The Firefly Hours (A Silas Sharp Metaphysical Mystery): Chapter 26

 

Fairy firefly pool by night
by EmmaKay's Creations

Chapter 26 – Calico Intervenes

Every life contains at least one room we'd happily inhabit forever if time allowed it. The kitchen where Mom used to make you hot chocolate when you were upset. The front porch where Grandpa used to tell you tall tales. The hospital room before the doctor walks in. Memory lets us visit. Grief tries to convince us to unpack and stay awhile.

By Saturday morning, I had nearly signed a lease.

Calico found me sitting alone beneath the old maple tree. The endless sunset painted everything in glowing amber. The fireflies glowed steadily overhead, watching like wise, silent elders. She carried two cups of coffee.

"I wasn't sure whether you'd still drink it.” She offered me a cup and I took it.

"I've considered stronger options. Whiskey. Tequila. Interdimensional tea.”

"I thought you might,” she said and she sat with me.

For several minutes, we simply sat. We didn’t exchange theories or consult her notebooks. No impossible phenomena were put forth as likely explanations for The Firely Hours. Just two tired people pretending the world hadn't forgotten how evenings worked. Finally she spoke.

"You saw your father. How’d that go?”

"He remembered I hate mayonnaise on my ham sandwiches.”

She laughed softly.

"My mom remembered coconut sunscreen," she said.

A comfortable silence settled between us.

"I almost stayed."

"I know."

"You do?"

She looked into her coffee.

"I almost did too."

That surprised me. I looked at her as she sipped her coffee. Her warm green eyes gazed at the sun stuck in perpetual sunset.

"No hesitation?"

She looked to me. The answer was written plainly across her face.

"So much hesitation.” Her voice remained calm, almost peaceful. "My mother held my hand. The way she always did when I was frightened. I forgot she'd rub her thumb across the back of my hand."

She demonstrated unconsciously with her own hands. I looked at my own hands.

"I hadn't remembered that in thirty years." She closed her eyes. "I almost followed her."

"What stopped you?"

"You."

I blinked at her. I was aware of a dumb expression on my face. It was the same kind I would get whenever teachers tried to explain algebra to me.

"I wasn't even there,” I said.

"No." She smiled sadly. "But I remembered something you'd said."

"I said something useful?" I chuckled in spite of myself and decided to take a first sip of coffee.

"Well, you know the saying,” she said with a soft smile. “Something blind squirrel finding a nut and all that.”

We looked toward the motionless horizon.

"You once told me..." She searched for the exact words. "...that mysteries aren't solved by finding what wants you. Which is typically Silas pseudo-cryptic thing.”

"They're solved by finding what's missing,” I added. I vaguely remembered saying it, as I do all my typically Silas pseudo-cryptic things. It sounded like something I'd say while trying to sound wiser than I actually was.

"My mother wasn't missing," Calico spoke quietly. "I was."

I frowned. "I don't understand."

"I was the one who had stopped living." She looked directly at me. "Not permanently. Just for those few minutes."

The breeze didn't move. The neighborhood remained suspended in impossible evening.

Children laughed somewhere in another summer. Harold rode his bicycle. Murphy chased another tennis ball. Every beautiful thing remained beautifully unfinished.

"I've been thinking about Walter,” I said. “He believes he's protecting love."

"He is." She nodded. "But he stopped protecting tomorrow.”

I looked toward the woods. "My father offered me years."

"I know."

"I wanted them."

"I know that, too.”

"No." I shook my head. "You don't."

She leaned forward, taking my hand in hers. She ran her thumb gently across my palm.

"I do,” she said. Her words came quietly, like a gentle knock on a door. "My mother would've watched me graduate. She would've embarrassed me at my wedding. She would've insisted on giving me advice I never asked for. I wanted all of those years.”

A tear escaped before she noticed it. She wiped it away impatiently.

"I still do,” she added.

"So why leave?" I asked.

Her answer came immediately. "Because they aren't there." She pointed toward the glowing neighborhood. "Those years don't exist."

"They could."

"No."

"They almost could." She gently shook her head. "That's the cruel part."

I stared into my coffee. The steam drifted upward. Unlike everything else, it moved. I watched it disappear into the amber light.

"My father felt real."

"I'm sure he did."

"He loved me."

"Of course."

"He knew things no memory should know."

"I believe you." She wasn't arguing with my experience. She was arguing with my conclusion. She set her coffee aside. "May I tell you something difficult?"

"When have you ever asked permission?"

She smiled. "Fair point. Your father belongs to your life. He doesn't belong to your future."

The words landed harder than any accusation. Because they weren't cruel. They were true. She continued quietly.

"You've spent your career helping people let go of almosts."

"I investigate them."

"You release them,” she countered. I hadn't thought about it that way. "But you've never released your own."

We sat in the kind of long, comfortable silence earned by friendship. One that didn't require unnecessary words. Finally, she stood.

"So."

"So."

"What are you going to do?" she asked.

"I don't know."

"I believe you."

She started walking away. Then stopped. Without turning around, she spoke one last time with the quiet certainty of someone offering a hand instead of an argument.

"Silas..."

I looked up. She faced the endless sunset. The impossible neighborhood. The lake hidden somewhere beyond the trees. And the father waiting there. Then she said the sentence I would spend the rest of my life trying to deserve.

"You visit there." A pause. She turned toward me. “But you don't live there. You don’t belong there.”

She walked away before I could answer. Leaving me alone with the one mystery no detective can solve for anyone else. Whether memory is a place to return to or a place to leave with gratitude.

*****

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