Chapter 3 – Eric
As I went out, I noticed George and Jodi were in the shop. Jodi immediately noticed me.
“Hey Eric. How are you doing?” she asked.
“Jodi..? But I thought you were…” My voice trailed off.
She paused, understanding without needing it explained, while George quietly headed toward the chapel.
“I’ve been talking to Caroline and Harvey,” she said after a moment. “I feel… steadier now. I can actually get up. Do things.”
A cold sweat ran down my back. The past few days had been a nightmare.
“Jodi… I’m so sorry about everything…” I said.
She shook her head slowly.
“No. It wasn’t you. When I realized what Penny did, I just… stopped.” Her hands trembled slightly as she clasped them together. “I couldn’t get out of bed. Sam kept asking me to stand up, and I wanted to—but my body wouldn’t listen. It wasn’t until Caroline and Harvey came over that I even made it to the hospital.”
She took a shaky breath.
“I didn’t understand why I froze like that. Why I couldn’t move. I remember staring at those shoes in the bush—the dirt still wet, the laces half-buried—and suddenly I couldn’t breathe. It felt like I was sinking.”
I stepped forward, hesitated, then hugged her.
“I… I don’t understand Penny at all,” I said, my voice shaking.
Jodi’s breath caught.
“I do,” she whispered. “Because we’re the same.”
I pulled back, stunned.
“W-What?”
She wiped her eyes quickly, forcing herself to keep going.
“We love kids. We endure. We fall for dutiful men.” Her voice cracked. “The difference is Penny still has a way out. I don’t. I’m here, even when I don’t want to be.”
She steadied her breathing, looking away.
“Penny’s been staying at my place. Pam isn’t handling this well. I haven’t seen her in days.”
“I haven’t seen Pam at the Saloon either,” I said quietly. “No one has.”
Jodi’s hand curled into a fist.
“That woman… every time I try to sympathize with her, she makes it impossible.”
I looked down.
“Gus has been enabling her for years. He’s afraid of her.”
Her expression hardened.
“I’ll never step foot in the Saloon again. Not even for birthdays.”
I managed a small smile.
“Just like Penny. She always hated that place.”
For the first time in a while, Jodi let out a short, surprised laugh.
After a moment, she spoke again, softer now.
“Would you come pray with me? For Kent. And for Penny—so she can find a way out of this town.”
I hesitated. Spaces like that always made me feel like I was intruding—like I didn’t belong anywhere meant for comfort.
“Um… I’m an atheist,” I murmured. “But since Emily is religious… I guess I could try.”
Jodi smiled gently.
“That girl’s been a miracle for you, hasn’t she?”
I nodded.
“Without her, I don’t think I’d still be standing.”
She exhaled, then reached for my hand.
“Come on, then,” she said. “Let’s go.”
I stepped into the chapel with Jodi, but the moment we crossed the threshold, I already felt out of place.
The air inside was still in a way the rest of Pelican Town never was. No clatter of dishes. No floorboards creaking under hurried steps. No distant voices drifting in from the square. Just candlelight, polished wood, and that strange hush spaces like this always seemed to carry—like you were supposed to leave your burdens outside before entering.
Jodi moved ahead quietly and took a seat near the altar.
I stayed off to the side, not quite sure what to do with myself.
That was when I noticed George.
He sat stiffly in his wheelchair near the pews, staring ahead like he already regretted coming but was too stubborn to leave. He glanced over when he heard me.
“Ah… Peter’s grandson,” he muttered. “What are you doing here?”
“I was just… here for Jodi,” I said. “She asked me to come over for a few minutes.”
George let out a low breath through his nose.
“Well,” he said, “I was never much for religion. Not even back in those days. But…” He shifted slightly in his chair. “I don’t have much time left, so I guess I could do with a few prayers.”
There was no humor in it.
Just blunt resignation.
I looked toward the altar, then back at him.
“Have you thought of praying for Alex?” I asked. “I heard he and Haley are heading to the city in the Fall.”
George’s face changed at that.
Not much.
Just enough.
