Previous: Part 1: New Adventure Begins : Part 2: Calling Holly
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I flopped back into my seat, my hands shaking, and sweat collecting on my temples. Everything was spinning. Breath was short. I was trying to chase after my mind, but my feet were stuck to the ground. I watched it fade into the distance and cycle back towards me as the smell of coffee filled my nose. I took a sip of the bitter bean juice and tried to relax.
“Are you okay?” Mahli asked, bringing me back to our shared reality.
“That was a lot,” I answered with a heavy sigh before resting my head on the table. “And now I’m going to have to explain all of this to her.”
“Isn’t that what you wanted? Sort of?” he said optimistically.
I shook my head. “I don’t know… I guess so, but it’s different when it’s in my head. It’s easy, planned out, and perfect.” I heaved a heavy breath out of my chest. “And that was not.”
“It’s always easy in theory,” he commented, “but we can never know how the future will play out regardless.” He paused. “So she’ll be coming over soon if I overheard right?”
“I’m already here, actually,” Holly’s suddenly familiar voice said from above. I jolted up in surprise, nearly knocking my mug to the ground for a second time, but I caught it just in time. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“It’s okay,” I assured her. “Mahli, could you give us a moment?”
“Umm…” he muttered. “Where am I supposed to go?”
Holly motioned at a table further in. “You can take my seat, Evette won’t bite. She’s wearing a bright red dress and has dark brown hair and eyes. Just tell her I sent you.”
Mahli looked at me, uncertain, but slipped out of his seat, backpack slung over one shoulder and mug in his other hand. “I guess I’ll see you later,” he said as he hesitantly backed up.
Holly took his seat almost immediately and stared at me hard, as if trying to pierce through me. “So what do you think all of this is?”
“I don’t know,” I answered, shaking my head. “Maybe we can figure that out together.”
“What’s your name?”
“Arthur, Arthur Compton, and you?”
“Holly Dyson.”
“Okay…” I replied, unsure where else to take this.
“Are you from around here?” she asked.
“Yeah, I grew up in the suburbs not far from here. You?”
She shook her head. “A couple hours away on a farm, actually. Only moved here recently.”
“I hope this isn’t over the line or anything, but are you adopted?” I questioned, the only question to have come to mind while she sat across from me.
A look of surprise crossed her face. “How did you know?”
“I’m an orphan too,” I explained. “Thought with how weird all this stuff is, it was worth asking.”
“You think we might be long lost siblings or something?”
I shrugged. “By all accounts, my biological mother died in childbirth and I was the only child born. Do you know anything about your birth family?”
She shook her head. “My parents refuse to entertain the idea I'm adopted and get very defensive when it's suggested. Figured they were trying to make me feel like I belonged with them.”
“And now you’re wondering if there was another reason for it.”
She nodded. We sat in silence for a bit, averting our gazes to the world around us. There was something piercing about her eyes, like looking in a mirror at myself and seeing all the ways I’ve messed up my life, all the ways I’ve failed everyone around me. It was uncomfortable, to say the least, but oddly addicting, like stretching just to feel pain.
“I guess I should probably ask my parents more about my biological family…” she muttered after a long time of being silent.
“You think?”
“I know it’s probably not going to go well though. After all, I only learned I was adopted through someone else, since small towns know when all the pregnancies are and when a baby shows up without one.”
“I can go with you if that would help. Might help convince them to tell you the truth since we both clearly look like we could be siblings or something of the sort.”
“Are you kidding?” she responded with sudden annoyance. “There's no way I could do that.”
“Why not?”
“Look, I don’t know where you grew up or with who, but my parents aren’t about to suddenly start giving out their precious family secrets with a stranger in the room. You and I might look similar, and I might look like your mother, but that doesn't suddenly mean that everyone is just going to do what you want.”
“Yeah, but-”
“No buts, I barely got any information out of them on my own, as their daughter. The only thing you’d do there is sit there and keep their mouths shut, then they’d yell at me about it when they have a chance. Do you think your parents would have done the same?”
