A Bright House
Chapter 26

Choice time arrived for Jenny as she held the marble in a closed fist. Falling in love being so much more than chemicals in an avalanche, she felt it keenly that she still held a choice to submit or to withhold. How much would she attach to his sudden unexpected declaration that he could love her? That she already knew him to be a man of truth given voice, it didn’t seem possible that he would have said such a thing without a compelling emotional reason to.

Jenny walked across the old floorboards with a closed fist marble so cool in her palm, soothing the turmoil of thoughts and this notion of choosing which way to fall, how far to commit. She took a seat in the kitchen. The chair that Ray had occupied one night prior. She placed her marble holding hand down flat on the table, idly rolling the glass orb in small circles, eyelids closed to a panorama of possible events suddenly made available where for years there had been only routine and a willful stoic coping.

Just what energy force had birthed these new possibilities?, she wondered. Jenny rolled the marble and thought about the strangeness of everything that had been unfolding; this sudden arrival of a man unlike any she had known. An encounter with a massive bird that seemed to have flown from their island sighting and directly into her shed. And, perhaps strangest of all, her easy dropping of the protective armor in Ray’s presence. She had asked him to stay. He had been so relaxed, so himself even after the spoken “I could love you” that had clearly surprised him as much as it did Jenny. Sᴇaʀ*ᴄh the ꜰindNʘvel.ɴet website on Gøøglᴇ to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

The matter of fact way that he entered her bedroom to stretch out atop the blankets, as if nothing could be more natural or desired, at odds with the pounding of her heart as she prepared for a night of non sleep beside him. Of course he knew. He was reading her like a book the whole time, perhaps, but once again there existed that easy wrapping calm as she climbed into a bed that had all at once become a foreign exciting frontier. Ray already asleep, exhausted from the funeral and subsequent delving into Scott’s table scattered residue. Jenny, both calm and aroused, blown away, hungry for the minute by minute savoring of his presence.

Am I deserving? The thought kept looping. Jenny knew the hard way that deserve has nothing to do with it. A chain reaction of poor decisions and tumbling events had taken her man away along with the children they would have raised together. Her own visceral childhood pain would live within for as long as she had life, and deserve had nothing to do with it. Yet still, a whisper of stubborn lesson-reminder wanted its say. Choices made carried the power of influence upon deserve. Here in her world, in the palpable new now of it, she had only to give way to what was waiting to occur. Whatever it was. What a beautiful catalyst she had been presented with, in Ray Townes.

Typical of this known universe, it would carry a hefty price tag or it would not. This part of it was entirely out of her hands, yet she was still required to offer those hands fully extended, bravely and through all vulnerability, in order that she would be better able to grasp the unseen all knowing offer. The longer Jenny sat at the kitchen table that evening, the clearer it all became. Simplicity complicity. Worst case scenario was another mental exercise that she wanted to dispense with as she weighed out her emotional choices. What could be worse than the disappearance of her partner? Deciding that, yes and openly, she wanted to try Ray on if he was willing, carried the potential for great pain only if Jenny allowed it to be perceived that way.

She lifted her hand from the marble to gaze into it. The next thoughts then seemed an almost snakelike movement as they slithered to project her ahead; Ray returning to Toronto to be with her. Their becoming lovers. The decisions stemming from that intimacy and out there beyond all logical thought processes in her kitchen and marble moment, a life she would never have guessed possible. It was only natural to experience these projected possibilities and she wanted to ignore the niggling I have no right to take it so far warning.

Time itself snaked throughout the evening after Ray’s departure. Jenny cared little for the clock and was surprisingly energized given her lack of sleep, laying there beside a man in a bed no longer a self sacrificial altar bearing homage to Scott. To the tragic. Without knowing that Ray had experienced his own moments of physical longing upon waking, Jenny in her kitchen with his beautiful marble that meant so much more than it seemed to on the surface, came to terms with her own awakened longing. That which had been decisively shut down was in want of new attention. The raw physical attraction had been there from her first sight of him. It had leapt to the fore when she entered his personal space, could smell him and see the nuances of his expressive face and hands. The warmth and touch of him on the island when he folded his arms around her and placed those hands against her skin had been of a swooning power.