“Yeah,” he said after a moment. “That’s actually why I’m here. The kid isn’t the brightest, but… I hope he’s happy in the city.”
I nodded quietly.
Despite how often I’d talked to Alex, I realized I never really knew him that well. He could come off as arrogant, shallow, immature—too obsessed with sports and appearances to notice much beyond them.
But he wasn’t cruel.
Just young.
The kind of young that still believed strength and certainty were the same thing.
I couldn’t help but think back to our conversation before—how worried he was about his grandparents, how badly he got along with his father, how little Pelican Town had ever really felt like home to him.
Then my mind drifted to Haley.
Somehow, despite being close to Emily and on decent terms with Alex, I had never gotten along with her at all.
And yet, for all her selfishness and spite, even she had a way out now.
She was nothing like her sister.
Funny.
So many people in this town were already halfway gone.
“I wonder if sports, the mines, and the army are really that different from each other,” I said.
George gave a dry, humorless scoff.
“Hmph. You’re telling me?”
He tapped the side of his wheelchair once with his hand.
“Back in my day, we didn’t have much else to do,” he said. “My own grand-pap was a farmer, just like you are now. My father went off to serve in the army.”
I paused at that.
“And?”
George sighed.
“He didn’t come back.”
The words landed heavier than I expected.
“He was killed in action,” George said.
I stared at him.
For a moment, he didn’t look bitter—just tired.
“I used to believe he died a hero,” he continued. “Thought if they told you to fight for the Republic, then it had to mean something. Thought if you questioned it, you were weak. A coward.”
His jaw tightened.
“Your grandfather didn’t agree with that by the end.”
That caught me off guard.
I looked at him more carefully. “You knew Grandpa that well?”
George stared ahead for a long moment before answering.
“We served together,” he said at last. “Long before any of you kids were born.”
The words settled over me slowly.
I remembered sitting with Eirika, listening to Grandpa’s old war stories—back when he still talked about that part of his life at all. He used to say the government fooled boys into doing its dirty work, then dressed it up as honor. Once, a long time ago, he mentioned a man named George he used to be close with.
That was before everything between them fell apart.
Before Grandpa realized what the war really was.
Before he walked away from it, took over for Lewis’s father as mayor for a time, and later left for the city to protest the war outright.
The thought made my chest ache.
Grandpa was gone.
Eirika was gone.
My parents had split apart.
“He was different back then,” George continued. “Stubborn in a different way. Idealistic. Thought if you fought hard enough, it had to mean something.” He let out a bitter breath. “Then the war dragged on. Men died. Others came home broken. Orders kept coming anyway.”
His hand tightened against the armrest.
“Peter changed after that. Said the whole thing was rotten. Said the Republic fed boys into the machine and called it duty.” George’s mouth twisted. “He stopped believing in it.”
“And you didn’t,” I said quietly.
George shook his head once.
“No,” he said. “I kept fighting. Thought someone had to. Thought if you stopped, then everything the dead suffered for meant nothing.”
He glanced down at his own body—at the wheelchair, his useless legs, the shape of what the war had left him.
“So we stopped speaking much after that,” he said. “Your grandfather went one way. Became an activist. Started preaching that the system itself was the problem.” He scoffed softly. “Maybe he was right. Didn’t make it any easier to hear.”
The chapel felt even quieter now.
I thought of Grandpa’s letter. Of the farm. Of the way he had tried to hand me something gentler than what he had lived through.
And suddenly George didn’t just feel like George.
He felt like someone who had known a version of my grandfather I never could have.
“You hated each other?” I asked.
George frowned.
“No,” he said. “That would’ve been simpler.”
He exhaled slowly.
“We understood each other too well for that. That was the problem.”
I swallowed.
That sounded like Grandpa.
That sounded too much like Grandpa.
“I think he saw me as a fool who kept feeding myself to a cause that didn’t care whether I lived or died,” George said. “And I saw him as someone who lost faith and started calling it wisdom.”
His voice dropped after that.
“But I don’t think either of us wanted boys like you or Alex making the same choices we did.”
That line stayed with me.
Because it was true, wasn’t it?
