And that's where my earlier confusion came from. When I had last seen her, she could barely speak, or move for that matter. But there she was, walking around and smiling as if everything was peachy. I had so wanted to tell her it wasn't. I wanted to tell her to lie back down, to shut her eyes and rest after an exhausting hospital trip, but something in the back of my mind wouldn't let me speak about that.
I knew my head felt fuzzy that morning, and my memory had seemed slightly blurred, but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't forget my aunt going to hospital, right? But it wasn't just that. It was everything. It was learning I didn't live there, anymore, except during my summers. It was discovering I had an uncle named Joe, which is another thing I'm sure would be pretty hard to forget in the first place. It was the old picture of the boy standing alongside my uncle on the mantle. It was that I wasn't even in the old trailer anymore. The trailer I'd come to love over the time I was here. Instead, I was in an actual house. A bright house, with two floors, and wallpaper that was still intact.
I tried to think back to the previous night, but all that flashed in my mind were brief images of heavy rainfall, a tall, strong boy that looked intimidating, and another person who I could barely put a face on. After breakfast with my aunt and apparent uncle, I walked back over to the fire place and glanced at the pictures my aunt had shown me earlier. The boy standing next to me in one picture, my boyfriend, apparently, was Jackson, a boy I'd met at the high school a while ago. I had thought he was only a friend. When had this relationship formed, and why hadn't I gotten the memo?
The photo of the boy standing next to Uncle Joe had a certain energy to it. The boy was attractive, and he looked very friendly by the genuine smile on his face. There was an eerie familiarity about him, but I couldn't put my finger on it.
I walked into the backyard of the house which, unlike everything else, was very much the same. A long field of tall grass and trees with a thick haze of mist at the end of it. I stared intently at the mist while a fear started building inside of me. A fear that the mist would disappear and never return. My legs started moving without my consent, some force pulling my towards this fog. I didn't try to stop it, though. It felt really right.
And that's when it all started to click.
The memory of the beautiful blonde boy from the picture on the mantle started to come back to me. Everything made sense. Every moment we spent together was playing back in my head. Every conversation was narrated by his disembodied voice and my own. I remembered his promise to change his prayer about the endless summer that he'd created, and that's when today actually started to make sense. I couldn't stop the tears from falling down my cheeks and my voice from saying the name I'd come to love. Henry.
My Henry. Henry Briggs, a farm boy from 1944 that space and time had, in some completely unexplainable manner that I would never stop being thankful for, allowed me to meet. But, he had to take himself away from me for things to correct themselves in our times. He'd saved my Uncle Joe after I told him about my Aunt Mae's long lost love. He'd sacrificed himself to make things right. In my eyes, nothing was right. Of course, I was thrilled for Aunt Mae, and I couldn't be more excited that I had never had a horrible, abusive relationship with Matt, back from my hometown. But nothing felt right without Henry by my side.
Hold on. What's going on? I stopped walking through the field I was only 30 feet or so from the mist that had brought me back in time before.
How was the mist even here? Henry was gone, he went missing in World War II, and never returned. The last time I had walked into his time, his brother was the one M.I.A., though he did eventually return after the Henry, his mother, and his grandfather had mysteriously left Rockville. Whether Henry was home, safe, or gone away at war, he didn't return. In both scenarios, he never returned. What could this mist be leading me into, then? Back to Henry, or back to his mother, grandfather, and brother in their farmhouse, or to the actual other side of the clearing, where there's no time warp at all?
The possibility that I'd never see my farm boy again frightened me, but I knew that it was very likely. The slim chance I had at seeing his face again, talking to him again, even it was only once more, was what got my legs moving towards the mist again.
I felt my head getting dizzy, and I felt weak, which is what happened whenever I went to see Henry. It made me excited. I reached the mist, finally. I stood only inches away. I slowly moved my hand into it, far enough so that I could barely see the outline. I took a deep breath and took a step into the mist, not knowing what waited on the other side. But I wasn't scared. Henry had taught me not to be scared and to do what I felt was right, and I sure wasn't going to let him down.