There is this sense always when you turn back the pages of a lifetime and it feels as if that lifetime has remained preserved; frozen as it was
That life. That relationship. Those people you were.
To me, it is like you could see them there still; your ghosts haunting the hallways of scenes from that life. There they are still lurking in the shadows of rooms where the dust glistens like pixie dust and romanticizes forgotten pain
“Do you know where I am right now?” Bran. His voice. Alive. It reaches me through that audible organ my phone is pressed to; ageless and ….still belonging to that ‘her’ that ‘“Beth” who is what?’
But in slow motion I only comprehend the meaning as I am myself in this strange bedroom that I have only learned to occupy as mine of Sunny’s hunting lodge. No the bedroom is not strange. Just strange as in I am its stranger; new and not mine and I am not its
I belong to me. I am mine.
or am I? I look around me and wonder how to mesh the celves ….how to become its whole; how to find perspective with this voice that belongs to a man who once broke my heart
“Cardiff?” I ask him. And I fear the very strangeness of my voice gives me away
“Well…. I mean—where I am sitting….calling you from….” and that lilting of his accent befuddles my mind playing tricks with how it causes me to feel
I only realize when I exhale I’ve been holding my breath and need to breathe and must stop to inhale deeply as I pull the phone away a moment so as not to give myself away
I cannot find any answer though to what he has said and feel too dizzy to think
“I used to call you from my car outside, remember? I showed you ….”
“The same car?” I ask because I remember it from our trip when we drove from Paris to Rouen
“No—that one had a sad demise,” he says with a kind of heavy nostalgia
“So the same house then….” I say because ….because ….it was that life that won over me
“Well….it’s ….a lot different now—added on….” he says and I note he refrains from any pronoun
“How is Clare?” I ask as I put my mind on the frank reality of the present
“She’s ….she’s….” he sighs heavily
“And the child …? Should be —what eight right now, I guess?”
“Please Beth….” unexpected is the heavy sorrow in his deep voice, “you’ve been on my mind so much lately,” he says with a sigh of defeat
“Have you been reading my blog?”
“Do you think I ever stopped?” he asks
“I don’t know. How would I know?” I ask him. But then ask, “why did you call?”
He does not answer right away. But hear him moving around in his car. In my mind he is still in that old faded blue car with the mis-folded old maps stuck in the visors.
After a moment he says,
“I’ve needed to hear your voice again. Maybe it was that recording. Or….maybe ….I just wanted that glimpse back of feeling ….anything.”
“It’s been eight years….” and I regret how cold my voice says this
“I deserve that,” he says
“No—no—I’m sorry….I ….have wondered about you. I just felt it was best to leave you in peace.”
“Peace. Is that what you call this?”
“I don’t know….but still, I mean—I left Chris ages ago and even that life feels it belonged to someone else.”
“I’ve been replaced by a Viking,” his laugh is forced
“Not replaced —another who is otherwise engaged so to speak; unofficially still with his partner.”
“What happened with the other one?” he asks trying to seem casual
“Who? Eliot? The step cousin of my illegitimate father and his ridiculous ideas….?”
“Nicholas? The archeologist researcher, professor?”
“Nigel—oh, he was just ….that was….I don’t know; his DNA memory theory was really why but he—was….I think he was my rebound ….from you,” and only as I say this do I realize what that was, “why did you really call me, Bran? Don’t tell me it was to give me lessons in Welsh.”
“But….it would be a good excuse,” he says
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