Griffin allowed his eye to follow it—in the moment, aware, and without judgment. He didn’t attempt to put in words what he felt. Maybe it didn’t matter.
Standing next to Clare was enough. Right?
The child skipped across the bridge, holding her mother’s hand. Her springy red hair was tied in two ponytails,and she was missing one of her front teeth.
After she and her balloon disappeared under the Merchant’s Arch, Griffin and Clare walked out onto the center of the bridge.
Clare pointed her camera phone off the side and said, “I love reflections because they look so dreamy. It’s like seeing the other side of our life, or wondering if we’re on the other side right now.”
“Likethe Otherworld is our world, and our world is the Otherworld.” Griffin bent over the railing and let the wavering reflection of the bridge float into his consciousness. “Do you think I’ll remember all of this after my surgery?”
She put a hand on him and whispered, “Just be you.”
He inhaled and exhaled, then let everything go, keeping his gaze on the surface, or was it underneaththe surface, of the slow-moving river.
It had rained earlier, and now that he was noticing things, streetlamps appeared inside of puddles, and even fire hydrants had their mirror world.
Epilepsy was said to be a shattering of the mind, a frenzy of nervous energy, and vibrations that overcame the orderly working of the brain.
Could it also be a gift? A diving into another worldthat was more real than the present moment?
He raised his head and looked into the transparently open face of Clare, the would-be fairy, but actual romance writer, and suddenly, he threw out all the labels.
“Clare Hart, you’re you.” He cupped her cheek with one trembling hand. “That’s enough for the moment.”
“It’s always enough for a moment,” she replied, and then her lipscrested to meet his hungry ones, and her kiss applied salve to his troubled soul.
He let the kiss go on and on, each moment stretching into the next and the next.
So, this was letting go. No more identity. No past. No future. Was this how a man in the gallows felt? Or was there an expectation of going into another world? Or staying present in this one.
Did it matter?
Maybe not.
Or maybe it mattered a great deal.