“My parents gave me all the information they had, and I found out the rest,” I informed her, and there was a moment of surprise in her eyes.
“Yeah, well, we’re from different families. Just trust me that I know what I’m doing.” She paused and took a deep breath. “Sorry for snapping at you, it’s just personal and hard, you know?”
“It’s okay,” I replied.
“Can you send me that picture? It might help move their lips a bit, especially once I tell them about all this.”
“Sure thing,” I admitted before saying, “I should mention that it’s part of an article though. Do you want to know about what I found out, or would you rather wait on that front?”
There was a long moment of deliberation on her part. I could see the thoughts bumping around her head. On one hand, learning this sort of stuff from any other source than her parents felt wrong, especially if it did have something to do with her, but on the other hand, it could have nothing to do with her, or they might not want to tell her.
“Give me an abridged version of your parents’ story then,” she decided with a heavy sigh.
“My parents were both scientists,” I explained. “The police think that they were performing some sort of experiment when the birth happened, leading to complications that caused my mother to die. My father passed me off to an orphanage and hasn’t been seen since.”
“Oh wow, that’s really something,” she commented with wide-eyes.
“You’re telling me.”
“Alright, here’s what we’re going to do,” she said with a plan formed in her head. “I’m going to go see my parents and ask them about all this, about my biological family. I’ll report back to you what I find.”
“And if they don’t say anything?”
“Then I’ve got my ways to get the info, but it might take some help from you or Evette. I’ll explain it when and if the situation arises. Sound good?”
“Sure, but how are we going to communicate?”
“We’re in the 21st century, surely you can’t be serious,” she said to me as she handed me a piece of torn off paper with a phone number on it. I didn’t even see her scrawl it, but surely enough her notebook was open with a pen on it right on the table. "If this doesn't work, messenger pigeon should work."
“Alright, sounds like a plan,” I said. “Sorry for dragging you into this. I just saw you here and was suddenly overcome with a desire to know more.”
She nodded in understanding. “I know what you mean. I guess I just wasn’t as driven to find out.” She closed her notebook and stashed it and her fountain pen away again. “I’ll go back to Evette and send your friend back.”
“Thanks, and his name’s Mahli.”
“I won’t remember that,” she informed me with a smirk before walking off. I watched her go with my mind still spinning from the whole encounter. Around her, I felt something I had never felt before. It wasn’t like with Solenne, some sort of love. It was uncanny and unsettling, yet familiar and welcoming. It was like looking into a mirror and seeing a different version of yourself looking back at you. As I sat there and waited for Mahli to return, I couldn’t help but think that she and I really were from two sides of a mirror and something had shattered the barrier between us.
“I'm back!” Mahli declared with surprising volume when he returned.
“How was sitting with her friend?” I questioned playfully.
He let out a heavy sigh. “Honestly, a little exhausting but good. She’s exuberant, that’s for sure. Not afraid to be who she is and ask for what she deserves. Smart too.”
“Are you developing a crush on her?” I smirked. He blushed and shook his head.
“I just met her, of course not!”
“The last words of a romantic before they fall in love,” I commented with a knowing grin.
“You always say that,” he pointed out.
“And one day I’ll be right,” I asserted playfully.
“Anyways, what happened with her? What did the two of you talk about?”
I filled him in with the current plan and everything I had learned, but most of all, I told him how she made me feel. I figured that as a poet, he’d be able to understand or at least imagine that experience.
“Ever heard of anything like that before?” I questioned as I finished my second coffee since Holly had sat down across from me.
He shook his head in pensive thought. “Not exactly. I’ve read about stuff sort of similar to it, often called soulmates or kindred spirits, like two twin flames born of the same source that come to meet, but it’s not usually this uncanny. I’ll have to do more research.”
“You’re going to research this?” I was in mild disbelief. It seemed like such a strange idea.
He nodded. “And hopefully we find something that might be able to help explain this in the annals of history.”
“I.E. in poetry.”
“Basically, yeah.”