Grandpa gave me the farm because he wanted me out. Out of the city. Out of the machinery that had worn him down. He hadn’t left me the farm because he wanted me to become him.
He left it because he didn’t.
And now here was George—harder, bitter, more broken in ways Grandpa never let himself be in front of me—saying something that wasn’t all that different.
He didn’t want Alex ending up like him either.
The paths had split. Their beliefs had split. But the regret underneath them felt strangely familiar.
“I just hope Alex knows what he’s doing,” I said. “He always told me he was worried about you.”
George looked away at that, his mouth tightening.
“What he really means,” he muttered, “is that he worries for Evelyn.”
He stared toward the altar, but I could tell he wasn’t really seeing it.
“I think part of him hates me,” he said. “We never really got along after my dear Clara died.”
That startled me.
I frowned. “Hate’s a strong word.”
George gave a short shrug.
“You didn’t know him back then,” he said. “Kid was hurting. So was I. I got mean.” His voice roughened slightly. “Easier to bark at people than admit grief turned you into someone hard to live with.”
I didn’t answer right away.
Because that, at least, I understood.
Still… it sat strangely with me.
Eirika and I loved Grandpa until the bitter end. Even when he scared us with how thin he’d gotten. Even when I knew he was leaving us behind. I couldn’t imagine speaking about him the way George spoke about Alex—or Alex speaking about George with that same distance.
But then again, Grandpa had given me an exit.
George, from the sound of it, had mostly given Alex warnings, bitterness, and the wreckage of a life he didn’t know how to explain.
Maybe that was the difference.
Or maybe I’d just gotten lucky.
George glanced at me again, his expression harder to read now.
“You’ve got his face sometimes,” he muttered. “Not all the time. Just when you’re thinking too much.”
I blinked.
“Grandpa?”
George nodded once.
“He used to look like that whenever he was about to say something I didn’t want to hear.”
Despite myself, I let out a quiet breath through my nose.
“That sounds about right.”
George’s expression almost softened.
Almost.
“You really did love him, didn’t you?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said quietly. “I did.”
He looked away again.
“You were lucky.”
The words weren’t cruel.
That was what made them hurt.
Because maybe I had been lucky.
Or maybe Grandpa had simply learned how to become a door instead of a wall.
I looked toward Jodi. She was standing now, prayer finished, hands folded as she turned back toward us.
“Huh,” she said softly as she approached. “I never thought I’d see you two talking.”
George didn’t answer.
Neither did I, not right away.
The chapel suddenly felt too small for everything sitting inside it.
“Jodi…” I said quietly. “Let’s go.”
She nodded.
As we turned to leave, I looked back once.
George was still staring toward the altar—but not with the bitterness he’d had before.
Something in his face had softened.
Or maybe just cracked.
I couldn’t tell.
But as I followed Jodi back out into the daylight, I could’ve sworn there were tears in his eyes.
As we stepped outside the chapel, the daylight felt harsher than it had a few minutes ago.
Jodi walked beside me, but her mind was clearly somewhere else. She muttered to herself under her breath, half-planning dinner, half-trying to convince herself that routine still meant something.
“Maybe soup…” she murmured. “Or eggs… if I still have enough…”
I chuckled weakly, more out of discomfort than amusement, and mentioned how Joja had been struggling financially these past few days. She barely reacted.
Her exhaustion hung heavy between us.
It struck me then how little she actually seemed recovered.
Caroline and Harvey may have gotten her back on her feet, but that wasn’t the same as being alright. If anything, she felt like someone moving on borrowed momentum alone—upright only because too many people still needed things from her.
Or maybe that was all she had ever been.
A woman surviving on obligation.
The thought made something tighten in my chest.
Then the question I’d been avoiding slipped out before I could stop it.
“Are you… planning to stay here?” I asked. “It feels like this place is becoming unlivable for you.”
Jodi stopped walking.
Not dramatically.
Just all at once, like her body had reached the end of what it could pretend not to hear.
“I…” She looked away. “I don’t even know anymore.”
Her voice had gone so quiet I almost missed it.