Shock into arousal into a melting need to cry out in favor of and against the unbidden sweet intrusion that had announced itself in a diner. Jenny lifted herself from the chair, picking up the marble, and switched off the kitchen light. The fulcrum had been swinging toward her choice, then met by a new distracting force. As she passed through the dining room it seemed entirely decreed that Ray’s pretty marble be placed back into its baseboard corner. Not doing so would break the chain of events that she had finally accepted as being hers to enable.

Risk of the heart carried with it a chance for broken tomorrows were their story not to write itself in alignment with her wishes, possibly his too, but she would not allow fear to interfere with the sheer poetic beauty of having a choice. An hour later she faced a mirror and saw a halo. Her slick fingers, heaving breath, radiant sheen in a glass made from the sands of time. She wanted him. For every aching exquisite reason a human heart can want, she wanted Ray. Before one of the best nights of sleep in a lifetime, she made her peace with Jenny.

The man who has appeared from nowhere one morning to insert himself into the fabric of Goderich Ontario cannot tell a soul who he is. He carries no personal identification. His last memory, in fact the only one, is of walking mile after mile through uninhabited rural landscapes that are variably forested or vast farmland acres. At one point he encountered a house that was sitting empty, doors locked and windows boarded up. He doesn’t recall when that was. This being the late 1980s and a time of economic recession, no surprise in finding deserted foreclosed homesteads. He is a man in his forties with no name and no story.

What lucidity and presence of intellect he may have once contained is now in tatters to match the clothing he wore when falling face first to the sidewalk. Taken to the hospital by Roy “Over Easy” and his elderly cohorts, the stranger slipped into a full tooth chattering shock. He was emaciated and frostbitten, his nose broken when collapsing, threatened with a potential for lost toes that eventually abated as his good fortunes and physical strength returned. Of these good fortunes, the foremost is Roy’s decision to take the stranger into his home.

Roy is one of the rare men to outlive his cherished wife of many decades. He lives a structured existence that is not rife with sadness, for their marriage had been rich and soulful. His children and grandchildren play active roles free of guilt and entirely from a volition of love for the family patriarch. Roy’s days are fluid in flow, comfortable and familiar and sweeter with every birthday, for he knows of the future reunions in waiting. His beloved Cheryl. His own parents and deceased siblings. He has a financial safety net and the supporting cast of friends and family that any right minded God fearing soul would treasure in the closing acts of a life well lived.

The stranger revealed himself to be a good person. His name and history had been taken by an act unknown. Police investigation and the taking of fingerprints, the searching of missing persons data countrywide; these procedures had come up empty. Roy, being relatively open minded for a man of his generation, had even paid for hypnotherapy sessions that also bore no fruit.

These early weeks in the saga of Goderich’s newest resident both fed the small town gossip circuit and exacerbated the anguish of the man who had lost who he was. He now lives in a home provided by a kind elderly gentleman, for no other reason than kindness, and this depth of anguish is met only by the stranger’s gratitude. Roy will provide for him. He will explain the man to those who enquire. He takes out ads in various newspapers of neighboring counties that feature a photograph and description, none of which result in a mystery solved. And so time does what it does best; it passes.

A routine develops in the life of these two men cut from wildly differing circumstantial cloth. Roy’s popularity and influence will assist in finding employment for his roommate, who seems to have little of skill or education to offer but harbors a work ethic which wants to hint at a blue collar past. As the weeks accrue and no memories or details return, the man must be given a name. He is asked and has no preference, but exhibits a flash of the wry in mumbling “Rich”. His nod toward the town that has saved what remains of his life.

Elsewhere in the elasticity of time and placement, a lead investigator for the Ontario Provincial Police department is rediscovering the definition of creeping crawling fear.