Surely enough, Mahli did his research. He came up with all sorts of examples in literature about something similar to this, but they didn’t properly offer any answers. Turns out it’s hard to discern the secrets of the universe. It’s not like there’s someone consciously writing everything into existence. We’re just drops of water in an infinite ocean we could never fathom.
A couple of days passed without hearing back from Holly. I checked my phone repeatedly to check if I had texted her already, somehow finding the ability to doubt it again and again, in a sort of disbelief that I hadn’t heard from her. I wanted to check in with her, but I was afraid I wasn’t giving her enough time, so I kept to myself, compulsively checking my phone, waiting for it to light up. And every time it did, I desperately hoped it was her, only to be let down by Mahli’s name (or my mother’s) popping up again.
As I stared out of my open bedroom window, letting the fresh but chilled spring air float into my room and body, I watched the world gently breathe. I wished on the stars hidden behind the clouds that she’d get back to me soon. Everything hinged on her now, and I had no control over her actions. All I could do was hope and wait.
Absentmindedly, I glanced at my phone, only to have it go off in my hand, Holly’s name illuminating the screen. I nearly dropped it out of my third story window to the cement parking lot below, but I managed not to. I flopped down on my bed and unlocked my phone.
“Hey Arthur… It’s me, Holly. I talked to my parents, and well, it didn’t go well… I know it’s late, it’s just that it was pretty intense and I thought you’d want to know…”
“Oh no, I’m so sorry to hear that,” I told her sympathetically. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“I’m already talking to Evette about it, don’t worry about it, but I am thinking maybe we call this whole thing off.”
“What? Aren’t you curious as to why we’re so similar?”
“Well we’re not. There’s a contrast between the two of us, you know that right? We share the same eyes and same hair color, but what else? We’re both orphans? But we grew up differently, had different experiences. We’re no more the same person as our parents are.”
The text felt aggressive and frustrated. I knew that I had perhaps been getting a little out of control with the way that I was thinking about this whole thing, but I didn’t think it was that bad.
“I’m sorry,” I responded, and went to write a full apology but she replied before I had the chance.
“You think that there's some great reason for why I look the way I do, but it’s some coincidence. This whole universe is just a collection of fucked up occurrences. There’s no such thing as fate, it’s all just random chance that screws us when we need it most.”
I didn’t have a response to this. I didn’t want to argue with her. I didn’t want to fight. A part of me did, a part of me wanted to scream at her and tell her that there has to be more to life than this, but I didn’t have the heart for it. So I didn’t reply at all. I put my phone on the windowsill, silenced it, and lay in bed, just staring at the ceiling.
My mind tried to wander to thoughts of Solenne, but every time it did, I dragged it back to the present. What good could come from lingering on the past? I drifted off into vague fantasies that bled into dreams and awoke the next morning with a heavy heart.
I rolled out of bed and dragged myself to the bathroom where I filled the bath with burning hot water and gradually waded into it. I sat there for a while, until the fan had sucked up all the moist air, leaving it cold and dry outside of the bath. The water had cooled to room temperature and felt more cold than warm. My skin was wrinkled and pruned. I didn’t know what to do with myself.
But the truth is that you can’t sit miserable in the bath all day. Eventually, something draws you out, and in my case, it was hunger. My stomach hurt so much I was ready to eat a bar of soap. I prepped a quick breakfast, and as it cooked, I retrieved my phone from the windowsill. On it were a slew of messages, mostly all from Holly. And one from Solenne.
Shaking, I fell back onto my bed, staring at Solenne’s name lit up on my phone without me putting it there. I didn’t want to look at it, but I was desperate to. The smell of burning eggs caught my attention, and I left the phone on the bed to go and salvage what I could of my breakfast.
I ate away from my phone, wondering how things were supposed to go now. Why was Solenne contacting me? Did she leave something here that she forgot about? I thought I gave her all her stuff back, as much as it hurt to have that whole process.
“So last night was eventful,” I texted Mahli after breakfast, actively ignoring the texts from Holly and Solenne, unsure how do deal with either of them.
