Resolution

Chapter Three

She had always been good at remembering things. Dealing with details was a part of the way her mind works.

Most people forgot details as time passed. They lost focus of the events of their life, and only remembered that important things, the events, and conflicts.

She was different.

She could rewind her mind and go back to a time when things were simpler. Sometimes she got lost in her daydreams, her eerie memories. She would escape to the past and wouldn't be found again until something pulled her out of it.

Maybe it was this constant callback to times long gone that led to her melancholy disposition.

She didn't know if the flashbacks were a good or a bad thing.

Usually they were bad. She would get stuck in a place she didn't even want to be, a memory she didn't want to relive, finishing high school, or her grandmother's funeral, or some other dastardly emotional journey she doesn't want to revisit.

Trapped in her room, she finds herself revisiting new years eve. Not the party. She couldn't handle the party yet. But the rest of her day.

It started the way that so many of her days start. Late. She didn't set an alarm. She never did.

She woke up at quarter past ten, wrapped in her soft sheets, on the far side of her queen sized waterbed.

She rolled over so she could see the sunlight streaming through the tall window by her bed.

A bird flew past and she yawned. The sunlight was warm on her skin, a comforting glow. She watched the outside for a while. Her apartment was by a train station, and from her penthouse room, she could see a train moving across the tracks, inching ever closer to the city skyscrapers on the horizon. A boat was on the river by her house, taking a leisurely cruise. She watched it all unfolding, in the light of a bright blue day. It would be a hot day. She could feel it. Perhaps she would get in her swimming costume and get the driver to take her out to the beach. The southern one, where the cliffs rose above the water, and she could stand atop them and look down from a distance at jagged rocks and overenthusiastic surfers.

She would have to get out of bed if she were to do that, and she didn't want to leave the comfort of the soft sheets.

Yet, reluctantly, she rose, dragging herself from the bed like a bear leaving hibernation.

She went to the kitchen first. Rummaged through the pantry, searching for something she wanted to eat. There was nothing. She knew she was hungry, but she didn't feel like eating anything. So she just pulled a protein bar from the cupboard and sat at the breakfast bar. She found herself staring at the artwork on the wall of her kitchen, an abstract glass plate of yellows and blues. She'd always thought of it as just that, blue and yellow colours, but that day, she could see something. A figure of a distorted eye. She stared at it, intrigued at this sudden new finding.

Then, once she'd taken the last bite of her breakfast, she stood and walked out to the living room, and the balcony. The moment she stepped outside, she could feel it. She knew she'd been right, and that it would be a hot day. She didn't wait in the heat, but rather shut the balcony door and grabbed her phone, which was on charge by the TV.

Hot day, she texted her driver, could you take me to the beach?

The response was almost instantaneous. He had probably been up for hours. Of course, he wrote, I am ready whenever you are.

Her driver lived an apartment at the bottom of the building, on his own. He was a kind, old man named Pete, who had been driving for a the Kellers since K was a little girl. He always drove with a picture of his deceased wife in the glovebox, and was never without a string bracelet on his wrist His own daughter had given it to him many many years ago, back when she was a little girl.