Till Trust Do Us Part

This is how love ends

Image generated by Midjourney

“Everything comes to an end, doesn’t it, Bobby?”

Bobby Longstreet nodded sluggishly as if his head were trapped in molasses. He looked down, studied the coffee in front of him, and stirred it, letting the small whirlpool of white and brown hypnotize him for a few seconds before returning his gaze to Sam. 

Kona King Coffee sat on the beach's edge, a three-minute walk from their hotel. A dozen small tables filled the outdoor patio, shaded by leafy palms. Animated conversations surrounded them, and despite the breeze, the aroma of sweet coffee lingered. 

He loved Sam, his graduate school buddy and colleague. Bobby believed they were born of the same mother and reunited in Professor Reese’s class at Columbia University, Mathematical Models of Subsurface Lava Flows. Bobby often wondered what it would have been like if they had grown up as brothers, together through all the childhood woes and beyond. When he shared this thought with his wife, Keiko, she replied with a smirk of mock jealousy, “Brothers? It’s like you’ve got two wives: me and Sam.”

“Things aren’t supposed to end this way, Sam. Not this fast, with no time to prepare.” His sigh was heavy as if weighted by every misery in human history. 

Bobby gave Sam’s iPad a final look and returned it to him. He took a deep breath and templed his hands. “We have to tell somebody.” 

“We’ve been over this. Who can we tell? Who would believe us? Besides, there’s zero time for people to crunch the numbers, evaluate our data, and confirm our conclusions.” Sam stretched his arms out to the sky. “There’s nothing we can do anyway. There’s nothing anyone on Earth can do to stop it.”

During their six-hour flight from Seattle to Maui for the annual Volcanologist and Spouse Conference, Sam and Bobby had passed Sam’s iPad back and forth, speaking in hushed, frantic tones, tapping the tablet with nervous intensity. Anyone listening might have caught random words from their conversation: “magma,” “core ejection,” “superheated fluid,” “spin acceleration.” Anyone watching them would have seen worry lines crease their foreheads like earthquake-torn ground, their pupils dilated, their hands shaking, imprisoned in the equations on Sam’s iPad. 

Bobby leaned back in the wicker chair. He slipped off his sunglasses, closed his eyes, and aimed his face at the warm sun. He tilted his chair almost to the point of falling over. After a minute, Bobby leaned forward again, landing his chair on all fours. He looked at Sam and asked, “What will you tell Lilly?”

“The truth. Everything. As soon as we’re done here. She will want to see it through; that’s how Lilly is.” Sam glanced at his watch. “Let’s have one more glorious Kona coffee, my friend. Are you still going to do it?”

“I have to. Keiko’s not like Lilly. This is best for her. I found the perfect spot.” 

Bobby recalled his anger toward his parents when his grandmother died from lung cancer. His parents didn't tell Grandma she was dying, thinking they'd spare her the sadness of knowing that Death was close. He believed his parents had no right to withhold the truth. As a kid, it was not Bobby's place to interfere, which only made him more furious. He stayed silent and visited his grandmother as often as possible until the end.

Twenty years later, he knew his parents were right. 

“When does the world end?” Bobby asked. 

“Ten p.m. tonight, give or take five minutes.” 

“I’m not ready, Sam. I had hoped to do so much more, spend the rest of my life with Keiko, and attend conferences in Hawaii every year for the next fifty years.”

“Remember the time strangers walked into our cabin?” Keiko asked.

The mellisonant Pacific spilled into the outdoor restaurant. Moonbeams danced over their wine glasses. 

Bobby circled his thumb over the back of Keiko’s hand and forced a counterfeit laugh. “That was hysterical!” 

“And embarrassing,” Keiko reminded him. She turned her hand over, unfolded her fingers, and threaded them between his. They slid their chairs closer. “Who would have thought one key fits all?”

“That couple was as surprised as we were.” 

“Yeah, surprised,” Keiko said. “That’s putting it mildly. Who expects to walk into their rental cabin and see two half-naked people in front of the fireplace? As I recall, your hands were wandering over me when—”

“The Wagners—”

“The Wagners walked in.”

“We did make friends, too.”

Keiko smiled. “I like how you see the positive in everything. That’s one of your finer attributes, Bobby Longstreet.” She separated her hand from his. “Now, how about some more wine?”

Then Keiko noticed. “You’re not hungry?” 

Bobby had been sliding his food around his plate but hadn’t eaten much. Two-thirds of his ahi tuna remained, along with a similar proportion of carrots and broccoli. 

“There was an enormous amount of food at the conference. And it was a late lunch, plus coffee with Sam. Sorry, I’m just full.” 

Who has an appetite before the end of the world? Bobby thought. 

“Do you trust me, baby?” Bobby swallowed the rest of his wine but couldn’t wash away the lump in his throat. She trusted him, he knew that, and he would violate that trust in one final moment of cruelty and compassion. Ignorance isn’t just bliss; it is the ultimate kindness. 

“Always and forever.”

“I have something special to show you, something amazing we can do together. But first, we return to our room and change into bathing suits.”

The walk from their hotel to the cliff took fifteen minutes. The moon spotlighted the waves’ crests. It was just the right amount of light, Bobby thought.

“I’ll go first,” he said. “Then, your turn. Finally, we’ll jump together, holding hands. There’s geothermic warming, so when you land, it will feel like you’ve slipped into a warm salt bath.”

“Geothermic warming—I love being married to a volcanologist. You say the most romantic things.”

“Me, too, to you.” 

Keiko peered over the cliff. “Are you sure? You said six stories. This looks even higher.” 