“What happened?” I filled him in on the whole thing with Holly, and informed him about the 3 am text from Solenne that I had yet to look at.
“That is a lot,” he replied as Captain Obvious himself. “Want to get coffee?”
“I think that’s a good idea.”
We met at the cafe only a couple hours later, as fast as we could on such short notice. Our seat by the window was taken, so we moved deeper in, taking a spot against the far wall underneath a portrait of a woman being swallowed by a cat.
“Have you read them yet?” he asked.
“I don’t know if I should, or if I can,” I answered.
He nodded. “Do you want me to read them for you and let you know what they say? Like if it’s anything bad or anything?”
I nodded and handed him my phone. He unlocked it and started reading. It was an unbearable wait, probably like it was for him when he shared a poem. All you have to go off of is the way someone reacts to what they read, and facial expression can mislead us sometimes. But the look of concern on his face never went away. After what felt like an eternity, he put down the phone and looked at me. He let out a heavy sigh.
“What?” I cried out desperately. It was a little too loud, as some people turned to look at me. I shrunk into my chair and he took the opportunity to think how he was going to word it.
“So… Solenne is a person that exists…” he muttered, still struggling to find the words to express what he read. “And it seems this person would like to see you again for some reason…” There was doubt in his voice and on his face. He didn’t think it was a good idea.
“What?” I repeated, though this time I kept it quieter out of fear of disturbing the others around. I grabbed my phone and read the message.
“Hey Arthur, I was wondering if you wanted to get coffee at that cafe you like so much some time to catch up. It’s been too long.”
“It’s a bad idea, right?” I questioned, feeling that part of me drawn to saying yes.
“Of course it is,” Mahli asserted, but it wasn’t enough.
“Well maybe it’s important. Maybe there’s something she needs to tell me,” I suggested as my broken-hearted mind spiraled into hopeful fantasies.
“She literally says it’s to catch up. There’s no doubt about that.” He let out another heavy sigh. “I recognize that look in your eye. You’re going to do it anyway, aren’t you?”
“I don’t know. I feel like I should. It would be rude if I didn’t, right?”
“I think it would be stupid if you did,” he said, uncharacteristically forward. I recoiled in shock. “I know, I’m sorry. It’s just… you’ve been a mess for months over this girl. Getting coffee with her again is just chasing after more pain. You’ve been through enough with her.”
“You’re right…” I muttered, admitting defeat but I knew I was still going to see her. Just because we know something to be stupid doesn’t mean we don’t do it. That’s ninety percent of love, I’m pretty sure.
“So what did the messages from Holly say?”
“A lot,” he replied. “I guess she snapped at you last night and gave you a mouthful?” I nodded. “Well, she spent a bunch of time apologizing for that, and then suggested you meet her parents.”
“That’s a jump.”
“She explains her thoughts.” He motioned at the phone.
I switched to the conversation with her and read through it. Mahli’s summary was about right. There were a bit more angry texts before they became apologetic, and then I found it.
“I think you should meet them. I told them about you, but that wasn’t enough. Maybe you can convince them to finally be honest with me, and if not, then we have no other choice than to trick them. I’m sick of having my own story written by someone else. Let me know if you’re still up for it after all of this. Take care, Arthur…”
“So are you going to do it?” Mahli questioned. I wasn’t sure what he was referring to, but it didn’t matter.
“I think so. I need to know the truth. Maybe it’ll help me find a way forward.”
We started to plan everything, though I kept my plans with Solenne a secret from everyone else. With adulthood keeping her busy, Solenne (who still somehow wanted to see me) was only free in a couple of weeks in the middle of the usual work day. Unfortunately for both of us, I was free. After checking her parents’ schedule and deciding when would be best for he two of us to go over and talk to them, Holly decided that it would be best to do it on a Sunday afternoon, after their parents got back from church. She subtly suggested that I go to the church with them, but I missed it and laughed at the idea of going to church. That did not score me many points with her, and we agreed never to bring it up to her parents.