There is a surreal juxtaposition within the sights and sounds that surround him on the evening of the missing Kevin May’s photographs being developed. This professional pragmatic man of many years experience, hardened and sharpened, is home with the file contents before him on a richly appointed desk of burled walnut. His office doors are of the 1904 vintage of an Edwardian house that he loves more than is reasonable but perhaps can be understood when viewed beside the stresses of his job. Not being assured of returning home alive may be applied to anyone as they leave for work, errands, or pleasure... each day of each life is subject to the indifference of random occurrence, chaos energy in constant flux, and synchronicity.

A day in the life of a police officer seems undeniably a more fragile promise, does it not? Applying all of his experience and mental faculties to decades of these shortened life tales, to the solving of mysteries as applied to thousands who are found on the wrong end of a supremely indifferent universe’s methods, will underpin a cop’s appreciation for home and hearth. Safety. Safety and belonging was fairly steeped into the walls of this chief investigating officer’s home.

He could wear it like a sweater, sitting there at his antique desk with two French doors locked behind him unable to block out the comforting sounds of a television downstairs, his wife and three children floating up the staircase in voices that kept him glued to this world when all else that he was paid to do wanted to hurtle him screaming into the abyss of that which should not be and yet prevails.

At once his ears relish the lilt of his wife’s laughter, soon followed by reactive sounds of his children also laughing, and this collides with what is before him on the desk. He now stares at the opaque emulsion smudges of that which should not exist. The featureless pale streaks of lower extremities definitely not human. Had these images been placed in front of him, free of the exasperating mystery of two people simply vanishing, he may have had a chance to slough them off. But now there is a case history. A repeat unknown. A chain reaction of fact into fantasy that rattles him like nothing ever has.

What is he to do with this? These images are beyond explanation, of little actual use within investigatory protocol, and will open him up to professional ridicule. This is a strong willed man with a proven track record who does not appreciate feeling his back against the wall. Keeping a lid on this thing has taken a toll; he has been sleeping poorly already, deeply affected by his ineffectual thought processes as they apply early on to this baffling double-disappear mystery. And now, the photographs. A second gale of normally heartwarming laughter floats upstairs, but mister investigator can only shiver.

Where did the mirror, in all of its event twinning power, place Ray Townes during the span of time that enfolded Jenny holding the marble? A two hour time zone differential was of little consequence, for the energy of Jenny and Ray had become spliced.

Sympathetic resonance in energy has a self amplifying quality that is both inevitable and elastic. It responds most efficiently to a pure signal path that will place it free of a vast majority of external influences. This bonding twinned energy field attains its mirror effect no matter the overlap of time and place. It doesn’t hide from those able to perceive its workings. Quite the contrary, in fact. It is blatantly evident between twin siblings. It is also incontrovertibly apparent to those, like Ray, whose minds have been equipped with little understood receptors that ride a wider bandwidth. He lived his life in an ongoing intuitive fluidity, perhaps in part as a survival method after the betrayal of his mother by her own hand, but more consciously as a respect for that which had marked him as “different”. When Jenny was sitting in her kitchen, swimming in the waters of choice and aftermath, the man who could not stop thinking about her found himself in a nearly identical mirror. Almost, but for the lack of physical desire that had earlier made itself known to Ray.

Lights off in his bedroom, curtains drawn, deeply relaxed in body but with a contrasting mental turmoil. There are pressing choices here, he repeated over the cascading of seer imagery that depicted them atop the shared bed in shared thoughts. He felt a freshly intensified responsibility to her now, and it came with worry. As his fingers had held the diner teaspoon not many days before, Ray visually roved the shadowy ceiling and gently skimmed his right thumb along the ridges of an oversized feather.

Some of the clearest messages he had ever received had come attached to physiological reactions or sensations. He had kept himself from tuning into Jenny directly, (so lost in his own thoughts of what was about to unspool for they-become-one should they mutually choose the path that had evidently chosen them), Ray did not know of the passionate minutes devoted by Jenny to her reawakened want. As he measured the weight and scope of this newly altered course, making his own choice in a darkened room so a part of him, he only knew that they had entered into an amplification of combined signal.

Anything in their now, ever so possible.

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