The Firefly Hours (A Silas Sharp Metaphysical Mystery): Chapter 18
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| Fireflies by Daniel Hughes |
Chapter
18 – Calico Crosses Over
Every
investigator eventually commits the same mistake. You begin by studying the
mystery. Eventually, you forget the mystery has been studying you.
By
Saturday evening, Dr. Calico Verde had accumulated three notebooks, eleven
rolls of exposed film, two cassette tapes, and enough observations to make a
university psychology department very happy.
None
of it explained the Firefly Hours. She had merely documented them. The Hours,
meanwhile, appeared increasingly uninterested in remaining documented.
"We've
been asking the wrong questions." Calico stood at the hood of my car,
flipping through one of her notebooks.
"I
was afraid you were going to say that,” I said.
"We
keep asking what this place is." She looked toward Laurel Lane. "We
should ask who it's for."
Arthur
overheard us. "I wouldn't."
"You
disagree?"
"No."
He slipped both hands into his jacket pockets. "I just wouldn't ask out
loud."
The
children were already gathering near the moving place on the Firefly Map they
had created. The fireflies had shifted again overnight. The red X now rested
behind a modest ranch house with faded green shutters. Tommy looked uneasy.
"It
doesn't usually move this much," he said.
"Has
it ever?" I asked.
"Once.
"The summer Danny disappeared."
Arthur
quietly looked away. We spread out around the yard. No one crossed the
invisible boundary Tommy had marked with a length of blue chalk because rituals
matter. Even when they don't. Especially when they don't.
Twilight
arrived along with the fireflies. The familiar hush settled over the
neighborhood. The air thickened with cut grass and steamy pavement. Somewhere,
someone laughed. Except there wasn't anyone there. The laugh belonged to
another year.
Calico
stepped closer. Only one step. I almost told her to stop. Instead, I watched. She
removed her glasses.
"Do
you notice something?" she asked me.
"What?"
"The
sounds."
I
listened. Children. A lawn mower. A screen door. Wind chimes.
"What
about them?”
"They're
layered."
I
concentrated. She was right. Not one lawn mower but three. Not one
conversation. Several. Different summers playing over one another like radio
stations just barely sharing the same frequency.
Calico
took another step. Arthur stiffened.
"Doctor,”
he called out but she didn’t answer. Her attention had fixed on something
beyond the tree line.
"What
do you see?" I asked.
“I…”
Her voice was barely audible. She frowned. "...I don't know."
She
crossed the chalk line. Nothing happened. Another step. Still nothing. The
fireflies stopped blinking in an instant. Like they were on pause. Every light
hung motionless in the air. A sky full of tiny stars that had forgotten to
twinkle. The silence arrived next. Even the breeze disappeared.
"Calico,”
a voice called.
Dr.
Verde didn't move. Her face softened with recognition. A smile spread across
her glowing face. It wasn't the smile she'd worn while teasing me about analog
cameras or correcting my theories. It was younger, smaller. The smile of
someone who had unexpectedly found home.
I
started toward her. Arthur grabbed my arm.
"Don't."
"She's
not moving,” I said.
"I
know."
"We
have to—"
"No."
His grip tightened. "If you go after her..."
He
never finished. He didn't need to.
A
woman stepped into the yard in a pale yellow summer dress. Dark hair pinned
loosely behind one ear. She couldn't have been older than thirty-five. She
crossed the grass with the easy confidence of someone walking through her own
backyard. She stopped in front of Calico and touched her cheek with her hand. Calico
closed her eyes. She laughed a laugh I'd never heard from her before. Unrestrained
and childlike.
For
one impossible moment she wasn't Dr. Calico Verde. She was simply someone's
daughter.
I
couldn't hear the conversation. I wasn't meant to. The woman spoke. Calico
answered. They shared a sweet moment. The woman brushed a loose strand of hair
from Calico's forehead exactly the way mothers do long after their children
stop needing it.
Arthur
quietly whispered, "How long?"
Tommy
looked at his watch. "Too long."
The
fireflies blinked again. The light had changed. The shadows stretched farther
across the lawns. Calico took one more step toward the woman. Arthur inhaled
sharply.
"No."
I
pulled free of his hand. This time he didn't stop me.
"Doctor!"
She
didn’t respond.
"Calico!"
She
walked peacefully like someone following familiar footsteps home. I reached her
just as she crossed beneath the old maple tree. My hand found hers. The world
lurched. For one heartbeat, I wasn't standing on Laurel Lane. I was eight years
old. My father was teaching me how to skip stones. The smell of lake water
filled my senses. I heard his laugh, felt his hand on my shoulder.
Reality
snapped back like a stretched rubber band. Calico gasped. Her knees buckled. I
caught her before she hit the ground. The woman in the yellow dress was gone. The
yard was empty. The fireflies blinked normally. Crickets resumed singing. Someone
several houses away started a charcoal grill. Ordinary summer returned with
startling indifference.
Calico
stared silently at the grass for five minutes where the woman had stood. Finally,
in a voice so quiet I almost missed it, she said, "I remember now."
Arthur
knelt beside her. "What?"
"My
mother didn't smell like roses." She looked at him with tears quietly
filling her eyes. “I've remembered roses for thirty years. It wasn't roses. It
was sunscreen. Coconut sunscreen."
She
drew a slow, unsteady breath. I placed my hand on her shoulder.
"I
had forgotten,” she said with choked emotion.
She
looked toward the place where the woman had vanished. Finally I asked the
question I wasn't sure I wanted answered.
"How
old were you when she died?"
Calico
swallowed. "I was nine."
“So
you relived a memory?” I asked. “Is that what happened?
"I
don't think I just remembered my mother." Her voice trembled. "I
think..." She struggled to finish the thought. "...she remembered
me."
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