Falling in the Garden

Chapter Seven - Details

Chapter Seven

Details

“How is it that we can even talk?” Ashley asked. This was, of course, the core of our mystery.

I told her that I had no idea. “I almost talked myself into not believing this whole thing because of that,” I continued. “There must be some reason. You said you couldn’t talk about your house. Do you think that has anything to do with it?”

“I’m sorry, Michael. I hope I didn’t sound too secretive, but Dad says we have to keep it a secret. It really doesn’t seem like it should be that big of a thing, though.”

“Can I say something about it? I promise I won’t ask you anything.”

“Okay,” she said cautiously.

“Well, it’s not just about the house. It’s about time. If you’re in 1946—”

“I am,” she interrupted.

“—and I’m in 1999, then if we planned it, couldn’t you come and visit me right now when you get older?”

“Sure. I’d be a lot older, though, right?”

“About sixty-seven. Can you do it? Say, visit me on this very day, right now in this same place?”

“Sure.”

“But you haven’t come,” I said.

“Maybe I’m running late.”

“Then come and visit me before all of this happened. Early June, when I’m still in school.”

“Okay…” Her voice was far less sure. I felt bad for posing the hypothetical.

“I have no memory of you from the past month other than talking to you in this way. The place where I am right now? My friend Joe and I call it The Meadow. There’s a foundation in the ground and I think that if your house was here, it might have burned down—”

“But our house can’t burn down,” she said, then stopped and began to laugh. “Oh, you tricked me. That’s not fair! I can’t tell you anything more. Not a thing. You’re going to get me into trouble.”

“Sorry. I wasn’t trying to trick you. I’m only trying to figure out why exactly you can’t visit me when you’re older.”

A pause. Ashley broke the silence:

“There is a good reason, Michael. At least, a logical one.”

I knew what she was going to say, but didn’t want to hear it. She continued anyway.

“It could be that I don’t live that long.”

I couldn’t say anything.

“Are you still there, Michael?”

“Yes.”

“That possibility doesn’t sound great to me either, you know.”

“I just don’t want to think of you like that. Locked into something that’s already happened. In a way, both our times are happening side by side. Maybe there’s something I can do."

“Like what?”

“Well, if something happened to you by accident, there might be a report about it somewhere. If I could find it and tell you when and where it happened, you could avoid it.”

“That’s true, but I may not be in Monroe when and if something terrible does happen. We have to move a lot because of my father. It feels like we move all the time. When I get older, I hope to stay in one place for a while, but not now when I’m with my parents. You could be reading newspapers for the rest of your life trying to track down every place we had to move.”