The Firefly Hours (A Silas Sharp Metaphysical Mystery): Chapter 30

 

Kansas Summer Day
by Catherine Freshley


Chapter 30 – After Summer

Every season teaches a lesson. Spring teaches us beginnings and renewal. Winter teaches us endurance. Autumn teaches us that beauty and endings have never been enemies. Summer teaches us that nothing beautiful was ever meant to last forever.

I closed the Peterson file on a Thursday morning. Exactly four weeks after I'd first visited Laurel Lane. The folder wasn't particularly thick. A few photographs. Several pages of notes. Copies of county assessor's records. Hand-drawn maps from children who understood the neighborhood better than any surveyor ever would. A pressed firefly wing tucked between two blank pages. I didn't remember putting it there but I left it anyway.

Officially, there was no explanation.

The local newspaper settled on UNUSUAL ATMOSPHERIC PHENOMENON ENDS AFTER SEVERAL DAYS.

Meteorologists blamed temperature inversions. Psychologists blamed collective suggestion. Social media blamed the government. Someone always blames the government. Laurel Lane simply resumed being Laurel Lane. Lawns needed mowing. Gutters needed cleaning. There were barbeques and parties to attend. Garbage trucks complained loudly every Tuesday morning. Reality has an astonishing talent for pretending it was never interrupted.

Arthur McCreary finally finished repairing his fishing reel. He invited me to the lake. We spent an entire afternoon catching almost nothing. It remains one of the better fishing trips I've ever had.

"You know," he said as he reeled in a fish too small to keep, "Danny would've liked you."

"I wish I'd met him."

Arthur smiled toward the water. "I think you did."

Neither of us felt obligated to explain.

Walter Ashcroft built a birdhouse; one different that the one he’d imagined for forty years. It was slightly crooked and he painted it robin’s egg blue. He hung it beneath the old maple tree. A week later, wrens moved in. Walter declared them noisy tenants. I considered that measurable progress.

Dr. Calico Verde mailed me a photograph of the sun setting over Laurel Lane. The back of the photograph contained only one sentence. I tucked into the folder so it would be the first thing I saw whenever I revisited the case.

Which has been often.

Children returned to their normal activities. By the following weekend, Tommy had discovered baseball again. Emma had become fascinated with frogs. Lily announced she was "probably too old for fireflies now." She wasn't. She was simply ready for bicycles and sleepovers and whatever impossible adventure came after eleven. Children have always understood the secret adults struggle to relearn. They don't abandon wonder or mystery. They cherish it.

The adults took longer to come around. Mrs. Collins still looked toward the dogwood tree every evening. Sometimes she smiled. Sometimes she cried. Both seemed appropriate. Arthur still paused near the edge of the woods on his evening walks. Walter still visited the cemetery every Thursday. Only now he brought fresh flowers and stories about the wrens. The collective grief of Laurel Lane would always be there.

Before leaving town, I stopped one last time at the park. The children's Firefly Map still hung inside the picnic shelter. Rain had curled the corners. The crayons had begun to fade. Someone had added a new drawing in bright green marker. It depicted a swing set, a basketball, and an ice cream truck. Across the bottom, in handwriting that could only belong to Tommy, someone had written:

GOOD PLACES TO PLAY

I smiled and folded the map carefully. I left it exactly where it was. Some things belong to the people who draw them.

My car was waiting where I'd parked it twenty-nine days earlier, dustier and a little warmer. The passenger seat still held my notebook. I climbed in and tarted the engine. The clock blinked the correct time. For reasons I couldn't entirely explain that made me happier than it probably should have.

As I drove out of Laurel Lane, children chased one another through sprinklers. A husband planted hostas for his wife. Someone argued cheerfully about whether hot dogs counted as sandwiches. A lawn mower refused to start. Normal life had reclaimed the neighborhood as if The Firefly Hours had never happened.

Good.

It deserved to.

At the subdivision entrance, I stopped one last time. I looked back toward the trees and Arthur's porch.  Toward Walter's birdhouse. Toward all the ordinary lives that would continue becoming memories one Tuesday at a time.

A handful of fireflies had returned.

I thought about sitting with my dad at the lake and eating the ham sandwich with mustard, not mayo. I could taste it as easily as when I bit into it. Staying in the Firefly Hours to hang with Dad in perpetuity would have been easy, I suppose. At least on the surface. I’ve spend enough time in the metaphysical mystery game to know that it’s never easy. Once you think it is, the monkey’s paw begins.

Yeah, I’ve learned a lot as metaphysical detective. You can build a pocket dimension powered by your weed eater. You can open a random door and catch sight of what your life might have been had you made different choices. You can buy glimpses of the future in your quest to obtain certainty. You can sit in a chair that lets you forget the worse day of your life ever existed. The problem is with each of those comes a higher cost. For you. For those around you. Collateral damage, if you will.

The Firefly Hours tempted with a promise of forever with lost loved ones. What I learned, though, is that promise holds you back. And them. They need to move on. We can remember those we lost while still choosing to move forward. The two concepts are not mutually exclusive.

As for me, I honor my dad every day by simply remembering he loved me. And I loved him.

The day after leaving Laurel Lane for good, I sat in my regular booth at The Perpetual Egg Diner. The usual waitress, Vera, asked me if I needed a menu but I already knew what I wanted.

“What’ll you have then, honey?” she asked.

“I’d like a ham sandwich. No mayo. Only mustard.”



*****


My new comedic sci-fi novel, Someone Else's Book Club, is available on my website or through Amazon! 


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