Broken Tides

Chapter Four

I spent the remaining evening playing games and keeping my mind off the journal. I would occasionally flip it open and read a passage or two, but after a while they stopped fully making sense, and the paragraphs would slip in and out of another language. This other language was made up of symbols, not as direct as hieroglyphics, but less confusing than anything else I've seen. Some of the words were directly translated in the margins. Some of the symbols I realized on my own were numbers. It began to make a little bit of sense, but I still didn't get it. According to what I could understand my father, well and alive, found himself living somewhere he calls home, relearning his native language and has now decided to reach out to me.

I continued trying to translate. There were a few words that I had an idea of what they meant but I couldn't figure out the direct meaning. I tried looking it up online to no avail, nothing I could find online actually matched the patterns of the symbols on the pages. It was similar to ancient Greek and hieroglyphs. There was this one word that was completely unique and used a few times, but I couldn't think of what it could mean. I was so heavily lost in thought that I hadn't noticed my aunt standing in the doorway, staring. I looked up to see her on the verge of tears.

"Aunt Kat?" I called for her concerned. But her focus wasn't on me, it was the box, the drawings in the Ziploc bags I hadn't even touched yet, the journal.

"Where...?" her voice trailed off. She looked scared, almost.

"It was just...here? I didn't notice it at first, but then when you and Jay went downstairs I noticed it sitting on the edge of the bed." I tried to explain, but she placed a shaky hand on my shoulder as she went to pick up some of the pages.

"This, these are all- I mean, I know this handwriting, this art style, Marlowe-"

"My dad's." I finished. " I saw the engraving on the box," I turned the rusty tackle box towards her. "and the first few journal entries are about how I was born and when he... left."

We were both quiet for a minute.

"The last journal entry is from three weeks ago."

Kat flipped through the pages. "This isn't even English- Marlowe what is all this?"

"I don't know. I think my dad is still alive and just hasn't reached out to us."

"For TWENTY ONE YEARS?!" she yelled. Not at me, just to herself. "Marlowe, I'm sorry, I love you so much but the thought- the idea- that your father ran off without telling anyone and is still out there, leaving my sister- your own mother!- crazy- and me to raise you- makes me so mad. "

I nodded a little. "I know."

"Does he ever say where he went?" she asked flipping through the journal.

"Nope" I popped the 'p' for emphasis. "Just refers to where ever as 'Home'. He does mention, like, cardinal directions and how long it took him to swim there." I took the journal from her and flipped to the pages that detailed this information. "Something is like really weird about this. like not even thinking about the 'Sudden Vanishing of Lance Thompson' but like the little details, things that just don't make sense otherwise."

"What do you mean?" Kat asked me to clarify.

"Well, one of the first entries mentions my dad's brother, his kid, and like a dead wife? As far as I've asked you and been able to ask mom, He's never mentioned his family to you guys, and even said so himself in the same entry. Also- I feel like if there was a small country with a large fishing population and a completely unique language living of the coast of South Carolina we would've all known by now. Not to mention the weird behavioral patterns my dad lists experiencing before and shortly after his leaving."