The day came after a long wait of working and thinking about it. I was distracted, more so than before.I had twice as many things on my plate, and the menial tasks that I did for a paycheck did nothing to distract me from the thoughts that bombarded my mind. The last time I saw Solenne haunted me.
It was August, I think. Sometime in the summer, when the bright sunny days start to all blend together, when I can only tell the passage of time by the flowers that are in bloom. Solenne and I had been spending our nights apart from each other. I didn’t think much of it at the time. I just figured that we were trying to avoid the summer heat since neither of our places had proper air conditioning and two bodies sleeping near each other was basically a death sentence.
We met at the same old cafe that I kept returning to despite all the memories that haunted it. We sat outside on the little patio set up on the deck. The street was busy with strangers, the smell of exhaust in the air, along with wet asphalt from the business across the street hosing down the sidewalk by them. The sound of kids could be faintly heard by the nearby neighbourhood, and all around it was a good day. It was obscenely hot, but that was the price we paid for good summer days.
Solenne was wearing a beautiful blue sundress with flowery flats and a pair of large sunglasses that covered most of her face. It was hard to know if she was looking at me or not the whole time. I never liked sunglasses that much. They always seemed to distort reality and hide people’s eyes. It messed with my ability to identify people, and that made me uncomfortable.
“Nice to see you,” I said with a loving grin as she sat down at my table. “Feels like it’s been forever since I last saw you.”
“Yeah, well these summer days have been incredibly hot. I’ve been trying to stay cool.”
“Right, yeah, I get that. I don’t know how many cold showers I’ve taken in the past week. I’m worried I might drain the entire lake myself.”
I didn’t have any suspicions that everything was going to change, but it did feel weird being with her. She wasn’t smiling at me, and refused to banter with me when the opportuntiy presented itself. I brushed it off as the heat getting to her head. It’s hard to want to laugh and be pleasant when your body feels like it’s about to shut down.
“Look, I wanted to meet here for a reason,” she said ominously, long flowing blonde hair blowing in the wind.
“For the great iced coffee? Cause honestly I find it’s subpar,” I joked desperately.
I couldn’t tell if she was giving me a disappointed stare or not, but in hindsight, she was probably trying not to actively be annoyed by me. “No, that’s not why. I just wanted to tell you this in person, in a place where you were comfortable. And I didn’t want to go to your apartment…”
That was when I clued into what was happening, but I didn’t want to admit it to myself. I wanted to deny that reality with every part of my body. There was a rhythm to her words, one that only led to one place. One of heartbreak and a future where I feel miserable for months, pining over someone who wants nothing to do with me, not that I fully knew that was my future.
“It’s over between us,” she told me with a sad yet somehow cold tone. “I can’t be in this relationship anymore. I hope you understand…”
I was in shock (obviously). I desperately wanted to see her eyes, to know what they were trying to say, but she had already denied me that benefit. So I looked around, checking for on-lookers to see how loud I could be. I took a deep breath and tried to hold back the tears that were welling up with all the quiet force of a flower bursting through the soil.
“Why?” I said between poor attempts at not sobbing so pathetically.
“There’s a thousand reasons,” she answered, shaking her head. “But we’re miserable together. I’m your answer for everything, but that’s not how things should be. I’m sick of having to be myself and the rest of you all the time. I shouldn’t have to carry that burden…” She paused. “I had hoped that these weeks apart might have helped with that, but instead all you do is sit around and wait for me to respond to your texts.” She moved to get up.
“Wait, don’t go,” I cried out louder than I should have. She let out a heavy sigh as she looked down at me, eyes concealed by big flashy sunglasses.
“I’m sorry, Arthur. Goodbye.”
I watched powerless as she walked down the stairs onto the street below. She didn’t look back. She just kept walking. I don’t know exactly how long I sat there, my eyes locked on the horizon that had once been graced with her figure, but eventually Farah came by, having been checking the outside table for dishes.
“Arthur? Are you okay?” she asked as she reached over the table and grabbed my long empty mug.
