Falling in the Garden

Chapter Thirteen - Correspondence

Chapter Thirteen

Correspondence

During the remaining days of summer, Ashley and I spent our evenings talking about the past and the present. We learned more about our families and all the little things you discover when you fall deeper and more helplessly in love. We did not, however, (dared not) talk about a possible future we might some day together share, although the temptation was certainly there. I started reading some of my stories and poems about us finding each other, but it was too painful. We were too close to the situation to be able to look at things even in a fictitious way. Plus, we were both in our early teens. Our emotions often overwhelmed us, as I’m sure they do for most at this time in life.

Days passed without an e-mail reply from Sarah. We didn’t know if Ashley should tell Sarah about my discoveries in the Kasner house, so nothing was said. After a week with no reply from “my-time” Sarah, I wrote a letter to the address listed on the website. The letter was similar to my e-mail—simple and direct. The final day of summer vacation filled my world with no new revelations. I would still be able to talk with Ashley each evening, but it felt as if our magic time was over. I suppose I just didn’t want to spend my days thinking of other things. I selfishly wanted to be only with her. Surely this is close to the heart of young love?

I spent this final day of freedom doing things I wished I could have done with Ashley. I took the canoe out on Walton Lake, spending an hour or two exploring the woods on the opposite shore. I went to the country store at the bottom of Heaton Road and bought a blue-raspberry Italian Ice, the kind that seemed to last forever. As the day began to slow and the spaces between trees grew darker, I sat with my mother on our back deck. The evening was nearly silent as we ate barbecued chicken and steak fries with ketchup. We drank sweetened iced-tea from plastic tumblers I had won the previous year in our town’s Italian Feast. Staring at the large, red-white-green cups I realized that I’d missed the festival this year. I hadn’t given it a single thought at all until now. I told my mother I’d be spending the evening out in the woods again. She still had not pressed me much about what I was doing. As I was clearing our plates, she surprised me by asking if my disappearing acts at night had anything to do with a girl. She saw the shock on my face, then laughed light-heartedly. Amazingly, that was the end of the subject. We spoke about my grandmother, who was doing very well, her fracture nearly healed. We talked about my upcoming year at school. I remembered that I hadn’t yet checked the mail, so I excused myself, walking down the back stairs and cutting around to the front of the house. The night was cool, foreshadowing autumn, which happened to be my favorite season. Still, I wanted the summer back. All of it. I wanted more time. More time to figure out what happened to Ashley. It hit me like this almost daily. How odd to think of her at the same time a mystery lost to time and the beautiful girl I was going to be with in less than an hour.

When I reached the mailbox, a breeze pushed against me from the west. I opened the trapezoid-shaped door and pulled out a stack of envelopes. Bills and solicitations, mostly. The last envelope, however, was for me, the name and address typed rather than printed. The postmark was from California, but I couldn’t make out the town or city. Inside I found a single sheet listing various companies (some familiar) that had strong technological ties. My attention was drawn to the bottom of the page, past the various tallies of numbers and such. Beneath a heavy, solid black line was this amount: $38,640,410,000. I counted back from the decimal point three times. It was definitely 38 billion.

There was no further notation. The back of the page was blank. For some odd reason, this letter scared me. Worse still was the fact that I couldn’t move. I wanted to turn and run toward the woods. Run to Ashley, as if something was terribly wrong. I stared down at the strange sheet.