𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐁𝐫𝐢𝐝𝐠𝐞 𝐎𝐟 𝐅𝐢𝐫𝐞

𝟔. 𝐓𝐚𝐥𝐞 𝐎𝐟 𝐀 𝐒𝐡𝐚𝐝𝐨𝐰

As soon as we finished reading the letter our minds were dizzy, filled with so many questions. The thing was, Alice was an emotional person. When the emotion was strong it felt the same as truth and it compelled her. That was great when she felt love with a person who loved her back, that was what made living so awesome. But there were other times when it hurt her or those she loved.

So over time she had learned how to question these emotions, the negative feelings and suspicions, rather in the same way I learned how to lucid dream. In the moment of negativity and entitlement I asked myself one simple question, "How would this look if I were a fly on the wall?" Then I could take a step back for a fraction of a second, enough to regain self control, maybe not fully, but better. It had made my life so good, embracing the positive and questioning the negative. It was smart.

I didn't know what to say or how to react, the only certainty was that the situation was quite complicated for my taste and Alice's too. The truth be told, our aunt would never leave anything behind for us only to hurt us, this was important to her and our duty was to listen. Understand.

All those newspaper scraps, the strange letter and Jenny, she knew something about all that, I was completely sure. She was for sure alive and living in Snowshill when all those things happened. I turned to Alice, her eyes were puffy and filled with tears. Never once did she cry in front of people. To them, she was calm, collected, stoic. She held her head high and smiled in the face of everyone.

Yet as soon as she was alone, the mask dropped and tears fell. It was often for little reason, even the memory of the smallest thing would send her into heaving sobs, tears wetting her soft, pink cheeks.

I turned and checked the newspaper again, the date was 1956, our aunt Grace was twenty years old at that time. I had to ask Jenny, without her suspecting anything, she was already acting strange because I had found our aunt's journal. I didn't know what would happen if she knew we had found that letter.

"What are you thinking about?" I whispered. I didn't want to interrupt her thoughts, I could see that she was in deep thinking. Alice took the newspaper scraps and observed them, looking at them closely.

"What is that supposed to mean?" Alice murmured while she was staring at our aunt's letter.

"Alice, don't you see?" I looked down.

"Yeah. I see that we came here to have a good time and suddenly this is happening to us," she sighed. "She was always making up stories for us Victoria, I guess she wanted to leave us with another tale of hers. Our aunt had lost her mind in her final days," she murmured.

I could see that she was hurt by all that but I didn't think that it was just a tale, just another story of hers, it couldn't possibly be. Why would she do that. Anger was boiling inside of me. This wasn't a tale, it couldn't be...could it? My thoughts were messed and my mind was running with a thousand miles.

"Come on," Alice murmured.

"Alice, this is something aunt Grace wanted us to do," I replied while looking at her, deep in the eyes.

"Are you serious?" she asked me hurt and angry.

"Our aunt is not crazy Alice," I yelled at her.

Tears started streaming down her face, tears of sadness. The pain and sorrow had totally shattered her but with this, her throat was too raw with pain for her to speak. She kept looking at me without saying anything but at the same time she was saying everything. After some minutes she composed herself and wiped her tears away.

"Alice, if you could just listen to me for a few minutes," I tried saying but she cut me off.

"No, enough. People in this village talk about our aunt as if she was a crazy person and you know it," she told me with rage jumping uncontrollably in her eyes. "Now I am thinking that they were right."

I knew she regretted saying those words the exact moment they came out of her mouth. As hurtful as it might was, aunt Grace had left something for us, something that was important to her. Maybe deep down I could understand Alice, our aunt was there for us on our difficult moments after our mum had passed away but most of the time she wasn't. She was only there on summer's, Christmas's, as obliged.

So after all that, how could she expect us to unravel the truth. The truth that she hid so many years ago, if of course, all that were actually true and not another tale of hers. How could she expect us to unravel the truth when we were left completely broken. Completely alone.

She was there for us on our difficult moments and that was something we would never really forget. The truth be told, I was in the middle not knowing what to do or even say. After a while Alice's voice woke me from my deep thinking. I immediately turned and looked at her.

"I can't deal with this right now," she murmured. With one soft move, Alice turned and left from the storage. I left her alone, maybe she would be more receptive once she had calmed down. I knew deep down that aunt Grace wasn't crazy. She wasn't.

Our dad at his sickest his body was cage. He would never leave his family, his soulmate, his friends, or abandon the work he had taken on, yet he resented his beating heart. We tried to help him but he gave up, after our mum's death he broke down. Only a person already in his heart could retrieve him from such darkness, only true love running in both directions. In the end it wasn't just one person, but many, who brought him back. So for all the hardships of being "crazy," he felt blessed to know that he was so loved.

Aunt Grace helped him the most even though they didn't have the best relationship. She wasn't crazy, on the contrary she was a very wise woman. Anyone that developed a new sense was going to get called crazy. We were all just kittens in a box, none of us ever seeing outside of it and assuming there was no "box." We were wrong. She could sense it. She always felt the positive entity outside that guided her and so she helped our dad. He didn't let him open the door of his "box" alone, he helped him understand himself and the dangers around him.

Aunt Grace had mentioned "The Bridge Of Fire", again that Bridge. I knew Alice didn't want to get involved in all this, but I had to. Truth could be a strange notion, for it always relied on perspective. Can the two ever be separated? I believe the only pure form to be love, for that was a truth that brought us to the same understanding. I loved aunt Grace and even if that was a tale of her I would gladly live through it and honor her.

Once Alice would fall asleep, I was going to find out by myself what all the fuss was about. I would demand answers on my own, the Bridge would give me the answers, I just had to take another good look at it, the fire was still bothering my mind but I wouldn't let it have that effect on me anymore.