The Hardcastle’s pond

 

Electra writes

“on one hand, there is affirmation that my wild fears were accurate and not wild imaginings of a conspiracy theory about what would happen on November 2024  but ….”

   ….silence—and pause 

“Jörn’s government has ‘called’ him back indefinitely… so I find myself alone and back at the penthouse of Ethan Rhys Jones, my dna multicultural late dad’s, and obsessively thinking while searching for answers to anything that gives any value as to why I ever was thrown upon this course and why …I even am; exist

“I could either return back to the barn house which is close to Canada by minutes or ….

“Or…. 

“Organize everything that I so far know….

 

I beg your pardon. I fear I have lost my appetite for spy stories and war games. The James Bond appeal seems from a bygone dream 

so I shall dream another dream 

somewhere else

“Don’t evade the question, Bran. Why now after so much time?”

but he doesn’t answer for awhile. 

we fall silent. 

Then he says after a long sigh,

“I don’t know.”

“Rather ….answer me this, why did you go back to Clair? Why did you really? I never asked you and you never explained it to me and at the time I just assumed you just didn’t really love me….didn’t love me enough….just didn’t love me, it was just a wild fling, then, wasn’t it?”

“No—that’s not it,” he says in that dry voice  

“Oh it doesn’t matter —only why do you worry if —I don’t matter, not enough—not to actually have you make room in your life for me….”

“It was not that—it was me….Beth, if you must know, it was because I was just a coward.”

He calls

“Are you ok?” he asks me

“No,” I say

“I know. I can still sense things like this about you,” he says

“Why?” I ask him “and why now after so much time?”

“Because I worry about you. Someone has to,” he says 

“What are you doing for money these days?” he asks me

“Just the usual.”

“I don’t want you depending on that spy—you need money….Commission me six new images,” he says