JWP #27:

Scan the Shelves For Ten Seconds: You have 10 seconds. Look over your collection of other books, movies, TV-show compilations, etc. (Or sweep through your electronic library at top speed.) You have 10 seconds to pick one item. Now add something from that work into your offering – a setting, a plot-point, one of the characters. ("Watson, this dead man is marked with a mockingjay.")

The silence seemed to fill the cottage.

I wandered from room to room, more searching for something to do than out of any real interest in exploring the small cottage. Holmes had already settled in, I noticed. His pipe, collection of books, and other possessions were already in their places here that matched where they had stayed for years back in London. It was strange seeing his stuff spread about the room without any of mine.

I had decided I was not yet ready to retire, and I had opened my practice on Queen Anne Street the same week Holmes had finished moving, but that would not prevent me from coming to visit. I had managed a long weekend, and I had three days before my practice required that I return to London.

Holmes was out, probably running an errand in town and not yet aware that I had arrived, and I moved slowly into the kitchen, deciding to note what he had and make a list of anything we might need over the next few days. If he had not returned when I finished, I could walk back to town and get it myself.

Before I could start opening cabinets, however, a note in the middle of the counter caught my attention, and I picked it up.

"Went to the store. Back shortly."

I chuckled, setting it aside. That ruled out that idea. Of course, he would go himself to avoid me going for him.

I moved back to the sitting room, looking for something to do, but there was nothing. This was his house, not mine, no matter that I doubted he would care I had let myself in.

I ended up outside, wandering slowly through the grounds I knew so well. Here was the meadow, where Holmes had said he was going to put beehives…and where Mary and I had enjoyed so many picnics. Here was the stream where I had told Holmes my plans to stay in London—and where Mary and I had spent hours talking, laughing, enjoying the bubbling water.

Two layers of memories filled this place, one much stronger than the other, and glimpses of the past rushed forward. I had prepared for this to happen, and I let them take over, skipping lightly through time as Mary came alive around me.

The stream was shallow and clear, and she had wondered aloud once if there were fish in it. A baited hook produced no bites, but we saw many crayfish crawling along the bottom. I had told her the crayfish were edible, if she wanted to try to catch them, but she had waved me off, laughingly claiming there was no reason to eat such a strange creature.

The tall trees had captivated her, and I had found her sitting in the branches more than once. Each time, she had regaled me with stories from her childhood, both in India and after she returned to England.

The meadow would be covered in a carpet of wildflowers soon; Mary had so enjoyed the daisies, picking many of them to make a chain as she voiced stories of picnics on the rare days she could escape the boarding school. Occasionally, she had told me, she could even get one or two of her agemates to leave with her. They always got in trouble, but she rarely cared. The matrons never knew half of what they did out there anyway, she had laughed. India was where she had learned to shoot, but the meadows and forests around her boarding school were where she had honed her skill using a revolver her father had given her for her thirteenth birthday. On the days she went alone, she used the time to practice the skills her father had taught her in India.

I wandered further from the cottage, seeing years long gone much clearer than anything in the present, as if time had wrinkled, catapulting me through the years.

Playing together in the meadows, dodging through the trees, laughing by the stream. I felt as if she might be right behind me, if I could only turn around fast enough.

I kept walking.

Watching sunsets by the water, catching her reading a book on a low tree branch, bickering about whether we wanted to watch the sunrise enough to get out of bed, listening to the waves crash on the shore.

I eventually found myself at that small cottage. It appeared empty, and I allowed myself to stare, remembering.

Quiet talks stretching long into the night as we planned our future. Suppers with more playful banter than eating. Simple time spent hoping, healing, enjoying the other's presence.

A hope and healing that had abruptly ended only a few months later. How I missed her, even after all these years.

"Watson?"

I started minutely at Holmes' voice behind me, sighing as the memories faded back into the past, as the wrinkle in time straightened.

"Hello, Holmes." With one last glance at the small cottage, I turned to face him, my smile of greeting fading when I saw how he was studying me. "Holmes?"

He glanced between me and the small, red cottage behind me, and I raised an eyebrow, wondering what he was thinking, but he said nothing.

"Did you find what you needed at the store?" I finally asked.

"Are you—?" he asked, still glancing between me and the cottage.

"I'm fine." I smiled faintly, remembering the metaphor I had used earlier. "I just found a wrinkle in time."

He frowned. "A wrinkle in time?" he repeated, staring at me with a touch of worry.

My smile grew, partly to reassure him, partly at the chance to teach him something, and I put the memories behind me, ready and waiting to revisit another time, and focused my attention on the present, on the handful of days I would spend with my dearest friend before I returned to London and the patients I had left behind.

"Have you not heard that metaphor?" I walked toward him, leading the way back to the cottage as he fell in step beside me. "It is a concept based on a theoretical version of time travel using Charles Hinton's exploration of a fourth dimension…"