Of Orphaned Boots and Other Things

It was his night to have the kids, and Tim was determined to make this one count. He’d been losing them lately. Once a week wasn’t enough time to feel connected.

So he took them to the beach. It seemed perfect—fun, yet unstructured enough to give them time to talk while playing. The kids always wanted to go to a movie, and that hadn’t been helping.

Unfortunately, work ran late, and Tim didn’t have time to go home and change before he picked them up. When he told them the plan, his daughter sneered.

“You’re going to the beach in jeans and work boots? Nice.”

She was 13, which was probably part of the problem.

His son—ten, and easier—liked the idea, so Tim forged ahead. When they got to the water’s edge, he stripped off his boots and socks and rolled his pants up most of the way to his knees.

His daughter rolled her eyes. “Embarrassing.”

But once they started splashing around, they seemed to have fun. The kids got their shorts and t-shirts soaked, and while Tim had a fleeting thought of how mad his ex would be about that, he didn’t worry about it too much. They were enjoying their time together and actually doing it together for once. That was the important thing.

He did worry, though, when it came time to leave, and he discovered one of his boots was missing. He dragged the kids up and down the beach looking, but it was gone.

Shit, he thought, but didn’t say aloud with the kids there. Those were expensive boots.

“Why would someone steal one boot?” his daughter asked.

“Maybe one of those big birds took it,” his son said. “To make a nest.”

Tim said, “It could have washed out into the water.” They spent some time staring out at the waves, but if the boot was there, it had already sunk or floated too far away to be seen.

“Well, come on,” Tim said. “It’s getting late.” He had a spare pair of boots he could wear to work tomorrow. Not as good, but they’d do. He scooped up his socks but left the orphan boot lying on the sand.

“Aren’t you going to take that one?” his daughter asked.

“No point. Not much I can do with one boot.”

As the kids got in the truck, Tim thought about the next family to come to this stretch of beach. Why would someone leave one boot? the kids would ask.

Because things never work out the way you expect, Tim thought, and he drove his kids back to their mother’s house. 

Crazy

Her children thought she was crazy. Her friends—well, acquaintances would be more accurate—thought she was crazy, too. But her children were grown with lives of their own, and the fact that she had second thoughts about referring to her friends by that name told her she wasn’t required to take their opinions under consideration.

Her husband’s opinion would have mattered, but his death two months ago had sparked this crazy venture, anyway.

So Martha bought a VW van, chose not to renew her lease, put her things in storage and took off to see the country.

The idea had been simmering beneath the surface for years. She’d married young, had children young and had missed out on the adventures young people were supposed to have. She’d talked with her husband about getting an RV someday, and he liked that idea, but she knew, somehow, that wasn’t really what she wanted. RVs and RV parks were accepted retirement adventures. She wanted something even crazier.

When she set out in her van, she had no itinerary, no reservations and no plan. She would start by heading west—that was all the planning she’d done. When she was hungry, she’d eat. When she was tired, she’d sleep. When she saw something interesting, she’d explore, whether that took two hours or two weeks.

“And what happens if your van breaks down?” her daughter asked. “What happens if you can’t find a safe place to park? Are you crazy, Mom?”

Yes, she supposed maybe she was. And she liked it. 

Mirror Image

Carol was fascinated by reflections. It started with a childhood trip through a mirror maze when the circus came to town. She’d mocked the thing when she was outside—a real baby attraction for sure—but it became a different story once she was in there.

She got separated from her mom and brother. She could see them—could see two and three of them. Each time she ran forward, though, she just smacked into glass. She came close to real panic before her mom finally put a hand on her shoulder and said, “It’s tougher than it looks, isn’t it?”

Ever since then, she’d been unable to pass by a mirror without stopping to stare into it. Storefront windows became whole other worlds when the sun was at the right angle. Lakes were her favorite, though. Lakes not only made reflections, they made reflections she could dive into.

When Carol was underwater, she thought about the reflection on the surface above her and felt she’d actually stepped through the looking glass. She’d broken into the world on the other side of the mirror maze, the one where her mother and brother had hidden from her so long ago. Sometimes she made a game of seeing how long she could hold her breath. She liked to stay down long enough to be sure the water over her had settled and stilled to show reflections again.

There weren’t many opportunities for the breath-holding game now that Carol was an adult, but she still paid attention to the reflections. There was a bridge she drove over every day on her way to work. She always watched her car’s reflection race along the water beside her, and she wondered what it was like in that car, the one hanging under the bridge rather than over it, the one filled with icy lake water.

It might have been an accident. It might not have been. She might have been paying too much attention to the reflection and too little to the road, or she might have had a momentary lapse of sanity. Perhaps the reflection itself had cast a spell over her. In the crazy few seconds between the time Carol’s car slammed into the guardrail and the time she realized she was going over, Carol was as surprised as if another driver had crashed into her. Except no driver had. She couldn’t blame this on anyone but herself—or her mirror self.