“I really wanted to believe I could make something work,” she said. “That if I just stayed patient—if I kept the house together, kept Vincent fed, kept Sam from spiraling, kept waiting for Kent to come home—then eventually something would ease.” She swallowed. “But now it just feels impossible.”
We stood in the road just outside the chapel, with the town carrying on around us in that slow, ordinary way that suddenly felt obscene.
“I can’t even buy basic food anymore,” she whispered. “Everything costs too much. Everything takes too much effort. I wake up tired. I go to sleep tired. I spend the whole day trying not to let the boys see it.”
Her hands had started trembling.
At first I thought it was just stress.
Then I realized it was worse than that.
“I knew this would happen,” she said. “Not exactly like this. But I knew.” Her voice wavered. “I knew there might come a day when I couldn’t do it anymore. When staying here would stop being loyalty and start being self-destruction.”
I didn’t know what to say.
So I said nothing.
That was probably the right choice.
Her breathing had gone uneven now, shallow enough that I could hear the strain in it.
“I wish…” she began, then stopped.
I waited.
She pressed a trembling hand against her mouth before trying again.
“I wish I had stopped you from doing what you did, but…”
The words trailed off.
A knot tightened in my stomach.
Stopped me?
Stopped me from what?
The Luau? The mines? Getting involved in any of this at all?
Before I could ask, I noticed her face flushing.
Her breath had gone sharp and irregular. Her eyes were unfocused—not on me exactly, but through me. Like she was trying to grab onto something solid and finding nothing.
“Oh,” I murmured. “Oh sweet Yoba…”
Panic crept into my voice before I could control it.
“Jodi—”
I stepped forward instinctively, not even sure whether I meant to steady her or just keep her from collapsing.
That was when she grabbed my face.
For one broken second, my mind didn’t understand what was happening.
Then she kissed me.
It was abrupt.
Desperate.
And somehow empty at the same time.
Not empty of feeling—there was too much feeling in it, far too much—but empty of intention, like the act itself had leapt out before either of us could attach meaning to it.
My body went rigid.
My thoughts stalled trying to catch up.
“W-What…?” I stammered as she pulled away.
Jodi looked horrified immediately.
Not at me.
At herself.
Her eyes widened like she had only just realized what she’d done. Her whole body shook now, not just her hands.
“I—” she choked out. “I love you.”
The words hit me like something falling apart in real time.
Then she shook her head frantically.
“No—no, not like that, I didn’t mean—” Her voice broke. “Like a son. Like Sam. Like Kent— like—”
She couldn’t finish.
The explanation collapsed in on itself.
So did she.
Tears spilled down her face all at once, fast and helpless and full of immediate shame.
I stepped back without thinking.
That brittle, dangerous energy flooded the space between us—the same kind I had felt around Penny when everything inside her was threatening to split open. Not romance. Not clarity. Just pain losing its shape.
And somehow that made it worse.
Because I understood, in the ugliest possible way, that this wasn’t really about me.
I was just standing where her grief had nowhere else to go.
“I…” Jodi covered her mouth with one hand, sobbing harder now. “I have to go.”
Her voice sounded raw. Small. Nothing like her.
I should have said something.
I should have tried to stop her, or comfort her, or tell her I understood—or at least that I didn’t hate her for it.
But I was frozen.
Still trying to process what had just happened. Still feeling the shock of it sitting wrong in my body.
Jodi turned and ran before I could say anything at all.
I stood there alone outside the chapel, my pulse hammering in my ears.
For a few seconds the whole town felt unreal.
The road. The wind. The sound of someone moving crates near Pierre’s. The shape of the chapel behind me. Everything looked the same.
And yet nothing felt normal anymore.
I wiped a hand over my face, trying to ground myself.
Jodi was unraveling.
Not in the quiet way I’d seen before.
Not like exhaustion.
This was something sharper. More dangerous. The kind of fracture that spread if no one caught it in time.
And the worst part was, I didn’t know who was supposed to catch her.
I thought he was smarter than that. He should know when it's time for the subtle conversations...
feels like a perfect match between Game canon and Fan Fiction 