Page 44 of The Pansy Paradox
“Henry, you don’t have to do anything right now. There’s no reason to rush.”
So he hadn’t notified anyone in the Enclave, not even his mother, until three days later, after he’d made all the arrangements to return his father home one last time.
Three days. And yet, somehow, Rose Little had known. Rose Little. In King’s End.
King’s End.
The notion had him abandoning the rest of the cards, and they went scattering across the floor. He yanked open the filing cabinet and rummaged around until he found the package with the security seal—the one his father’s lawyer had hand-delivered a few days after the funeral.
Inside, Henry had found nothing remarkable. Photographs, some mere snapshots, the sort that people had developed at drugstores. Larger photos, more professionally done, of landscapes at various angles. A site survey, perhaps with a bit more artistic flourish, but still, views from every conceivable aspect. At the time, all he could think of was that his father wanted some discretion in regard to these particular photographs. So, after thumbing through them, he obliged and tucked them away.
Now, Henry wondered. He wondered why those landscapes looked oh so familiar and why the drugstore where the photographs had been developed was in King’s End. Most of all, he wondered what his father was trying to tell him.
No note accompanied the package. There was nothing in the will. All the lawyer said upon delivery was: “Your father wanted you to have this.”
Henry tucked the photographs back into the package. He’d study them later. It was, after all, a long flight to Minnesota. Then he walked over to the umbrella stand and crouched so he was at eye level with the jade handle.
“Seems you were right. Again.”
His umbrella rattled the sides of the stand with excitement and delight and perhaps just a hint of I told you so.
Chapter 18
Ophelia
Seattle, Washington
Monday, July 10
“I shouldn’t be here. If anyone asks, you haven’t seen me.”
Henry always knows how to make her laugh. Were she younger—and actually conscious—Ophelia might lock her lips with an invisible key or cup her hands and pretend to shout the news through a megaphone.
“I need to go back to King’s End. It’s a long story.”
Oh, a very long story. You might say a never-ending one. It loops, and it loops, and it loops.
“My father left me all these photographs. I don’t understand what they mean.”
Just wait until you take a closer look.
“They all have to do with King’s End, so I think I need to go back there. I need to speak with Rose Little.”
That’s going to be difficult.
Henry sighs, and a hint of scotch floats in the air. Ophelia hopes he only drank the one. There are many ways this conversation ends, if you could even call it that. The outcome often depends on his earlier consumption of scotch.
The chair scrapes lightly against the floor, the sound filled with impatience and barely restrained fervor. Henry is a man who walks a tightrope between thought and action. Certainly, he is more centered, less impulsive than she is. It’s thanks to that impulsiveness that she’s here now, confined to a bed, unable to escape her mind and the Sight.
“But I’ve been gone for so long. I don’t want to leave you.”
But you must.
This is the one thing Ophelia knows. Henry always returns to King’s End, but how he returns matters, if only to her. He’s wavering, and the Sight is taking delight in showing her those scenarios, those other scenarios.
In those times through the loop, Henry is stripped of everything: his rank, his status, his job. They drag him before the High Council. He’s accused of misconduct, of crimes never committed. No one speaks on his behalf.
No one dares.
