we all better learned our lesson for the second time around."
"So you mean now sad children's eyes are looking at you again and I'm supposed to somehow conjure up your son because of that?"
His raspy laugh, always on the verge of turning into a cough, grew loud just before he mumbled, "You got my point …" He tilted his head as she couldn't help but pout. And all at once he seemed to know he could push a bit more. "As much as you tell yourself you couldn't find him even if you wanted to – you never tried. And not only that –"
"I know, I … I know," she whispered, staring into the darkness, "I've taken away any possibility of him finding us." This was not a fact she wished to confess at all, much rather she tried to forget about it for years, but she couldn't fool Teague. She knew it was true, and it weighed heavily. "I made all my peers swear not to say a word when we left, Kate and Jean came with us. The rest of the world has no clue where we are. But Edward …" Even more painful than her guilt was a certain detail. "He does, after all, possess a magical compass that guides him to the one thing he misses most in this world. And the fact that he's not here speaks volumes –"
"No at all," Teague claimed, waving it off. "It says absolutely nothing, Tara. Jackie regularly loses what is undeniably important to him – his ship, for example. Losing his compass, on the other hand, is not particularly difficult compared to that."
"Maybe," she replied after a while. She had actually never allowed herself to consider that possibility until now …
And Teague smiled as if he knew. "What exactly happened between you I don't need to hear, and I'll never ask. But knowing Jackie, and from what I've heard from Gibbs at the time, coupled with what Elizabeth's been saying for the last six months, he already wanted to find you again."
She remained silent, it was the probability she didn't want to hear about. The thought that felt so strangely oppressive, something that made her guilty, too.
"Why didn't you want to be found, dear?"
Even more silence seemed to be her best option, but the words came annoyingly easily. "The world's so different with him around." She immediately felt old tears well up in her eyes, much as if her senses were trying to prove that her head could never win. "I don't want them to know that," she forced herself to say as calmly as possible, "only to watch him leave again, as I had to do twice. I don't want them to learn what that feels like."
"The way his absence makes them feel isn't ideal either. It's just the beginning, they will miss him more and more with time flying by."
He said it, though reluctantly, knowing how much it was taking a toll on her.
"I know he broke your heart."
She just kept staring out into the night, not even flinching, but it was true. And in the very core of her soul, she still felt the cracks as much as she had then.
"But the second time you two tried to give it a chance, Tara, I think you left your mark on him, too –"
"I might have broken his heart just a tiny bit as well, yes," she admitted, abruptly getting up from her chair to lean over the balustrade of the terrace.
For so long she'd wanted to tell herself that she wasn't giving in to any flight instincts – and yet she had done just that. Here and now, as much as back then, in small ways as in large.
She could feel the west wind speed up on her cheeks. Within the next few days, it would cause any visitor of the Cove considerable difficulties to get through the Devil's Throat in one piece.
She wanted to think about that. Or about anything else in the world – rather than the last moment she shared with Sparrow seven years ago.
Perhaps the crux of it was that she'd never trusted him to make right decisions to begin with.
"I'm not enough for you," she'd said. "I'm not a ship, I'm no freedom. I'd only be an anchor."
His response to that was as unexpected as it was uncharacteristic.
You have no idea how much I wanted you as an anchor.
And yet, not for the first time at that, they parted ways. She'd expected memories to haunt her. She knew she would miss him again – not in her wildest dreams, however, she'd have imagined that his children would turn her world upside down nine months later.
"You didn't trust him anymore, did you?"
She glanced down into the Cove's harbour, nodding.
"But maybe he'd learned his lesson and actually for once would've deserved it the second time around."
She had already voiced it when the meaning of those words seeped into her consciousness. It was that very subject they would avoid all these years.
"Had you known," Teague nonetheless went on, "that you were with Tia and James, would you –"
"I don't know, Edward."
It was the other question that had been going around in her head for years.
Her heart and her head still were in conflict. Her head had always wanted her to believe that she'd done it all the same, despite the circumstances.
But her heart, that deceitful organ that, according to the legends, Jones hadn't cut out for nothing, pounded in guilt whenever she remembered how much he'd let her in. He was likely more honest than ever while she claimed he couldn't be trusted.
That had cost him a lot, to play with open cards. And yet she couldn't believe him because he who lies once …
Therefore, morals were of essential importance. That was why the words of the Desiderata were valuable. There were rules in life that defined a meaningful framework for harmony so that the world would stay on its tracks.
And what did people do? What had he done? What did she do? She lied to her children because, despite all her good intentions, she herself no longer managed not to regard rules as mere guidelines.
Freedom.
It was bitterly contagious.
The forbidden fruit would be ever tempting, but it always came with a price.
"I couldn't win." She turned back to Teague, crossing her arms over her chest. "Either way. Don't you think?"
No hesitation. He put the guitar aside with a smile, right where Poochie could guard it well, then got up and stood beside Tara, simply because he knew that gesture alone would help.
"Guess you're right," he went on to confess, "but a lot of time has passed, hasn't it? Sometimes we know the answer we seek because it is buried deep down within ourselves. All it then takes is a little sign." When she just gave him a side-eye, he pointed up to the sky, mischievous as ever. "The crescent moon, for example. The legends hold that Osman I once saw it in a dream. It expanded from one end of the earth to the other and thus became the symbol of his dynasty. He took it as a good omen."
She shook her head, lost in thought. "And I'm supposed to take it as a sign now as well?"
"Tara, dear …" Teague softly laughed to himself. "You were defending Ace earlier, you know. Ace Brannigan. A murderer, a greedy coward, staggering through life shamelessly and narrow-minded. And yet you didn't think he deserved a bullet thanks to a bit of rotting chicken liver, did you?"
She could barely help but smirk. "Well, I'll admit, when you compare it and put it into perspective like that –"
"My point is, Tara …" He paused to place his hands on her shoulders, her father from Caracas would have probably done just the same. "If you can work up warm words for scum like Ace, it seems like a good sign that you might also still spare a bit of indulgence for Jackie."
"To be able to do something, and to want to do it, are two very different things."
"They are." Teague tried to stifle a yawn and eventually went back to sit in his chair. "But I can't help but notice that you haven't wanted anyone else ever since you got here as well."
"I was concentrating on the kids. Well, and –"
"You miss him. You've missed him for years. You just refuse to admit it. Don't get me wrong, dear, I sure don't blame you, your kids remind you of him every day. I understand that he hurt you, but you should open your heart because you actually do want to. And you're still able to do it …" He let his words sink in for a moment, then added, "You look tired, let me play one last song for you."
"Will this song … mean something?"
"Of course it will," he chuckled. "Osman has already chosen the crescent moon as his sign, so you need one of your own …"
"How could I say no to that?"
"You couldn't," he agreed as he was already reaching for his guitar again.
"Greensleeves," she soon whispered, any child would have recognised the melody. "Why, thank you, Edward," she moaned, "for the melancholy …"
"Really kitschy, yes – I only play it as an exception …"
"Don't worry," she hummed, "you make even that sound like a revelation of the sea."
"You know the words to this song, don't you?" he mumbled and continued to play. "Why don't you sing along …"
"No," she whispered, "I can't."
She would be damned if she sang it.
It was quite enough that the words of the song were already haunting her mind.
It was quite enough that the words of the song were already haunting her mind.
Your vows you've broken, like my heart,
Oh, why did you so enrapture me?
Now I remain in a world apart
But my heart remains in captivity.
Thanks so much for your kind comments, I'm very glad you liked the story so far and hope you'll continue to have fun with it! xx Dalia