The Explorer's Apprentice

84:What Hurts the Most

Eleanor Brown
 
Eleanor hugs her knees in terror as her eyes scour Titanic. It’s slowly shrinking from view—a beautiful, horrible doomed nightmare—but she’s still close enough to see movement on the top deck. Her heart stops each time the men shove off another wardrobe.

Calm down, she keeps reminding herself. He’ll be in the last one. Fabrizio will be in the last one because that’s just the kind of person he is.

Eleanor has never felt more alone. The nearly suffocating pressure of passengers still isn’t enough to keep out the cold coming from inside her. Molly is gone. Lawrence is gone. Momma is gone. Fabrizio is gone. Everyone is gone. Even poppa, miles and miles away—for the moment he’s gone too. I drove everyone away and now they’re gone and I’m alone.

She doesn’t know where the audacity comes from, but she finds herself wondering one thought. A sneaky little devious little thought. Am I happy? When everyone is gone, and I am alone? Am I happy with myself? Am I happy with what I have and what I’ve done?

She sees the last wardrobe push off the end of the boat, and smack the water with a bone-shattering crash. Foam rises in jagged edges, and its passengers bump around dangerously as they clutch their handmade oars. If Eleanor squints, she can just see the man she imagines is Fabrizio, sitting atop an overturned drawer, giving the men the count on which to row.

No. No, I’m not happy.

And she imagines her poppa again. But this time, she’s not some creature, some evil selfish beast there to break his dying little heart. She’s his daughter, and he’s her poppa, and that is all. And she imagines her telling him what she’s done—choosing family over love, at the sake of her own happiness. And in Eleanor’s mind, she sees her poppa shake his old head in disappointment. She should know better. She should know all her father ever wanted was for her to be happy. She should know he would support anything she did, as long as it made her happy.

Eleanor strokes the dolphin pendant around her throat. It’s about time I stopped being selfish.

“Fabrizio!” Eleanor stands up and starts screaming at the top of her lungs. The woman next to her shushes her, but Eleanor ignores this. “Fabrizio!” She starts waving her arms in wide circles in a desperate attempt to get his attention. “Fabrizio! Fabrizio, I’m sorry!”

A few strangers respond by waving their own arms, the lifejackets hindering them to a few pathetic rotations of their wrists. She searches around for something, anything bright and colorful she can wave—and in her pocket is a crumpled paper butterfly.

“I’m sorry, Fabrizio! I’m sorry for everything! I’m sorry for being so selfish! I thought—I don’t know what I was thinking—that I didn’t deserve to have a future because one was already planned out for me, and I thought I had no choice, because if I didn’t I would break my poppa’s heart!”

Someone finally gets Fabrizio’s attention. She can see him shield his eyes from the bright lights of the ship in an attempt to see who’s calling.

“But I was wrong! I was so wrong and I’m sorry it took me so long to realize this! I can’t imagine what I put you through! I lied to you, before! I was never going to open a restaurant, I as going to inherit a big, fat, boring oil company, and I never wanted that! I want you! And I know it may be too late, maybe you don’t want me anymore but God I hope it’s not too late!”

Fabrizio stops rowing and cups a hand around his ear. Eleanor gathers up all her strength, and hopes to God the ocean will carry her one last message.

“I love you!”

Fabrizio’s lips move. He seems to be shouting What?

“I love you!”

What?

“I love you Fabrizio! I. Love. You.”

What??

“I love y—”

The screaming of helpless swimmers devours her voice. The tide of swimming shifts as people flounder helplessly away from Titanic, driven away by some unseen force. She looks up. The smokestack—the last smokestack on the end, the one bound to be littered with a hundred paper butterflies—starts to fall.

The very breath stops in Eleanor’s throat. “Fabrizio! Move! Row! Get away! The smokestack is falling! Fabrizio!”

What?

The creaking of breaking, twisting metal destroys her words. The stress of the flood is too much for the internal structure to handle, and the massive pillar buckles like it’s made of wet cardboard.

“Move, Fabrizio!”

What?

The roar of the ocean steals away Eleanor’s message.

“Move!”

The smokestack tumbles through the air slowly. Time seems to stop and it hangs, suspended in midair, right above the small collection of homemade boats. Prompted by the screaming, Fabrizio tears his eyes away from Eleanor for one second—and suddenly he’s gazing into the maw of death. One hundred tons of concrete and steel, hanging over his head like a child’s mobile. It’s the last thing he sees.

It’s the last thing he sees with his beautiful green eyes, every shade of green in the universe.

The scream that rips through Eleanor’s body is drowned out by the smack of the smokestack hitting the water.

“Danny!!”