The car filled with water. Carol fought to get out, but even as she fought, another part of her mind wondered what it would be like once she couldn’t hold her breath anymore and she truly became her mirror self. What would it be like to exist only as an image, something to be seen but not touched, something only half real?

That’s what ghosts are, she thought. They’re reflections. I wonder what the mirror is?

She stopped fighting to get out. She realized she couldn’t wait to step through. 

Justice House

The building had originally been a courthouse, but the actual courts had been moved to a modern structure on the east side of town twenty years ago. The old courthouse sat empty and might have fallen into disrepair if it hadn’t been bought by a developer and turned into upscale apartments. Justice House, they called it—studios and one-bedrooms, with a clubhouse in the basement that still had an iron-barred jail cell in the corner. A trendy place to call home.

Jack didn’t care about being trendy, but he had an idea the women he hoped to date would, so he felt lucky to get into an apartment there. It seemed to work. At least one of the women he talked into coming home with him after the bars closed only did it because she’d always wanted to see the inside of the place. “Can we go down to the jail cell?” she asked. “Maybe mess around some?”

It was an interesting night, to say the least.

Despite the perks, living at Justice House had its downsides. The pipes were old. The windows were drafty. And after a month or two, Jack started to suspect there were ghosts.

He didn’t get the feeling they were malevolent, despite the fact they haunted a courthouse, which probably meant they were either criminals or unjustly accused innocents. Jack never felt like he was in danger. He just felt he wasn’t alone, that something he couldn’t quite see was watching him.

He felt it most often in his bedroom. He never saw any ghostly figures, and he never felt an unearthly chill. He’d lie in bed, trying to sleep, and feel the undeniable presence of someone else in the room.

Being Jack, he decided to take advantage of his ghostly infestation. He called the woman who’d been so thrilled by the idea of messing around in the jail cell and asked how she felt about messing around while ghosts watched them.

“Ghosts?” she said. “I’ve heard every story out there about Justice House, but I never heard it was haunted.”

“It sure feels like something’s watching me in my bedroom”

She laughed. “So that story is true! I heard the builder cut peepholes in some of the walls, and left hidden passages available to use them.”

Absurdly, Jack felt less bothered by the idea of his builder peeping at him than he was disappointed to discover he didn’t have ghosts.

It turned out okay, though. His woman friend wasn’t disappointed by the idea of humans rather than ghosts. In fact, she seemed to like the idea. A lot.

Even without ghosts, living at Justice House had its perks. 

Lucky in Love

Sharon used to drive her husband crazy on road trips. She wanted to stop at every historical marker, every kitschy display, every vegetable stand. He just wanted to get to their destination as quickly as possible.

The divorce didn’t come as a surprise to anyone. Road trips were just one symptom of a bigger problem.

Once everything was final, Sharon started driving aimlessly on the weekends. She loved being able to stop whenever she wanted, with no one sighing or groaning or tapping his watch. Sure, she got lonely sometimes. She hoped she’d eventually find a partner who liked exploring the world with her. In the meantime, she got out on the back roads as much as possible, trying to make up for all the interesting stops she’d been forced to pass up before.

Of course she stopped when she saw the wooden head in the yard. How could she not?

Sharon pulled her car onto the shoulder, parked and got out to take a closer look. Someone had carved it, apparently, from a large chunk of tree trunk. It was roughly done but somehow magnetic. Sharon didn’t feel able to take her eyes off it.

“One-fifty,” a voice said.

Sharon straightened up in a hurry. A man in jeans and flannel had come around the side of the house while she’d been distracted. He didn’t look dangerous, but Sharon backed up a step anyway, just in case. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to trespass. I just couldn’t help stopping to look at this.”

“It’s for sale,” he said. “A hundred and fifty bucks. Heck, I could go one twenty-five.”

“Oh, I couldn’t. I live in an apartment. It’s good work, though. You’re talented.”

He laughed. “I didn’t make it. I was just driving around one day and saw it in the yard of the guy who did make it. He told me it was one-fifty, and it would make me lucky in love. Figured I couldn’t pass that up.”

Sharon smiled. “And did it work?”

“Not a bit. That’s why I decided to sell it. Maybe it’ll work better for you.”

“I doubt that.” But as soon as she said it, she wondered.

“One hundred, and I’ll haul it out and put it on your balcony.”

She hesitated. “Did you say you were driving around and had to stop when you saw this?”

“Sure. Same as you, I guess. How could you drive by something interesting and not stop?”

“That’s right,” she said. She realized she was grinning. “I guess maybe I could find space for it on my balcony, if it’s going to make me lucky in love. And if you haul it out there, the least I could do is treat you to dinner.”

“Well, I wouldn’t turn that down.”

She held out her hand. “I’m Sharon.”

“Mike,” he said, and they shook.

“It’s very nice to meet you, Mike,” she said. And oh, it really was.