When It's Time to Move On

Door 5 - Chapter 60 - One Good Turn

Slowly the world came back into view. The pallor dissipated to reveal he was looking outside a house's front door. He stood in what appeared to be a drawing room. The evening bulbs were animated. A clock on a shelf to his left read the time: 6 'o clock. But the items that were next to it caught his eye. 

A number of frames with pictures of family members; a child playing in his mother's lap, a father carrying his daughter on his shoulders, three siblings laughing, a multitude of these pictures over the years that showed the children growing up.

By all accounts, it was an indication of a happy household, one filled with love and laughter, and the largest of the pictures – in an enormous frame on the wall to his right – had all five members of the family blissfully beaming back at him.

However, with each passing second, each glimpse of a treasured memory, Harris felt his insides becoming numb. Because he knew where he was and, more importantly, which day he was reliving.

How could he not? This was when he had taken the biggest step of his life. Countless hours he'd spent tracing back the root of his grief to standing right here. So many things he could've done, so much he could've said. He'd gone over it bit by bit in every conceivable way. 

Now, thrust into this defining moment once again, he realized there was no way he could ever have been prepared.

He attempted to drink his surroundings in, as nostalgia and affection had succeeded in making their way into his heart. After all, it had been years upon years since he'd been home.

Back where he'd taken his first steps, where he had played with his brother and sister, been loved by his mother, and spent his nights being tucked in his bed with a new story before he slept. Back where he'd thought he would spend all his days surrounded by an ever-growing family. There was no corner of this house he had not explored, nowhere he didn't have a cherished memory; he had loved everything about it. All until that ill-fated day.

He could not bring himself to move an inch. That grief and regret that he knew would very quickly overcome him were here, and he felt that lump in his throat manifest. It was all he could do to hold in everything, to prevent himself from either breaking down or running straight out through the door.

And then he heard the voice, the same words he had heard when last he was here. Still, they pierced his heart like ice.

"So this is it, then? You're leaving."

It wasn't a question, it was a statement. This was what had run through his mind the first time he had heard those words. Now, with the numbness reaching an excruciatingly painful level that pressed tightly against his head, he could barely fathom what they meant.

Finally, the moment of truth. This is what the light had alluded to; the regret he'd carried with him. All those years ago, he had not had the courage to look the person behind him in the eye, and he had lamented over it ever since.

Each door ran through his memory concurrently -- every conversation with the light, each time he had walked into the station. And every time, he had turned to offer a helping hand to someone. This time, he had the choice he hadn't realized he'd also had back then.

To make one good turn.

Harris shut his eyes tight and willed his body to turn around. Despite the overwhelming nervousness and hesitancy that once defined him, he opened his eyes.

There he stood, looking directly at Harris. The man he had never forgotten, whom he had spent countless days bewailing over. The once handsome, sturdy man with broad shoulders, exceptionally tall build, and strong arms that had carried Harris in his childhood. The face which in its youth had enjoyed a regal beard but now was home to a bushy mustache, hair that had been richly curly but was now significantly thinned, and the physique that had carried on in years reminiscent of most middle-aged men. The person he had once looked up to, whom he believed could make any problem go away.