As he walked up the stairs he saw more pictures of the
children he saw in the picture frame on the hutch in frames of bronze lining
the walls. Most of the pictures were staged in a studio depicting the kids at
different ages as they grew up. A few other shots that lined the walls showed
the kids at play in a yard or by a creak. Here there was a picture of one of
the boys learning to ride a bicycle as the father held on to the back of the
seat. There a picture hung showing the older kid posing in a middle school
football uniform.
The young man felt as though he
should be able to recall the boys’ names, but nothing was coming to mind. A
sense of nostalgia creeped over him as he walked through the house, but he
couldn’t figure out where the sense came from. Everything seemed just where it
should be as if he would have put it here if he lived here. Had he lived there?
He looked around the second floor
of the house. Off to the left near the stairs and before the first bedroom
stood a small cabinet with a couple of drawers. The young man walked up to the
cabinet and opened up the top drawer. Inside he found various cards that
celebrated various holidays and birthdays for the family members.
One of the cards read, “George,
Dorothy, Ronny, and Jimmy, We hope you have a very merry Christmas and the
happiest of New Years! Love Andrew and Wendy” From this card he determined that
the patriarch of the family must be George, and his wife was Dorothy, the
mother of the children who were Ronny and Jimmy. As he dug through the cards
and looked at a few more his suspicions were confirmed with a few anniversary
cards written from George to Dorothy and from Dorothy to George. Out of
curiosity, he pulled all of the anniversary cards out of the drawer and made
two stacks: one stack comprised solely of the cards addressed to George and
another of the ones solely addressed to Dorothy. After he was sure he had all
of the anniversary cards, he counted each stack. When he was done, each stack
had fifteen cards in them, so he felt confident in saying that the couple had
been married for fifteen years.
He pulled out the birthday cards
for Ronny and Jimmy, some of which were addressed to Ronald and James, and
isolated the ones that were signed, “Love Mom and Dad.” For their number of
birthday cards he came up with nine for Ronny and two for Jimmy. He went
through the drawer again, but realized that they probably didn’t get cards for
the kids until they were old enough to appreciate them. Especially considering
they both looked a bit older than nine and two.
He took all of the cards and placed
them back in the drawer. For a moment, he thought about going further down the
hall but he didn’t know exactly how long he had here so he decided to explore
the upstairs a little more.
Looking over the layout of the
upstairs there were four doors leading to rooms, two on either wall to his left
or right, and across the hall was a window that stood partially propped open.
He came to the first door on his right and looked in. This was obviously the
boys’ room. Hanging from middle
of the ceiling was a complete replica of the solar system. On the far wall just
above the bed was a poster of the band The Beatles, and hanging over the bed
closest to the door was a poster of the band The Rolling Stones. Above the head
of each bed were the names of each boy carved in stained wood. James slept in
the far bed while Ronald slept in the bed closest to the door.
From the look of the room, the
young man assumed that James was the younger of the two. James’ side of the
room was littered with toys that an older boy most likely wouldn’t be
interested in from a Major Matt Mason doll and matching Jane Apollo to assorted
GI Joes and the Batman and Robin who assisted them with their matchbox cars.
The man questioned if the parents would scold young James when they saw the
shape of his side of the room. The thought made the young man laugh a little to
himself.
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