“The moonlight creates an illusion of extra height. Six stories, no more. And it’s fun and safe to jump. We’ll remember this for the rest of our lives.” Bobby pinched his thigh to hold his lie in place. 

“Okay,” Keiko said.

The cascading ocean waves partly masked Bobby's scream. But enough energy carried up the cliff to Keiko’s ears. She could see his arms waving from the water, a successful landing. 

Bobby dashed up the path from the sea to the cliff, wrapped his arms around Keiko, and kissed her quickly.

“You’re wet!”

“You’ll be wet in a few seconds, too. Remember to hold your head up straight to keep water out of your nose.”

“Gotcha.” If Keiko was nervous about jumping off a cliff into the Pacific ocean at night, she didn’t show it. 

“After I landed, I found a super warm patch a dozen feet to the right.” Bobby took Keiko’s hand and led her toward the new jump spot. “Jump from here. It’s luxurious.”

Distance, terminal velocity, and solid impact point. It will be instantaneous. No pain. No suffering. No worry or fear. Just a merciful end. 

“Great!”

“Do you need a push?”

“I do not!” Keiko said as if Bobby had wounded her pride. 

“Shall I count to three?”

“That you can do.”

They kissed. Bobby let it linger. A kiss of ignorance and love. 

“Wow. That’s some kiss. It’s like our first.”

“Yeah.” Bobby took a deep breath. 

But it’s our last. 

“One...two...three.”

Goodbye, my love. 

Keiko sprang into the Stygian void. The moment her legs left the ground, she began her brief vertical trip to the rocks below. In less than three seconds, Keiko was dead. 

An invisible hand reached into Bobby’s chest and crushed his heart. 

What have I done?

“Can I join you guys?” Bobby talked into his phone as he walked back to the hotel. “I mean, if you want to be alone, I understand.” His salty tears soaked his phone, almost as if the entire Pacific was rushing from his eyes. His phone became a weight he could barely lift. His shoulders heaved.

“We’re in our room. We have champagne. Why not champagne at the end? Join us.”

“Thanks,” Bobby managed to say.

Sam knew from Bobby’s weak voice, but he asked anyway. “Did you—?”

“Keiko’s dead. She never knew. She died happy, without worry.” 

Not like us. 

Bobby and Sam continued to talk as Bobby walked to the hotel, sneakers sloshing on the grass. 

“How much longer?” Bobby asked.

“Another forty-five minutes until we feel the first tremors.”

Bobby glanced at his watch. He estimated another ten minutes to the hotel. That gave Bobby, Sam, and Lilly thirty minutes to enjoy each other’s company. To talk about old times. To toast a farewell to Keiko. He picked up the pace, and with each step, another tear fell onto the dark ground. 

Bobby didn't believe in God but wondered if there was enough room in heaven for a sudden rush of seven billion souls. 

“I’m glad Keiko didn’t know,” Bobby said. “She would have spent the last hours worrying about her family. Her sister, parents, nieces, and nephews. She would have wanted to call them. She would have wanted to get on a plane to Japan to see them but would have suffered immeasurably because she couldn't.”

“Family was everything to her.” 

“Yes.”

“You did the right thing, Bobby. Don’t regret it in your final minutes.”

“I hope so.”

I should have jumped with her. Shinju. Lovers’ suicide. 

Bobby buried his chin in his chest and slowly shook his head. 

Was there a better ending for Keiko? No, there’s no good ending for anyone. I spared Keiko the terror to come. 

“I wish we knew why,” he said into his phone.

“We only know what,” Sam replied. 

“Tell me again, so I know this was right for Keiko.”

Sam obliged. “A massive part of the earth’s outer core of liquid iron and nickel, has taken a detour after faithfully circling the inner core for four and a half billion years. It’s heading to the surface at three hundred kilometers per hour. Nothing can stop it.”

“You’re breaking up.”

“Electromagnetic interference is already here. Fast-moving molten metal creates a powerful magnetic field. We may lose this call before you get to our room.”

“I’ll hurry.”

Sam continued, “The temperature of this liquid iron and nickel is forty-five hundred degrees Celsius and will heat up more from friction as it passes through the mantle. The superheated liquid metal will instantaneously boil the Pacific. Fiery metal will rain on everything and everybody. The liquid metal will be so hot it will melt through steel and brick buildings as if they were made of Jell-O. The lucky people will vaporize, but most of us won’t be lucky.”

“Your calculations show—”

Sam interrupted his friend, “The center of this eruption will be ten kilometers off the coast of California. But it doesn’t matter. When the iron rain falls, it will still be thousands of degrees and cover an area nearly fifty million kilometers in size. Soon after, the entire planet will be uninhabitable.”

“How painful will it be?”

“That’s what the alcohol is for.”

Bobby didn’t say anything. 

“I don’t know,” Sam continued. “It’s going to rain Hell's fire. We’ll burn, but maybe just for a few seconds before we die. I’d be lying if I were to say we won’t suffer.”

Bobby panted through his phone. “I’m at the hotel. I’ll be with you guys in a minute.”

“We have your drink waiting.”  

Bobby looked at his watch for the twentieth time in the past hour. It was closing in on midnight, and the annihilation hour had passed. "Why are we still alive? Why hasn't the world ended?"

The only sound was that of Sam tapping on his iPad. "Sam, what's going on?" 

Sam dropped his iPad on the desk. Brittle words escaped his lips, barely louder than a whisper. "I made a mistake. Nothing's wrong with the planet."

---

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If you enjoyed Till Trust Do Us Part, I think you’ll also like my story, Dark Hearts.