You Are My Sunshine
This is chapter 41 of The Inheritance, a serial fiction novel on FITK
Sunday Afternoon, October 3, 2020, Seattle
Sean Carroll had just connected on Facetime with his Icelandic son Villí who lived in Reykjavík with his mother, Þora.
“Hæ, hæ, Villí!“ said Sean upon seeing the boy, “How is everything?”
“Hæ, Pabbi, I am OK,” said the boy, “I have a new jacket for winter.” Villí stood up and turned around for the camera.
“Ooh, that looks to be warm, has it been cold there yet?”
“Næ,næ, not cold, 7°, we went swimming today, it was nice.”
“Are you taking lessons in school now?”
“Já, I can swim two laps!”
“That’s good, you are becoming a real fish!” said Sean, “How is school going?”
“OK, but there is this stelpa, this girl, Didú, she makes fun of me, I don’t like that.”
“How does she act with the other children?”
“She’s nice to them. Only me is she mean to.”
“She might really like you a little and doesn’t know how to show it. Always be nice to her, you never know with girls. She might become your best friend.”
Villí was silent for a moment. “Did you have a girl best friend when you were young?” he said.
“Oh, yes, Suzy Johnson, we were best of friends, and I even saw her last summer and we are still good friends,” said Sean, “So be nice to Didú, you can use all the friends you can get.”
Once again Villí was quiet. Finally, he spoke: “Pabbi minn, when will you and Mareka come back to Ísland?”
“As soon as it is allowed. Maybe next summer. We don’t know yet.”
“OK,” said Villí, sadly, “Can I talk to Mareka?”
“Of course, she’s in the kitchen, I’ll get her,” Sean called for Villí’s half-sister Mareka and then went back to the web cam:
“Hæ, Villí, þú ert sólskinið mitt… ”
After Mareka came to the computer and began talking to her brother, Sean suddenly felt very sad.
He and Mary and Mareka had been living a wonderful dream up until seven months ago; a couple of trips to Iceland every year, Mary’s witchcraft app had been doing well, and Sean had kept busy promoting his grandmother’s art. All of that had ended abruptly with the Covid-19 lock-downs. While Sean had been thrown off balance by that turn of events, things had gotten a bit better recently. Mary had been working with Hilmar on a new twist for the app and Mareka was really enjoying her new home-school experience. She had been somewhat isolated when they lived in the apartment in downtown Seattle and having children of her own age coming over nearly every day had brightened her moods considerably. She was still bothered by visions at times and the use of her new-found powers were sometimes scary but when she did ‘kids stuff’, as she put it, it had brought her some real happiness—or so it seemed to Sean. The other member of their household, Jo, had gotten a mood boost as well from being the children’s de facto instructor. Jo had other problems though. Sean sensed that Jo had taken the death of her mother very hard and she had also alluded to problems with her ‘ex’. Sean couldn’t help but wonder if those issues had re-surfaced during her trip to Spokane.
And then Sean pondered the meaning of his own life. Where was he going? Promoting his grandmother’s art was rewarding, to be sure, but when it came down to it, it was her show, Sean was just the messenger, not the message. Even if the new book project did well it wouldn’t satisfy Sean’s feeling that his life outside of the family had become meaningless. After talking with Barbara Merrit in the grocery store, Sean could see that her baseless conspiracy theories were running out of steam. His life would have been simpler if he had stayed a coder in the first job he had out of college, but that scene was a truly a meaningless life. “My life would have been a lot simpler if I had been born to a different father,” he thought.
Jo was in her cottage/guesthouse in the backyard of Sean and Mary’s house. She had the radio on and was listening to the Seahawks/Dolphins football game while she went through the boxes of her childhood things that she had brought back from Spokane. She made three piles: one of things to keep, one of things to throw out, and one of things to deal with later. The discard pile was the biggest, and with the addition of every rejected item she felt as if she was erasing a bit her past. Was that a good thing or a bad thing? Was it the same as Peer Gynt peeling an onion? No, Peer found nothing, Jo was finding release, there would be no tears from her.
The game had reached half-time and the local station was running a news break:
“Seattle police have issued a warning concerning recent murders among the homeless population. They are looking for a white male, slim, about 5 foot ten, mid-thirties, with a distinctive snake tattoo around his right wrist. He is suspected of involvement in three drug-related recent homicides in the last two weeks…”
“Stroud,” said Jo, staring at her mother’s revolver in the discard pile.
She moved the weapon to the ‘keep’ pile.
Next chapter: It’s Showtime!