I snapped back to reality, leaving the spiraling thoughts of all the things I had done wrong for another time. I blinked and wiped away the tears that had wet my face without my noticing. I choked out a small fake laugh and nodded.
“Yeah, I’m okay, just spaced out for a while there is all,” I lied.
She gave me a sad knowing look. “How about a refill?” she offered. “On me.”
“It’s okay,” I reassured her. “I-”
“You know what, you’ve never tried anything more interesting on the menu,” she suddenly declared, cutting me off. “I am going to treat you to a cappuccino. Don’t fight it, it’s already been decided. Just stay here and try not to space out anymore. I’ll be right back.”
“Alright…” I muttered. I watched her leave through the corner of my eye, unwilling to move my head much farther from the position that it was in when Solenne left.
When Farah returned with the cappuccino, I was ready to drift off again into sad thoughts of Solenne, but instead she sat down across from me, blocking my vision with her dark brown hair and understanding eyes.
“Shouldn’t you get back to work?” I questioned, a part of me desperate to get rid of her.
“I’m on a break,” she informed me with a small smile. “Figured I’d spend it hanging out with you. Let’s talk. About anything, it doesn’t matter.”
So we talked. At first it was slow coming and difficult, but after a few minutes, we found the stride that we always managed to find. It was nice, freeing, and liberating. For about 15 minutes, I almost forgot about what just happened and found solace in a friend. We haven’t spoken about that day since, but I’m reminded of it every time I go to the cafe. It’s one of the reasons I can still manage to go there after what happened.
“Ready to meet my parents?” Holly asked me as we met at the cafe that fateful early Sunday afternoon.
“I am a little uncomfortable with that question. The last time I met a girl’s parents, well, it didn’t go well,” I answered with a light chuckle.
“Well we’re not dating, so hopefully that will help,” she commented as she led me to her car. “I’m parked just over here. Do you drive?”
“Me? No. Never got around to it. I think I just got used to taking the bus and stuff. Makes it easier not to have as much of a carbon footprint.”
“I’m not sure it counts as a good lifestyle choice when it’s just out of laziness,” she teased, laughing as she unlocked her little white Prius.
“How far is the drive?” I asked as I carefully got into the passenger seat.
“Only about an hour.”
“Only? That’s a while.”
“Oh you haven’t seen anything. This is a big country, lots of places are farther than that. Haven’t you been to literally any other city before? The closest one is like 2 hours away.”
“Maybe when I was a kid?” I answered, realizing that I hadn’t left the city in years. I got settled here and never thought about venturing out. Like a boring person.
“You know there’s a whole world out there, right?” she questioned as we pulled out of the parking lot. “Lots to see and do.”
“I can do basically everything I want here, and I’m pretty content with what I’ve seen.”
“I don’t think I fully understand you,” she said in a joking tone but I could tell she was serious and just avoiding conflict with a new person.
A while of silence passed between us. Well, a while of a radio station occasionally playing songs but mostly their radio host being annoying with poor jokes and the kind of bubbly personality that makes you want to walk away, but I couldn’t cause I was stuck in the car.
The city blur outside gradually changed from tall buildings to suburban neighbourhoods just off of the highway. After a little bit, those become farms, and those farms turn to wilderness. A part of me has always loved the idea of the woods on the outskirts of a city, where the touch of mankind stops and the nature begins again. But in reality, there’s always something behind those trees that we don’t know about, whether that is somebody’s house or a sleeping bear, though the first is more likely.
“So what’s on your mind?” Holly asked about halfway through the long quiet journey. I glanced over at her and shrugged.
“I don’t know. Trees and stuff, I guess,” I answered but my mind had found its way back to Solenne.
“Yeah, sure you are,” she replied, chuckling though there seemed to be a little frustration in it.
“What about you? What are you thinking about?”
“I’m having a lot of second thoughts about this, honestly,” she told me following it with an honest sigh.
I didn’t respond. I knew the whole thing seemed like a bad idea. Is the truth really worth risking her relationship with her parents? I don’t know, yet here we are, preparing to do exactly that. I felt selfish. If it wasn’t for me and my wants, none of this would be happening. She could have just gone on with her life instead of chasing after a truth that might not be worth knowing.
