Dewey’s – By Anne Barwell #6
As soon as he reached what he’d come to think of as his and Hal’s corner, he undid the front and top of the piano, and got started.
“I was worried you might have changed your mind.” Hal greeted him with a hug, and then brushed his lips against Daniel’s.
Daniel looked up in surprise at the public display of affection. Hal’s kiss felt like everything he’d imagined, and more.
“It’s the middle of the night,” Hal explained, “but there’s a storm a-brewing. I told the librarian I’d check on Bib, then lock up afterwards.”
“There’s a huge one about to hit here, too.” Daniel adjusted the tension in the last few strings, hit the notes on the piano and smiled. He didn’t need a tuning fork. “Perfect pitch.”
“Nice.” Hal waited for Daniel to pack up his tools, load his backpack, and adjust it over his shoulder. “I want this to work, but if it doesn’t, I’ve loved our time together. No regrets, my love?”
Daniel smiled, a warm feeling rushing through him at Hal’s words. “No regrets. Love you, too.” He sat at the piano, Hal by his side. “Ready?”
Hal began to play. Daniel placed his hands over Hal’s, both of them playing the familiar tune together. A few bars in, Hal kissed Daniel’s cheek, and whispered, “Follow me.”
The tune picked up pace and changed into a major key. The scent of jasmine filled the air, entwining with the music, pulling at Daniel’s heart and soul.
The lights suddenly went out. Daniel jumped and stopped playing, leaning into Hal’s embrace.
“I guess the storm’s taken the power out.” Hal pulled a flashlight from his pocket and shone it on the open door to their left. Outside, the storm raged. “We’ll need to dash.”
He took Daniel’s hand and led him through the door onto a street from a hundred years ago.
A pristine Ford Model T slowly drove past, the only vehicle on the otherwise quiet road, its headlights briefly illuminating a new looking building that in Daniel’s time was decades old.
The atmosphere crackled, rain falling in huge drops and dancing on the cobblestone sidewalk.
“We….”
“Yes, we did.” Hal’s grip on Daniel’s hand tightened. “Welcome to the rest of our lives together.”
Daniel turned around, but the bar he’d left was now a library. Bib was standing in the doorway, watching them. She walked inside, and the door closed behind her.
Serena checked the name of the bar again before entering.
She’d received a weird message from her brother earlier in the week and hadn’t been able to reach him since.
His claim that he was getting a new start was reassuring, yet she couldn’t shake the feeling that he was saying goodbye, so she’d dropped everything and come to Laverge to find him.
When she walked up to the bar, the man behind it looked up and exchanged a glance with an old man sitting and nursing a drink. “Serena Lawrence?”
“Yes, and you must be Gerry.” Serena had phoned ahead once the power and cell service was restored. Luckily, the freak storm had only taken them out for a few hours.
“And I’m Germain Broussard, Gerry’s grandfather.” The old man gestured to the stool next to him. “You’ll be wanting answers about Daniel, then.”
“Yes.” Something about his tone made her hesitate, but Gerry had seemed nice enough on the phone, and Daniel had told her to come here if she couldn’t reach him. “Oh God, something’s happened to him, hasn’t it? He’s done something.”
Gerry quietly gave her a drink, whiskey by the smell of it. “On the house.” He handed her a letter to go with it. “There’s more of these, but you’ll want this one first.”
The envelope looked old, but the handwriting was definitely Daniel’s. Serena took a fortifying sip of whiskey and then opened it, her hands shaking, when she read the date.
“It’s from 1925. What the fuck?”
“Keep reading,” Germain said. A calico cat jumped onto the bar and studied her before pushing its head against her hands. “Smug, aren’t you, Bib? Funny how everything worked out, isn’t it?’
Serena put the letter down. “This is crazy.” She studied the paper. It looked old, but Daniel’s story of going back in time to be with the man he loved was unbelievable.
“Love can be, and this is more than most.” Germain smiled.
“I remember your Daniel from when I was a boy. He and Hal were happy in the forty or so years they had together. They achieved a lot of good together, too.” He took a swig of his coffee.
“Weird thing, though, when I remember him from now, it’s like there’s two versions in my mind.
One where I met him for the first time a few days ago, and one where I already knew him from when I was younger.
Time, eh? It shakes things out until they fit. ”
Serena drained her glass, the whiskey burning her throat, the warmth not quite taking the chill away.
“He asked me to look into someone named Hal, who lived here in the 1920s. He said he’d met someone in town with the same name and dressed in old-fashioned clothes.
Weird thing is, though, I had trouble finding much, and then I hit a lodestone of information.
Hal LeBrun, the 1920s one, I mean, as I couldn’t find the modern version, lost a close friend in the first world war, and kept mostly to himself. ”
“And then?” Germain prompted, although his tone suggested he already knew the answer.
“In 1925, an old friend from LA came to town, and Hal gave him a place to stay. He was a piano tuner called Daniel Lawrence. The two confirmed bachelors lived together here in Laverge until the end of their days. They were found together at the end in each other’s arms, confirming they’d been more than friends.
” Serena looked up at Germain. “I mean, what are the chances of my brother meeting a man with the same name as someone living a hundred years ago, who was in a relationship with someone with his name?”
“He asked me to give you these.” Germain placed a box on the bar.
“He wrote you letters, all dated. He said you used to watch movies together about time travel when you were kids, and that lately you’d both been so busy that your relationship became long distance, and that he’d continue that with these letters. ”
“You knew what he planned to… try?” Serena still couldn’t bring herself to believe in what was quickly becoming the only explanation for his disappearance.
“We talked about it a few days ago, in this time, and also shortly before he passed away. He told me to give you these, and that everything would make more sense in about seventy years or so.” Germain stood, and gestured for his grandson to join them.
“I struggled to believe Pepère’s story, but then I remembered the photo that got packed away years ago,” Gerry said. “It used to hang here when Dewey’s first opened. I figured it was time to hang it here again.” He led them over to the piano sitting in the corner of the bar.
A bowl of sweet-smelling jasmine sat on it. The scene relaxed Serena and left her with the feeling that everything was how it was meant to be.
“Daniel and Hal were well-thought of here. They weren’t afraid to love each other, despite the times, and the town respected that,” Germain said.
Serena followed his gaze to the photo that hung above the piano.
An older Daniel and a man who had to be Hal sat at the piano playing a duet. Daniel looked content and in love—an expression she never thought she’d see on him again.
Also in the photo, watching them, was a very smug, very familiar calico cat.
Anne Barwell lives in Wellington, New Zealand, and shares her home with kitty siblings Byron and Marigold who are convinced her office chair is theirs.
She works in a library and is an avid reader and watcher of a wide range of genres. She writes paranormal, fantasy, and historical, with a touch of contemporary and SF. Music often plays a part in her stories and/or her characters are musicians.