Time Lost by Elyse Douglas

Author:Elyse Douglas [Douglas, Elyse]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-02-26T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 27

Sally and Bert had finished their breakfasts, the pancakes gone, the bacon gone, some lukewarm coffee still in their cups.

Bert noticed Sally was fidgety, her eyes reflecting inner turmoil. “Do you feel like talking now, Sally?”

She looked at Bert, conflicted. Could she trust him? There was no one else, and she had no place else to go.

When she looked into Bert’s eyes, she saw a worldly wisdom, similar to what she’d seen in her Grandpa Fred’s eyes. He’d fought in a war, lost a business, and lost a child in a drowning accident. Despite it all, he’d laughed easily, and he’d been one of the most generous people Sally had ever known.

There was a similar lifetime of joys and sorrows in Bert’s eyes, and a warm patience.

“Bert…” Sally said, and then she stopped and tried again. “Bert, you’ve been so kind to me, and you don’t even know me.”

Bert rested his soft eyes on her. “I know you’re in trouble, Sally, probably running away from your husband. I don’t know why, and I don’t need to know, but if I can help you in any way, I’d like to, if you let me.”

She looked at him for a long minute. She took a drink of her coffee, replaced the cup into the saucer, blotted her mouth with the napkin, and then turned to stare out the glass doors.

“Bert… It was my son, Don, who first mentioned the lights in the sky. He said, ‘Mommy, last night, I saw lights outside my window, and they moved around in the sky.’”

Bert folded his hands on the table, listening closely.

“I said, ‘They’re shooting stars, Don,’ and then I pointed at the sky. ‘You should make a wish when you see them. Make one special wish, and it will come true.’”

“‘But Mommy, they move over the trees,’ Don said. ‘Sometimes they light up my window.’”

Sally lifted a hand, trying to explain. “I didn’t think anything of it. I mussed Don’s hair and told him to go to sleep. I told him that shooting stars don’t fly around the woods at night. I told them they flash across the sky like magic.

“Don said, ‘They don’t fly in the woods, Mommy, they fly over them.’”

Sally stared in front of her for a long time. “For a week or so, strange lights were seen over Rosemont. We lived not too far from here, Bert, on North Maple, but the street’s not there anymore. When we drove by there last night, it was all changed. But I remember this neighborhood. I loved the houses in this neighborhood, and the quiet streets.”

Bert leaned forward slightly, absorbed.

Sally picked up her fork and then laid it down again. “Anyway, several people in town said they saw those lights. I’d read about it in the newspaper, and people talked about it on one of the local radio stations, WQMI. It was one of those call-in shows. And I heard a woman talk about seeing lights in the night sky when I

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