“So what do you think they’ll say?” I questioned instead. “Like when they see me?”
“Do you think we’ll have to tell them about the similarities?” she questioned in return. “Or do you think they’ll look at you and know I wasn’t lying?”
“I have no idea,” I answered. “I don’t know your parents, but I feel like we look enough alike to make anyone do a double-take.” I took a deep breath and decided to get honest. “Look, you don’t have to go through with this. I know I just popped up and started causing trouble. You don’t have to-”
“It’s not only about you,” she reminded me with a sharp tone, her eyes still locked on the road ahead of us. “You may have started this, but they’ve hid my past from me for too long. I deserve to know the truth.”
“Sorry for trying to apologize then,” I said in a confused questioning tone. She briefly glances in my direction and grins.
“Just behave yourself around my parents and we’ll be fine,” she told me in a playful tone. “No loud outbursts, and no insisting anything. I’ll handle it.”
“You got it, Holly,” I agreed, saying her name just to say it. I was still grasping with the idea that she shared her name with my mother, and it was a nice name.
It was another twenty minutes of driving once we pulled off of the highway. Farms and fields covered the landscape, with a couple misplaced looking mountains far in the distance, two twin peaks among an otherwise flat land. They were still covered in snow, two white giants above the spring melt.
She pulled into a dirt driveway and motioned at the house at the end of the ridiculously long driveway. “That’s home. Or my childhood home. It’s not much, but it did the job.”
“It’s nice,” I said sincerely, looking at the well-kept farmhouse surrounded by apple trees getting ready to grow apples. Just past it is a small shed where the tools are kept, and out in the now-wild field on the right, a broken and beaten down barn stood ready to collapse.
“You think it’s nice now, but my dad’s really hard headed so they never got air conditioning and still heat the house with a wood stove. You do not want to be here in a summer like the one we had last year,” she informed me, reminding me of the heat that had separated Solenne and I.
I pushed those thoughts far out of my mind as I slipped out of her little white car. The spring sun was right at the top of the sky, trying to melt away all the snow as fast as possible so life can continue on again. Some birds I can’t name were chirping and singing from somewhere, but I couldn’t say where. Their songs just echoed through the air until they found me.
“Are you ready for this?” Holly questioned with the sun making her pale brown hair look almost blonde.
“I don’t think it matters if I am,” I responded with a chuckle. “We’re here. They’re bound to notice us standing out here eventually.”
She chuckled. “I like that you’re keeping the humor alive. You look nervous.”
“I think I’ve explained this to you before. Last time it didn’t go well.”
“What happened? Just a brief version before we go in.”
I didn’t want to tell her the brief version, but there was no point in hiding it. “Her parents thought I was a deadbeat with no goals of my own.”
“Wow, they figured that out with the first meeting? That’s rough,” she said sympathetically. “Is it true though?”
“I guess it was,” I answered with a shrug. “Let’s go in.”
She nodded and led me to the front door. She knocked, and then entered. I awkwardly followed after her. The interior of the house looked like a stereotypical grandparent’s house. Old photographs in frames dotted the wall, from war photos to family photos. The moment we entered, I noticed a bunch of them leading up the classic wooden staircase on the right that were just pictures of Holly as she grew up. If she was actually my mother sent forward in time and un-aged, then her parents must have gone through the same thing.
“Hey, it’s me! I brought a friend over!” she called out into the house, buzzing with the noise from a TV just out of range to make out what’s on it.
An older woman of about seventy appeared in the doorway at the end of the hallway. She had curly grey hair, was wearing a knitted sweater and old loose jeans. She was a thin woman and not terribly tall either. She wasn’t wearing glasses, but besides that she was almost a cookie-cutter grandma. A look of surprise shot across her face when she saw me pop up from behind Holly.
“Is this..?” she muttered before a smaller likewise old and grey man wandered up behind her, poking his head over her shoulder.
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Part 4: Meeting the Parents
-Zero
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